More and more aspects of our lives are transitioning to a digital format, and sports are no exception. Esports is gaining increasing significance in the offerings of bookmakers, attracting a new audience to the operators’ platforms.
At the SBC Summit in Lisbon, Thomas Donson, Head of Trading at DATA.BET, discussed with SBC’s Content Director Ted Menmuir the differences in the needs of esports users and clients of traditional sportsbook platforms.
“Esports is still very much a niche in the whole sportsbook landscape, however, going forward it’s becoming more and more mainstream,” explained Donson. “The clientele that we work with are becoming more mature, they’re getting more engaged and we’re developing tools to match their expectation in terms of a sportsbook
“Player props was our first foray into personalisation and [making] the betting experience more suited to an esports customer. There’s a big difference between a traditional sportsbook bet builder and what a player expects.
“It’s much more central to an esports bettor to have player props as a core offering of what they want to bet on. So, integrating top-class player props into a leading bet builder product is very important for us and being able to deliver a high-end UX that places it in front of the customer.”
Donson added that esports customers “don’t react the same way” and are more “social media driven”, which means that their allegiance to different teams and players varies compared to the loyalty shown by more traditional customers to a certain sports team.
An added challenge to operators presented by esports is that the developers of games are constantly evolving their products and changing the way the games are played. As a result, Donson emphasized the need “to stay ahead of the curve”.
He said: “Esports is incredibly fast-moving. For classical sports events, the rules don’t change and the method of a game being played never changes. Whereas with esports, the developers constantly change [games], they bring out new maps, new characters and new mechanics into the games.
“So from a technical point of view, we always have to be on top of what’s happening and talk to the developers and the providers to ensure we’re aware of what’s happening. We have to make sure that our statistics are on board and that the offering we give our customer matches their expectations.
“They’re not prepared to sacrifice on quality and we can’t just suddenly say to them that we need time to refine our product, we have to be ahead of it all the time.”
To hear more about the changing needs and expectations of an esports bettor, as well as DATA.BET’s risk management and player engagement strategies, click HERE to watch the full video.
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