‘Savvy players’ pose costly threat to eSports betting operators

February 9, 2019 4:59 PM
  • Hannah Gannagé-Stewart, CDC Gaming Reports
February 9, 2019 4:59 PM
  • Hannah Gannagé-Stewart, CDC Gaming Reports

New entrants to the eSports betting space have been warned not to have “your pants pulled down” by super-savvy pro eSports players with a keen eye on the odds.

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Blue Terra Ventures owner Benjamin Föckersperger said the uniquely expert nature of the eSports community posed both an opportunity and a risk to betting operators.

“They know so much, which is something you can engage with great data and great content, but also they know so much that they will pull your pants down if you’re not cautious,” he warned.

Speaking on the eSports panel being moderated by Föckersperger at ICE London last week, former managing director of esportsbetting.com Ben Bradtke admitted losing EUR 50,000 to ‘savvy’ players overnight because they understood the odds better than his trader.

“Three pro Call of Duty players came to the site during the Call of Duty World League. They were an example of very savvy players, people who know exactly what’s happening in the game,” Bradtke said. “Overnight they cost us over EUR 50,000 just based on what they were doing because they were total pros. They understood the odds, they understood the trader didn’t understand what he was doing, and they made a lot of money.”

888 Holdings commercial development analyst Jacob Richler-Kleiman said expert eSports players wasn’t the type of customers the company wants to attract.

“Not purely from a financial point of view but because if you’ve got savvy players dictating the market then unfortunately people are going to start closing down markets, closing down bets and accounts and eventually you’re going to get a bad reputation in the industry,” he said.

The panel agreed the lack of sophistication around data gathering and a deficit of expertise among traders and risk managers made fixed-odds offerings risky at present, while pari-mutuel models suffered from a lack of liquidity in the market.

However, Betspawn co-founder and CEO Vidar Duvnas said his firm had learned to mitigate the risks by imposing limits.

“If you look at eSports punters, they don’t place the same stakes as perhaps the biggest football punters do yet,” he said.

“The volumes per player are lower, and the average stake is lower than football, so today as long as you limit everything at a reasonable level, you shouldn’t take too much risk,” Duvnas said. “And once, over time, the odds are more secure and more stable and people have a harder time beating the odds, you can raise the limits.”