Promoted article (contains affiliate links)
Could there be a safer bet than a bet on esports? Though esports are still behind traditional mainstream sports in terms of overall views, the numbers are getting closer and closer, both in terms of the audience and the extracted revenues. And that’s not going unnoticed by the sports giants – many of them already have ongoing partnerships with esports pro teams and there’s much more to come.
Dozens of world-known and thousands of minor businesses are looking at esports as a solid investment opportunity. But let’s look at numbers.
According to Statista, the esports market revenue worldwide in 2019 accounted for 1.1 billion dollars, which is about 7-8% of the revenue from the sports merchandising market in North America and slightly less than 3% of the total annual profit of the European soccer market.
Indeed, esports has been taken seriously for a couple of years, but not all games are equally attractive. The main points of connection between big betting businesses and esports are League of Legends, Dota 2, and CS: GO, the three disciplines sitting on the throne of video games for a while.
League of Legends
With about 38% of the total betting volume in esports, League of Legends is big enough to provide fair betting with only the slightest chance of manipulation – the prize money along with the sponsorship accruals are too significant to indulge in match-fixing, though, just like in any other sports, fraud does take place in League of Legends from time to time, as it does in other esports and traditional sports.
That said, betting on LoL is generally safe and widely available across hundreds of gambling and betting online platforms.
Dota 2
The beloved child of Valve Corporation, Dota 2 is a worthy successor to the game designed by IceFrog in 2003 as a multiplier 5 vs 5 map within Warcraft III, another popular real-time strategy game.
The long and thorny path of Dota 2 has led it to an incredible success: the average number of players in April 2020 accounted for almost 500,500 gamers, 100,000+ players more than in the same month in 2019.
CS: GO
Concluding the ‘big three,’ this iconic shooter is demonstrating success in 2020: the peak number of concurrent players in April – a few players short of 1.3 million and by two times more players than the year before – is no joke. The global audience still loves competitive shooters and is willing to spend money on the best games in this category.
In terms of games outside of the big three, other esports companies are trying to catch up with the leaders by striking partnerships, developing their platforms and collaborating with adjacent industries. For example, Call of Duty has just signed a three-year partnership with TeamSpeak, the programme to associate with CoD for at least the next three years. The scene thrives.
Esports and Advanced Payment Gateways: The Easier, the Better
Gambling payments are more or less streamlined and smooth – for example, in Canada, all kinds of casinos accept Interac payments and PayPal, the two most favorable payment options among Canadians – but the same cannot be said about esports.
And what hampers many esports businesses is the lack of understanding that it’s not enough to accept payment methods in a variety of currencies. A much more important factor is local customer preferences, which are usually quite specific, including the necessity to create a unique currency for the game or endorse the use of skins (that is, items playing an entirely cosmetic role in the game; a skin might be an ornamented hilt, a holster, a hairstyle, character outfit – whatever) as a currency or cosmetic-only unlock.
But probably the best way to remove barriers in esports is to accept Bitcoin and the whole concept of cryptocurrencies. Alack, the relatively young and enthusiastic field of esports is still reluctant to integrate crypto, partially because of the low awareness of the potential of this kind payment, partly due to the high cost of talents capable of building BTC-compatible esports platforms from scratch, and also the views some have towards it.
The Sky’s the Limit for Esports and Betting
However, with all the challenges and underestimations, there’s no doubt that esports, along with esports betting, are two of the next big things for the decade.
Let’s have a look at the numbers for the last time within this article: in 2016, worldwide esports revenues amounted to 500 million U.S dollars. In 2020, the figure is expected to triple. Do you really need any more proof to bet on esports?
Promoted article (contains affiliate links)
