In essence, economics can be boiled down to a simple equation of supply and demand. Two parties interact with each other to exchange goods and services with each other based on how much of it is there and available and how much it is needed. This creates a market, where every supplier and every demander can compete with each other to try and get the best deal for their side of the bargain.
So far, so simple. But what would need to happen for a brand new market to be created?
The first option looks quite simple on a surface level. A new market needs a new product or service to be demanded and supplied. However, it’s not quite as simple as that. New products and services require innovation, new ideas for goods that the demander either previously was not able to get or did not know they even needed. Additionally, this new product or service then needs to be profitable for both parties, meaning that the supplier needs to be able to sell their goods for enough money to make a profit, while the demander has at least to believe that the goods they paid for are generating enough added value for their investment to be worthwhile. To top it all off, each individual party has to actually know that the other one exists in the first place, otherwise they would not be able to interact with each other to exchange their goods in the first place.
It’s these issues that plague the development of markets in esports data. If a new game becomes popular in the esports scene, there is the potential for live game data of professional matches played in that game to be used for a variety of different use cases, with users ranging from esports betting operators over media outlets to players and fans.
Let’s go through the steps required for a market to be created around data of that new game title.
Luckily, in that scenario, the first step of a new product or service being needed can already be crossed off with the creation of the new esports title. It’s the other two steps that can be troublesome. For example, if a betting operator wanted to integrate the new game title into their services, they would require minute odds to be provided to them. These odds not only require accurate and reliable data from the matches that are played, but they also require the trader to be knowledgeable of the game and the scene around it to better judge which team will truly have an advantage. In theory, this creates a demand for these odds that traders that decided to specialize in the calculation of odds for the new game can then supply. In practice, however, traders in (e)sports betting do not have set standards for their reporting, monitoring, market definitions, and API used, which means the betting operator would have to deal with higher development and management costs in order to be able to integrate these odds into their services. Accepting these additional costs is a risk not many betting operators would be willing to take since games in esports might only last a few years or even just months. This means that a demand for these odds might possibly exist, but actually integrating them is hardly ever worth it, making the market not profitable for the demander. For the few that it might be, it can be extremely difficult to then find a supplier that could deliver them the odds they need and vice-versa. Since both parties know of each other’s difficulties and the instability of games in esports, there are only very few players on the market that are willing to take the risk to participate in it. On a global market, it can actually be quite tricky for these typically smaller players to find one another.
It’s these two issues that Bayes Esports is intending to solve. By taking the raw data of data suppliers and standardizing the way it is handled and by allowing these data offerings to be findable in one central space, we can be more than just another player in the general market of esports data, we can be market creators. We can be creators of so much more than just a marketplace for esports data, where buyers and sellers only can exchange their goods. It’s an ecosystem, in which players of the esports data industry can find data offerings, esports odds, visualizations, expertise, knowledge, and contacts from various different sources from all across the globe whenever and wherever they need it. Because that’s the future of economics.
And we are the future of esports.
