Online Sports betting and Esports growth throughout the pandemic

Since the beginning of traditional sports, the gambling industry has complemented the ecosystem of sports as an industry; since, the gambling industry has offered odds on just about anything across any sport.

However, the past few years esports tournaments have been growing in significance and viewership. Whereas up until 2020, esports and the online sports betting industry have been seen as niche markets within the broader sports and sport betting industries, it may soon become a more mainstream betting option.

The pandemic paved the path for turbocharged growth of the Esports industry and, alongside the increasing amounts of viewers watching online broadcasts of their favourite esports tournaments, more players have started betting on esports games. This is because during the pandemic, whereas traditional sports leagues, such as the English premier league, had to cancel or postpone fixtures, esports tournaments just switched to fully virtual events and online streaming. Because the infrastructure for streaming, like Twitch, as well as online sports betting was already there, the transmission was smooth.

Interestingly, Find Betting Sites reports that, up until recently, the UK Gambling Commission did not really collect much data on esports. Although esports still represents a minority stake in the market for online and traditional sports betting, it has grown rapidly in recent years, and the trend seems to only be gaining momentum and growing further and faster, as opposed to just being a spur due to the pandemic.

Find Betting Sites quotes the gross gambling yield figures which, in essence, is the money which bookmakers take, minus the winnings they pay out. The gross gambling yield for March of 2019 for esports was just 50’000 GBP; this is clearly a small number, barely an industry in and of itself. However, in the March of 2020, this figure skyrocketed to 1’518’000 GBP at the start of the first lockdown in the UK. Just two months after, this gross gambling yield for esports in the UK tripled to 4’616’000 GBP. This huge surge was caused by a mixture of factors, such as the fact that more people had leisure time, with less hours spent on transport during the pandemic and, mainly, a lack of alternative events; and these are not just other sport events but, in the UK when there was a hard lockdown, there were no restaurants, gyms or shopping malls to visit and spend some time in. The internet was all that many people had to fill their empty time with and esports and online esports betting was one of the bigger sources of entertainment available to the public.

The most recent figures coming from May 2021, show that the gross gambling yield was at just over 2 million GBP; so, although this figure is much less than its pandemic peak, it is still at incredibly elevated levels, since before the pandemic. Therefore, we can see that the hype for online esports betting is here to stay and the whatever there was of esports gambling in the UK before the pandemic has shifted into a proper industry.

The esports betting industry is also much different than its traditional counterpart, as not only can players bet actual money, but they can use whichever currency tokens are used by the site on which they bet, but they can also bet using in-game items, such that it is much harder to put into a number the money that is being wagered and, ultimately, the kind of gross gambling yield-like figure which is used to quantify the esports betting industry.

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