The Future Of Esports: How To Crack The World’s Most Dynamic Betting Market
As esports continues its exponential rise to the very top of the gambling tree, melding sports betting and iGaming into a unique, compulsive proposition and attraction, the purity–or otherwise–of data holds the key to operator success or failure, writes André Dubronski.
So believes Amir Mirzaee, Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer of Berlin-based Bayes Esports, arguably the planet’s leading, and most trusted, provider of Official Live Data in the esports ecosphere.
Building on our long-standing partnership with Bayes Esports, Amir here discusses the financial and credibility perils of using and relying on ‘Grey Market’ or so-called ‘Scraped’ data.
This controversial pathway almost certainly leads to Destination Failure, argues Amir; as he maps a journey embracing Clean Data, a superior user-experience, greater profits and authentic sustainability.
It’s a message as young and as fresh as esports’ very own core audience — and it’s an essential pathway to help operators, both extant and putative, navigate the unique variables and complex flux of one of the world’s most dynamic betting verticals.
Amir Mirzaee:
“Over the past five years, the esports industry has experienced tremendous growth and transformation driven by the introduction of official and complete live match data offerings. The industry continues to be on the rise in terms of profitability, particularly within the betting space for a certain segment of market players. The businesses that continue to thrive all share one thing in common — an esports-specific focus and long-term vision within their company strategy. They have a strong understanding of how their return-on-investment will unfold.
“Those companies that gain access to live match data and other products built on it are one step ahead of the others. We have seen the significant impact it can have on the success of a company. For one reason or another, companies that have built their products on the grey market data also seem to have a harder time turning a profit, as we saw most prominently with companies like Betway or Luckbox completely losing their foothold in the esports ecosystem.
“On the flip side, in 2023, Bayes Esports enabled over €1 billion in annual betting turnover for its clients with a strong upward trend. Official live data not only produces a superior user experience, it is also the most significant indicator of a company’s dedication to actually investing in the esports market vs. plainly investing in marketing and sponsorships for example. It’s a simple logic: why open the funnel wide if the monetisation engine is working as it should? To maximize turnover in esports betting, understanding the key investments to make is crucial for sustainable growth.”
Build diverse, high-quality esports betting products
“Esports, with its predominantly young to mid-aged audience, age 27-35 at the core, and dynamic structure to the matches, demand products that go beyond conventional offerings seen in traditional sports. In traditional sports betting, we often see markets on Team A vs Team B, but with esports, each tournament and game title comes with unique variables, such as match length or last-minute roster changes. Games also face regular updates in the form of patches, metadata changes, and even new game titles altogether.
“The constant influx and complex nature of esports makes it challenging for operators to manage. Very few companies have the ambition and capabilities to run esports betting entirely in-house. Those that do can be seen in some of our customers; Bet365, Pinnacle, and GG.Bet. Other operators, however, may not be able to invest in esports so heavily, so it’s down to what partners they turn to.
“This is where Bayes Esports is unique. Not only do we deliver official live match data, we also empower an operator on any stage of the value chain. We offer a complete set of products and services and we can work with our customers as they evolve and grow. From offering the original “clean” live match data and industry-leading match probabilities products to offering traded odds, zero delay video feeds, data visualization, and more. With live data at its core, customers of ours can develop engaging and diverse esports betting products. With no delays, operators can maximize market uptime, and create a continuous betting cycle. Ultimately, impacting their bottom line.”
Streamline operations with one integration
“Each operator has its own unique set of challenges in the market. As the market and the operator evolve, so will the products and content they wish to offer. The popularity of one game may soar, new tournaments may pop up, and their in-house team of traders and data scientists may grow. However, to achieve maximum turnover, betting operators must aim to avoid too many costly integrations with multiple partners. Selecting the right partner that can allow for an evolving product without minimal integrations in esports is paramount for success.
“Bayes Esports acknowledges the regional diversity within the esports communities and supports this by delivering an expansive content calendar and distribution system that allows for global reach. Streamlining operations through one official data provider will cut costs, simplify the integration, and provide full back-end support. The Bayes Esports team, for example, provides round-the-clock operations managing live tournament data, and a full team of engineers, data scientists, and esports experts.”
Understand what your service provider offers
“When zeroing in on what service provider to partner with, know what to look out for. Take a look at where their data is coming from. While odds can be scraped, items like resulting a match, should be made based on an official data feed. This is why we believe it is so important to have transparency around the promotional language used because misleading can have a knock-on effect on the quality of the betting products, and ultimately the revenue accrued.
“Most importantly, a unique key question in esports is “How do I build context to punters in the absence of public live feeds”. It is common knowledge that esports – uniquely to the sport – usually has an integrity delay in place that feeds public broadcast by at least a minute. By launching Bayes Video Streams and Bayes Widgets, Bayes has rolled out a unique feature that allows for official data clients to have low-delay video streams and widgets running next to their odds. 2024 will be the year where unofficial data offerings will hence be easier to spot.
“Approximately 70 percent of esports betting is live vs. pre-match bets. This is unique to the esports target audience. Without any form of data visualization to the actual match, there will be a decline in betting volume. In the context of extracting data from a public stream with an integrity delay, allowing live match bets creates a potential for bettors to win a huge chunk of the revenue. Alternatively, operators may need to prematurely close their markets.
“Ask questions about the service provider’s uptime during a match and how it balances for risk-free margins. If an operator already has a solid team of traders in-house, take a look at other tools that can be outsourced to support building the most reliable and profitable products. A partner should be able to deliver a margin of a minimum four percent and up to seven percent across its portfolio.
“The benefits of building products on live data can be clearly seen in the success of our customer, GG.BET. With one Bayes Esports integration, GG.BET increased the number of total events covered by 20-25 percent. With access to more detailed data from more events, it offered its customers a broader and more interesting range of markets than ever before, while growing its audience, and generating a profit.
“Live data management plays a significant role in the long-term success and revenue stability of a betting operator and therefore, choosing the right partners is essential. While outsourcing more of the product will cost exponentially more, it allows the operator to kickstart their esports journey with higher quality products more likely to turn a profit. As an operator evolves and potentially brings services in-house, Bayes Esports ensures they remain connected to the original data ecosystem of esports.”
About the Author:
Amir Mirzaee has more than 18-years of experience in technology startups, many of them spent at Google and Waze. Bayes Esports established itself as the market leader in esports data science back when they were known as DOJO Madness, developing leading data-based companion apps for major game titles. That expertise and drive to explore data in esports led to a joint-venture with Sportradar and the subsequent founding of Bayes Esports.
Bayes Esports is pushing the boundaries of what is possible with AI and data science in esports — and supporting rights holders in their fight against the usage of AI for illegitimate purposes along the way.
