The rise of esports betting
An unexpected circumstance or consistent pattern?
The idea of esports claiming official sports status was a glaring perspective in the last decade. And why shouldn’t it be? 2020 was marked by the ubiquitous cancelation of nearly all sports events around the globe, causing real sports bettors to turn to esports. 2020 became a breakthrough in betting for esports by a large margin. Esports became a saving grace for the betting side of business, attracting companies such as Unibet and Bet365 to test the waters of online gaming. Proponents of the idea of betting in video games, formerly sneered at by the business world due to esports’ audience size, all of a sudden became the thing betting industry desperately needed in 2020.
But was 2020’s spike in new esports fans so unanticipated? It only takes a glance into the statistics of how industry had changed prior to 2020 to understand the ongoing development on the betting side of esports and how it drives esports to be recognized as real sports.
Despite its staggering magnitude, viewership rates come as no surprise to the industry experts who have seen how esports events were attracting an increasing number of people over the 2010s. The last decade demonstrated an astounding rise in viewership, but the betting rate of the 2010s was topped by the respective numbers 2020 had in store.
It’s worth noting that in the 2000s esports evolved into a billion-dollar industry reaching mainstream media. From late 2000s several media giants, like ESPN, have aired their first esports tournaments exposing the content to even larger audiences that had only previously heard of classic esports games from their friends. The march to claim 2 billion potential viewers, who had previously heard of esports, has turned into the unseen before rates of growth for the industry. By the beginning of 2019, esports total audience was estimated to be over 450-million viewers. This number was only topped by the viewership rates of major world sports finales like The FIFA World Cup.
This development has brought a dramatic increase in the betting volume. In the span between March and April of 2020 the industry witnessed x40 betting growth in real-life sports simulations, of which FIFA and NBA2k made 80% of the total betting volume (Everymatrix. Esports Report. May 2020). It should come as no surprise there are advanced talks of having esports included in the program of various Olympic events. And video gaming competitions, also known as classic esports with their leading arenas — League of Legends, CS:GO and DOTA 2, are turning into spectator sport.
Esports opens the door to a huge audience for betting companies. At this point the debate for the validity of increasing calls to recognize esports as real sports may as well run its end, as the power of market and emerging betting opportunities increasingly push the dialogue aside. It’s not to say the matter will lose its heat in the process of its unraveling. The latter is not to be expected to happen soon, but earlier outlined circumstances definitely drive the narrative to its logical conclusion.
Outcome of the debate may also be altered considerably by changing attitudes of the younger generation. A Morning Consult poll conducted in September of 2020 shows that “Gen Zers” (Generation Z, aged 13–23) are less likely to identify as sports fans compared to both the general population and the age group before them — millennials. 53% of Gen Zers identify as sports fans, compared to 63% of all adults and 69% of millennials, and are half as likely as millennials to watch live sports regularly and twice as likely to never watch. Esports are more popular among Gen Z than MLB, NASCAR, and the NHL, with 35% identifying as fans.
As industry nears a cusp of change with the shifting attitudes seen in Gen Zers, skyrocketing viewership rates and mass increase of esports bettors, online bookmakers design new ways to appeal both to existing sports bettors and established esports base, seeking new levels of engagement and reaching broader audiences who we never thought we’d see in esports. The industry opens the door to 2 billion potential bettors on top of nearly half a billion existing ones.
2020 started the new wave in the business attracting a myriad of sponsors and driving tournament prizes up on esports events. All these will factor in the expected growth of interest in betting. This momentum doesn’t stop in 2021 and there’s no telling where the horizon of the change ends as industry confidently marches through the uncertainty of the present day.
