SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
It’s important to remember when looking at esports as a whole that it’s just an umbrella term. Under the sports term there’s cricket, rugby, football and a plethora of other disciplines and each will have unique and independent betting markets.
The same applies, too, for esports. Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends are the three biggest titles in a sea of esports. Each game has completely different markets and popularity varies for each across the world.
Each title has different popularity across the world and in different betting markets. Dota 2, for example, is hugely popular in the CIS region whilst Counter-Strike is comfortably more popular in the East than the West.
We spoke to Peter Ivanov, Head of Esports Trading at UltraPlay, to find out just what they see between regions and markets.
SBC: What are the most popular game titles for you at UltraPlay? Do you see differences depending on where your client operates?
PI: As a leading esports betting provider with the widest games coverage on the market, we see the great importance of both well-known and new titles that players love, play and bet on.
Even though the fans base of some games is enormous, there are few titles that distinguish among the others, or the so called Golden Trio consistent of League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike.
These three games stand for over 80% of the betting turnover currently and have developed the esports scene for more than 10 years. Most betting operators are currently offering lines on these games.
There are some demographic preferences based on the popularity of the game titles. For example in Asia, you would see most turnover on League of Legends, Starcraft and Dota 2 with CSGO betting popularity close to zero.
However, in CIS market, CSGO betting dominates the numbers a lot with Dota 2 coming up second and any other game titles falling way behind. In Nordics markets you would see similar pattern with CSGO being even further ahead of all other titles.
SBC: What do you see with betting patterns on markets? Do different games have different amounts of markets and what are the most popular? Is it just straight-up match betting?
PI: The aforementioned Golden Trio has a well-established betting structure including specific game based markets, large betting limits, live betting available. Operators are actively advertising betting on those games. Moreover, Dota 2 and CS:GO are being developed with betting in mind.
It all starts with match winner market as this is the foundation of betting, but what really pleases esports fans are offerings that reflect the game objectives or different game strategies that test your game comprehension to the limit.
It has always been a main focus for UltraPlay to provide what esports fans truly deserve and that is to connect betting with gaming experience. It has been a real challenge but that is what makes our product truly special.
