Esports: the bookmakers’ favorites
Esports are beginning to make a very strong presence in the gambling market, attracting more and more the interest of younger people who generally engage in sports betting in the UK. In fact, Gen Z punters are exhibiting greater preference in watching esports tournaments and competitions than real life, traditional sports events and for the most part, they get to place bets more often in esports than in physical sports.
Almost all bookmakers today offer betting on esports and they do this for two main reasons: first, because it is becoming a very big thing in betting due to the enormous interest from customers. Published data show that esports betting has nearly doubled in 2021 compared to the previous year and it is estimated to have a further double digit growth in the next few years as well. Second, because it is a particularly attractive market for the bookies themselves.
We can easily demonstrate why esports are so popular amongst bookmakers, simply by taking into consideration three main issues: in-play betting, accuracy of odds and fast data feed.
In-play betting
Bookmakers can offer advanced and more enriched in-play betting when it comes to esports. As data is generated, transmitted, obtained, recorded and analyzed all at the same time, in such a speed that can’t simply be achieved in real-life, traditional sports, bookmakers get to offer a wider range of in-play bets instantly and efficiently. But this is not the only thing that makes esports betting appealing. It is also the fact that in-play betting is enhanced, providing a greater and stronger experience for the punters because of the complexity of the nature and the outcomes of esports. In esports there are so many different events that can be wagered on which go far beyond the more simple outcomes and events offered in betting on traditional sports. Afterall how many different things can happen in a traditional sport? On the other hand, in esports there are too many different things to bet on, expanding the list of bookmakers’ offers.
Accuracy of odds
Bookmakers generally try to build odds that are as accurate as possible and predict the outcomes of events as much as possible, through leveraging data produced and generated by the games. But in traditional sports, such data don’t come at the speed that they do in esports, which are based exclusively on digital technology and information systems. With esports, bookmakers have readily available huge amounts of data that are not only instantly processed for the development of the in-play odds, but they are also processed through artificial intelligence built-in technology, allowing the system to become more intelligent and accurate in its predictions of outcomes and as such improve the accuracy of the pre-game odds as well. This kind of machine learning (ML) is in fact one of the key advantages that esports provide to bookies, especially as it ensures that their systems and methods of data analysis are constantly informed and improved as more data is leveraged.
Fast Data feed
The issue of latency is one of the key features of esports betting because it can potentially affect the entire betting experience for the punters and in some cases it can also determine the kind of bet, the amount of bet or even the punter’s willingness to place a bet. With esports bookmakers get to have a fundamentally different process for obtaining data when compared to traditional sports. In the latter case, bookmakers pick up manually the data from the games and they use them to change or adjust odds, which means that there is certainly some degree of delay, which can be at the advantage of a punter, who let’s say watches live an event and is quick enough to place a bet on something that just happened. In esports, bookmakers get direct data feed from game servers and this means that there is almost no delay. So, bookies have access to almost real time data for esports games. But viewers and punters get to watch the streaming of esports with a delay-latency, which is built in the process in order to minimize unfair practices and unfair game tactics between opponents. This evidently gives an advantage to bookmakers to set their odds and as such benefit from the delay.
However, while a critical advantage for sportsbooks, the issue of latency and the fast data feed can cause problems that might ultimately refrain punters from placing bets on esports events. If punters are presented with odds that do not reflect the reality of the game at the given time, then they are most likely to abandon betting all together for this game and in this way lead to a collapse of esports betting or damage their betting experience.