How esports takes over the sportsbook market

Esports is developing by leaps and bound: major tournaments gather thousands of professional players, the target audience has turned over 500 million people and the sums of grabs number into dozens of millions of dollars. Top sportsbooks from the BetOn rating could not overlook such a dynamically developed direction — we will tell you about the basics and pitfalls of esports bets.

First esports bets

The first legal company that started to accept bets on esports events was EGamingBets and the first offered discipline was StarCraft II. This kind of bets made bettors curious and, consequently, sportsbooks extended the choice and added acceptance of long-term and live bets. Representatives of the largest online sportsbook Pinnacle claim that lately esports bets demonstrate record rate of increase in the whole betting history. If in 2016 the total annual profit of all sportsbooks consisted of 59 million dollars, next year the volume of esports bets is going to turn over 2,5 billion dollars.

Nowadays the lion’s share of popularity was taken by two disciplines – CS:GO and Dota II (75% from the total volume of bets), competitors – League of Legends (9%), Hearthstone (6%), StarCraft II (3%), and Overwatch (2%) were left behind. Here you can learn more about legal sportsbooks that accept esports bets that are popular now and do not cut down maximums and also read about profitable strategies. On the threshold of major esports tournaments, sportsbooks occasionally launch profitable special offers with gifts and monetary awards.

The biggest winnings in esports

The prize pools of esports competitions also show stable growth. In particular, the main Dota II tournament of the season – The International – sets records of the volume of payment for the fifth year in a row. If the sum of winnings for participants in 2014 turned over 10,9 million dollars, in 2018, the sum was increased 2,5 times – no doubt, this record will be broken at the nearest main event.

Besides Dota II, League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive may also boast about prize pool with six zeros. Esports is the most popular in Asia – in particular, in South Korea the winners of the main LoL, StarCraft II, and Dota II tournaments are not less popular than Messi, Ronaldo, or Neymar. Sponsorship, broadcasts, advertisements of hardware manufacturers and others – all of that brings esportsmen extra money.

Match-fixing

Grabs from tournaments and game enthusiasm are not enough for some esportsmen – losses of matches and match-fixing happen as often as in football. Now it is time to remind about the juiciest ones.

sAviOr (StarCraft II)

Esport’s homeland is South Korea, and the first discipline that caught the sportsbook experts’ interest was StarCraft: it is not a surprise that the first juicy scandal happened with this game at this Korean peninsula. As the official investigation happening in Korea in 2011 showed, one of the legends of the discipline, Ma Jae-Yoon became one of eleven players that got involved in a fixed match. Apart from the contestants, local sportsbooks also were complicit in match-fixing the total profit of the participants in the speculation must have been $35 thousand. As a result, Ma Jae-Yoon was sentenced to correctional tasks, got two years of a suspended sentence and also got deprived of all the won titles.

Solo (Dota II)

In 2013, a member of RoX.KIS, Alexey Berezin from Russia, became a reason of the loss of his team. Before the match, RoX.KIS had been treated as the biggest favorite while their opponents’ win was estimated as 3,22. This coefficient was used by Solo as he made a bet of $100 on the loss of his team. However, the security police of the sportsbook EGamingBets worked quickly and efficiently and revealed the information about the author of the account owned by Alexe Berezin. Unlike the majority of similar cases, Solo was disqualified for one year. Now Alexey is playing for the top team Virtus.Pro: at majors in 2017 and 2018, Berezin’s team reached Top-6 and in both cases won more than $1 млн.

iBUYPOWER (CS:GO)

In 2014, one of the juiciest scandals in Counter-Strike took place – NetCodeGuides and iBUYPOWER met at the tournament with a big prize pool. Despite the favorite status of the latter, the team статус NetCodeGuides won. The hype was fueled by the spectator of the event, the organizers had to investigate the case. As a result, the scammers that got $10 dollars were proven guilty and the players from the promising team iBUYPOWER got a life-time ban.

Life (StarCraft II)

Another investigation connected with a StarCraft II fixed match is also linked to a South Korean player - Lee Seung-Hyun who is more known as Life. At the moment of the scandal, Lee was one of the Top players in his discipline (total sum of the grabs was approaching $500 thousand). However, it was not enough for this esportsman and he became a player at many fixed matches. According to the episodes proven by the Korean public prosecution office, Life earned a profit of $62 thousand. But there is still a question about the number of episodes that were impossible to prove. As a result, the participant in fixed matches got a major monetary fine, suspended state and also a life-term ban from participation in official Dota II tournaments.

Evil Corporation and Sweet Boys (Dota II)

At one of Dota II tournaments with a relatively big prize pool, an extraordinary situation took place: two participants in a match decided to lose the match profitably. Before the start of the duel, sportsbook experts had got suspicious about considerable bets on the teams of the middle level. As it was discovered later, the representatives of both teams made bets on their own kisses at the battle up to ten frags. When the score was 9:9, the situation went irrational: the players of the teams put their heads on the block and did not finish their opponents. Despite the solid facts of the unfair game (the video of the fixed match with comments of professionals is available on YouTube), both of the participants in the match managed to avoid punishment.