"A few big betting companies just missed the train with esports"

RTSmunity is an eSports data science company and market maker for eSports on Betfair and Matchbook exchanges, focused exclusively on analyzing, predicting and researching eSports matches. Since the outbreak, the company saw traditional punters move to esports betting, specially on the Betfair exchange, where the volume increased over ten times, according to Pavol Krasnovsky, CEO and Co-founder of RTSmunity. The same upward trend was true for B2C costumers, he tells Yogonet in a video interview, mostly due to the major sporting events shutdown, and the major esports leagues quickly moving from offline to online events.

"I think a few big betting companies just missed the train with esports," Krasnovsky says. "They considered esports as the traditional sports, so they didn't invest money to promote esports for millennials and Gen Z, and I think the traditional esports is just not sufficient to be competitive across the market." He notes that even at esports dedicated betting companies, their business is based on a traditional approach, with very similar sites to the traditional ones.

Watch the full video interview with RTSmunity CEO:

Krasnovsky believes there is still a "huge space for innovation" on the esports betting market. "Their features are not enough to attract new esports punters, because these want something new, different. So there is no big game-changer on the esports betting market." Though he acknowledges that is difficult for esports to compete against traditional sports such as tennis because most of the punters understand traditional sports better and more easily, he believes esports will become the best acquisition product, specially for new customers.

Furthermore, the expert cites recently conducted market research about what esports punters really want: "The main feedback was that what is missing on the sportsbook market is transparency," in terms of punters having access to more information about the bets that are placed, he explains, and calls for sportsbooks to add more transparent features on their websites in order to be competitive and attract millennials. He also notes that pre-match betting is boring for these younger generations. The esports betting ratio is 90 to 10 in favor of in-play betting, while in traditional sports the ratio is 65% to 35% in favor of live betting.