Are you maximising your iGaming brand's potential? The key may lie in the rapidly growing world of esports.
Esports offers a mostly overlooked and cost-effective avenue for iGaming operators to drive brand awareness and reach a younger, tech-savvy audience. Esports' fast-paced action and dedicated fan base provide a unique opportunity to enhance customer experience and foster deeper connections.
By integrating esports sponsorships, influencer partnerships, and tailored content into your marketing strategy, you can tap into a passionate community that craves authentic engagement with brands.
0:00 Esports Betting Market Overview
3:22 Popular Esports Titles and Regional Differences
6:24 Desktop vs. Mobile in Esports Betting
8:27 Marketing and Brand Awareness Strategies
11:37 Operational Challenges in Esports Betting
14:08 Building a Team for Esports Betting
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Welcome to “15 Minute Mastery,” the ultimate show for iGaming professionals, hosted by industry veteran Dmitry Belianin. With over 17 years of experience, Dmitry brings unparalleled insights and wisdom from top industry experts in just 15 minutes. Each episode delivers actionable strategies from all iGaming verticals to improve your personal and business performance. As the founder of Belianin, Dmitry also shares his expertise in nurturing high-potential iGaming startups. Subscribe to “15 Minute Mastery” for concise, high-value content and stay ahead in the competitive world of iGaming.
You want to cover as much audience as possible and if you are covered in the football one, why you forget about the esports. You are listening to 15 minute mastering, a show that empowers you with insights from leading iGaming experts to enhance your personal or business performance. The show is brought to you by the AI-powered data analytics platform Blask and supported by ten driven affiliate and media company already media. Lala stars the leading casino partnership program and next.io the world's iGaming community. Hi everyone and welcome to 15 minute mastery. Today we're deep diving into the exciting world of esports betting with one of the industry's leading experts. Step one is a very good friend of mine and he is a renowned authority in both esports and sports betting. He is built and managed esports vertical at pretty much, which is one of the world's leading iGaming operators and now runs business development and iGaming software provider. Step one is here to share insights on the unique aspects of esports betting and how iGaming operators can effectively tap into this growing market. Step one my friend, welcome to 15 minute mastery. Hello Dmitry hello everyone glad to be here let's start. Thank you thanks thanks for being with us. So let's start with basics so esports betting landscape can you give us a snapshot of the current esports betting market what is the size what is the growth rate and how does it compare to traditional sports betting. We have to understand that the esports betting this is a consistent part of the traditional sports betting so but the share is not so significant as everybody expect. I think that the general sports traditional betting Gigi are worldwide this year 2024 around 90 till 120 billions of US dollars and inside this esports betting could be something around 800 millions up to 1 billion of Gigi are this year. It's really interesting that in different countries it could be really various for example in Greece or in Italy or even in Spain but in Spain it's slightly different picture esports betting volume could be almost zero because we have no a lot of audience that is playing these video games they are not popular because in Greece you have a lot of some you have not so powerful internet as everybody expect and this is not a culture as for example in skandic countries or for example in the countries where we have big cities really with the high like industrial history if you could say something like this this is Poland Germany France and and others of course all of the countries of Eastern Europe historically plays a lot esports games and as well they place a lot of bets. I think that growth rate for the esports betting is around 20 percent per year and in general sports betting 9 10 percent so esports is growing much more faster why because people are growing up for example if you if you'll take a snapshot from audience it's up to 40 years old because the most popular esports title CS exists for 25 years so we have a lot of people that started to understand this game 20 years ago they still love it and they are not like I can say extremely young persons they're still young of course but they love this game they still understand the rules can they could place a bet or something like this so it really depends on the region even in Latin America in Brazil we have a sports in Peru we have a sports in Chile almost doesn't help so this is the question of research and it's couldn't be covered in social podcasts. Okay so you mentioned markets I heard Nordic countries Latin America as well and you also mentioned CS as one of the top games so can you deep dive us into games so which are you know games are most popular which esports titles are driving the most betting action. Okay no problem CS is the king I think it's around 60 70% of whole esports betting in the world Dota 2 and League of Legends are number 2 and number 3 League of Legends are not so big as everybody expects because of the riot games they put a lot of restrictions on the betting advertisement maybe it will change soon but right now Dota is a bit bigger I I'm speaking only about the esports betting volumes. Valorant is really small really small because the audience of Valorant is a bit younger than in CS and the game itself is really new so we have no people that grown up with this game and have a lot of money to place a bet on it if like to to short it and to make it as simple as possible and I think that the rising star here is MLBB this is mobile legends and believable extremely popular game from the South East Asia a lot of audience it's it's one of the biggest esports titles right now in the world it's really fast you can play on your mobile and of course the gambling in this area are not fully legal but of course because a lot of people are interested in this game betting of course exists I think it will be something really promising because this is true esports on mobiles but as I said before CS number one king of esports betting Dota 2 number two league of legends Valorant and mobile legends as well I'm not sure about the volumes I'm just only can do some kind of predictions but the audience in this game and the way of the game because three people playing those three people much more interesting than PUBG mobile or 35 that is really huge as the games in mobile but it's not comfortable to place a bet on these games interesting so it feels like still the top of the rankings are older games especially like as you mentioned with with a big fan base and it feels like these are mostly desktop driven games while the mobiles are still small but growing so this is right yeah you're right desktop is much more interesting than mobile still still but it's good it could change as well CS is something as for me really similar to basketball every time action every round action the most popular markets