Traditional online sportsbooks have so far been reluctant to embrace esports, but this is proving to be a missed opportunity. This is mostly due to fears over integrity and offering markets on contests and tournaments featuring underage athletes.
But despite this, esports has taken the world by storm and is hugely popular in a growing number of markets and jurisdictions that operators are looking to target with their sportsbook brands. According to a Newzoo study, the global esports audience is set to hit 577 million viewers by the end of 2024 with significant interest coming from Latin America.
Brazil is leading the charge here. In 2023, there were more than 25 million esports users in the country with that number set to reach 33.8 million by 2028 according to Statista. This is a big-money industry, too. In 2020, Latin Americans spent an impressive $8.8bn on physical and digital games, a number that will be much bigger by the end of 2024.
The interest in esports is incredibly high in Latin America and beyond and operators that do not bring esports into their sportsbook will miss the chance to engage a vast – and growing – segment of bettors.
Many of these bettors fall into the lucrative but hard-to-reach Millennial and Generation Z cohorts. Often considered the bettors of tomorrow, they are willing to wager today so long as they can bet on the sports – esports – that interest them.
Offering esports betting will be especially important in markets such as Brazil as Millennials and Gen Z make up the majority of the addressable audience for online betting – in Brazil, Millennials account for around 34 per cent of its population and 70 per cent of its workforce by 2030.
Before looking more closely at how operators can provide an engaging esports betting experience it’s important to understand some of the concerns they have and why this has forced them to stay out of the vertical up to now.
Cause for concern
Integrity is perhaps the biggest concern that sportsbook operators have when it comes to esports and. Given that esports athletes, audiences and bettors skew younger than with traditional sports betting, operators have been incredibly cautious when approaching the vertical.
The biggest fear is offering markets on underage athletes, with operators often having to rely on their data and content providers to have the necessary integrity protocols and processes in place to ensure this doesn’t happen.
I think operators are also worried that they don’t fully understand the core esports audience and what they are looking for in a betting experience.
This experience needs to go beyond just a good selection of markets and solid odds and include content, data and live streaming. Ultimately, esports betting is fast, dynamic and rich, and this can be hard to provide if you don’t have deep experience in the sector.
Of course, these concerns can be easily addressed and the operators that have done so have been able to tap into a whole new bettor audience and reap the rewards for doing so. So, what does a top esports betting experience look like?
Esports betting content that hits the mark
First, it’s important to understand why bettors prefer esports to traditional sports.
This is mostly because of the unpredictable match results and there are more events (24/7/365) to bet on – sports are seasonal with breaks in the action throughout the year. Fans also feel more connected to esports athletes – they tend to be of a similar age and appearance.
One of the most important aspects of a compelling esports betting experience is of course the fast betting nature as well as the markets and odds offered to bettors and the disciplines they are offered on.
What do we mean by fast betting? Fast matches that take place simultaneously with near-instant bet settlement. Fast betting is what esports fans are looking for – they want bets to resolve in a handful of minutes (not an hour and a half like with a standard football match, for example) so operators need to add this type of content to their lobbies.
For example, our ESportsBattle tournaments are one of the most recognisable examples of fast betting content and provide 24/7 action across eFootball, eBasketball, eHockey and CS2 – in total, bettors can wager on more than 35,000 events per month with up to 50 markets per event.
These tournaments have a huge fan base including 10,000 followers on Instagram. It really is a comprehensive offering with more than 370,000 matches arranged in the last 12 months, with 24 simultaneous streams at peak times and with a 90%+ uptime rate.
We complement this with a highly accurate esports odds feed covering 450+ tournaments globally with 40,000+ live and pre-match events per year for popular disciplines like CS2, Dota 2, LoL, Valorant and many more.
Accurate data, odds and live streaming
The accuracy and reliability of data and odds need to be second to none, and that’s why we use official data, including from our partner GRID with their advanced widgets to be added recently, combined with our team of dedicated traders for each discipline. Esports is no different from sports in that each discipline is complex and requires specialist understanding – a tennis trader is unlikely to trade for rugby, for example.
Data and odds must be combined with live streaming, too. Esports fans hang out on streaming platforms such as Twitch so when they are betting, they expect to be able to watch the action unfold in real-time on an accompanying stream via the sportsbook.
Content and outcomes that bettors trust
It’s important for operators to build trust with esports fans and bettors, and the best way of doing this is to provide content and betting experiences underpinned by the highest degree of integrity.
As a content and data provider, we take our role in this seriously and have a dedicated Integrity team that works to a stringent framework. This covers everything from athlete training (we provide them with access to our own educational platform and courses and then test their knowledge) to a proprietary whistle-blowing platform. The result? Over the past 12 months, just 0.02 per cent of matches across our entire content offering have been flagged for suspicious activity.
We also rigorously control that only adult athletes over the age of 18 participate in our ESportsBattle tournaments. When it comes to providing markets and odds, that’s why we work closely with official tournament organisers and data providers, using these data feeds to calculate our odds. Again, this is crucial when it comes to integrity and building trust with operators and bettors.
While integrity in esports remains a concern for operators, today, the esports industry works to the same standards as traditional sports betting, sticking to the rules of fair play, collaborating with official content and data providers, etc. I think if more operators understood this, and how to offer a compelling esports betting experience, they would be quick to get in on the action.
The headline numbers for esports betting are trending upwards and when you look at the hottest online gambling markets in the world right now, offering esports betting will likely prove the key to unlocking the full potential they have.
The article was originally published in Newswire.
