Along with professional sports competitions, most of the related sports betting has stopped in recent months, which are part of a sector that is worth around 500 billion dollars a year worldwide. In these months without sport, however, there have been bets that have gone on, and with considerable success. They are those related to eSports, a name that encompasses many very different activities: from video games (war, football, cars) played professionally to video games that are even played alone, without human players and with simulated matches. from the computer.
Marc Blume, who deals with financial matters for betting company Pinnacle, told the New York Times that until a few years ago talking about esports betting generated little interest, if not hilarity, but now everything has changed. Thanks to the reduction in real sports activities to bet on, it is expected that in the world the esports betting sector will generate revenues of at least 14 billion dollars in 2020, approximately double compared to 2019. All in a sector that, at the same time, on the contrary, it will certainly have lower revenues than the previous year.
As the New York Times wrote, the recent success of esports betting is based on a simple axiom: “Anyone who bets always finds something to bet on.” As a result, betting managers go to great lengths to look for new things for bettors to bet on. The New York Times also cites some data according to which eSports bets have increased up to 40 times since March. “Esports are now fundamental,” said Blume, “from March until now they have been our main category of betting; every major betting agency now allows you to bet on eSports: even if it didn't do it a few months ago, now it does “.
The recent and significant increase in bettors was quickly followed by an increase in possible bets. As the New York Times wrote, “we are already much beyond simple bets on single matches between two world champions of the same video game”. Now you can bet on human players who compete in a video game (sports but not only), but also on matches played automatically on the FIFA 2020 football video game, in which the game is simply managed by the algorithm of the game. Those who bet on an event of this type, therefore, do so by watching a simulated match from a video game, watching digital footballers compete on a digital field, without any human being deciding how to make them move and act through a joystick or a keyboard.
As in many other industries, the coronavirus only accelerated something that was already happening. Especially the younger ones, and especially online, had for months followed the growth of interest in eSports by a growing interest in betting on those eSports. And in recent years, esports have grown a lot: in 2019 they had revenues of over a billion dollars, the prizes of the most important tournaments were close to 35 million dollars, and the Fortnite World Cup has been watched online for more than two. millions of viewers. To the point that even real competitions, such as NASCAR and Formula 1, or football teams from different countries, have taken an interest in the issue, organizing competitions and in some cases hiring professional gamers.
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In addition to the many and not simple issues related to the possibilities of betting in various countries (and the possibilities of betting on an exclusively digital event), the sector that relies on betting related to eSports also has other legal and legislative problems to address. The New York Times wrote that so far in many cases it has acted on the assumption that legal permissions from those who control a video game are not needed to offer the possibility to bet on activities related to that video game, and that so far no video game developer company has succeeded. to gain full control of the betting related to that video game. But it is very likely that with the growth of the turnover the various parties involved can clash on the issue.
Furthermore, it will be increasingly necessary that anyone who develops a video game on which activities you can possibly bet on must also ensure that there is no possibility of cheating on that video game or in any way influencing the outcome of a game played automatically. And that's a problem, as there have already been some known cases of illegal betting and combined outcomes.
In the meantime, it is certain that with the return of real sports (soon also in Italy) many bettors will probably return to “traditional” betting, but the prevailing opinion is that eSports will continue to grow, and with them the related bets. And it is also possible that, on the contrary, the interest due to betting can still lead to the growth of certain video games.