this is the map winning because they're all much itself game itself consists really often from three maps we call the best of three so we have to win at least two games to won all the best of three and the most popular market this is the winning of best of three or winning in the specific map it could be first map second map and of course this is the totals total rounds the same as in basketball people growing up with this game yeah so and of course if you will take a look where it's popular it's kind of countries all Europe Eastern Europe Asia as well in China it's popular Australia South Africa Brazil northern America Canada a bit and that's all so it's almost worldwide game okay this is very interesting so it leads me to probably the question which triggers the most of minds these days how to tap into this audience right so I think acquisition and retention is probably one of the most important topics in in a gaming no matter which niche we're talking about so what are the strategies like can you build to acquire and retain this what's better so other traditional marketing approaches are still effective or does this audience require a different touch you are completely right a bit different touch but we have to understand that the esports this is the great tool for brand awareness one of the greatest tool that we could imagine why so because it's much more effective and cheaper than football for example if you will take a look on the brazilian market one of the biggest football club it could cost around 30 millions and the biggest brazilian club I couldn't share the numbers but it's significantly less of course the audience could not be compared but still you will have a lot of young people and you have to consider this is not only your strategy that you have esports have to be always part of marketing pipe so that is why it's really useful for the big brands I don't take a look on the night keep for example they have advertisement for everyone for the older guys for the guys with their like disabilities for the guy for the young guys street where basketball basketball line football and so on they want to cover everyone this same with the betting company you want to cover as much audience as possible and if you are covering the football one why you forget about the esports so traditional way brand awareness sponsorship of the teams sponsorship of the broadcast as for me the most effective part working with the influencers this same is a traditional sports but less less expensive and effective as well retention interesting detail but you have just to understand and speak the language of this audience to understand best of three provide some statistics to provide special give a wave special raffles that could be clear for these audience just just to be not like in this man like a hello fellas or something like this you just have to hire people who understand this this audience and just always remember this is part of my marketing not the whole marketing itself i think you totally right and that was very important to hear where you should not treat it as you know probably the one and only part of your marketing strategy this should be a part of the mix so and i think no matter which audience you will tap eventually into basketball football you will need to speak their language so i think i think you're totally right but it leads me to a complicated question which is probably around operational challenges so in order to understand esports which is quite a new niche right which you know you've been mentioning some games names and i think for for some part of the audience this might sound like artificial magic formula so what are the biggest operational challenges while you offer in the sports betting how do you issue like data feeds outside and risk management from traditionally from traditional sports betting the risk management is is all of the same it's a bit so difficult to understand but not a lot of companies at the moment have to do the risk and anti-fought management themselves because you have a suppliers for example at the moment on the market you have up to three quite strong suppliers of everything as it isn't one i don't want like a channel yeah all the odds all offering and risk and anti-fought as well so you can just choose from your suppliers and to not build it yourself because at the moment i don't know the company that trying to build themselves some kind of trading for i don't know for tennis so if you are trading if you're taking this as a feed take as well as the feed esports and how to not get in the truck yeah the same approach research understand what kind of esports feed your competitors using research and compare the features that have your product and your competitors product and do conclusions and after that go to supplies and build it as well try to hire people who understand this and try to believe and trust this is as well important okay yeah it makes a lot of sense i think um getting a right software provider is probably a crucial part of you know any strategy so it's it's great to hear that esports you can still find a decent professional software providers which will be able to provide you with the required feed but in terms of the team to run it internally so you mentioned you need to have the right set of people so talking about the current available skill set in the market so can you hire like easily the required esports professionals in-house to be able to build a full marketing mix product mix like are these people available somewhere out there or it's still like like a part of the unicorn you need to build and raise yourself it depends on your strategy so the same question would be it's possible to hire the marketing person who is really experiencing casino and in sports book at the same time understand the sports industry in general so this is as well complicated task and and you have to understand that this person have to know something around betting itself and this is your task so this is your task as a manager who understands how to run betting company to teach and have a nice and boring and to explain that okay if you understand the esports industry right now i will teach you how to understand betting industry so for me the perfect mix is to hire people who understand you like a pillars esports itself and something about the marketing digital part offline part the principles of marketing itself so to understand what kind of what are you doing after all you are promoting your brand or you are trying to achieve a lot of FTDs from from some of your action but the main stuff that from the beginning this person have to love esports and to understand what's going on in general because these why so we all say it's a bit much more complicated stuff okay i will teach you esports i think it's not possible you have to love it yeah true true i think i think this is how many of us got into industry in first place by loving something about the the sports betting or casino or online poker is in my case and then you know master in the rest of it i think this conversation has been insanely insightful and this will explain a lot about the esports and esports betting most importantly so thank you so much for this conversation step on i really enjoyed it and i hope the rest of the audience will as well thanks a lot see you thanks a lot bye bye [BLANK_AUDIO]
