Esports bettors are a unique type of bettor, and as more operators are looking to add Esports entertainment betting to their online websites, it’s key to understand the demographics, the drive and what defines an Esports bettor.
Altenar, a sportsbook software provider is looking into what contributes to the Esports bettor, pulling information from the article ‘Defining the esports bettor: evidence from an online panel survey of emerging adults’ written by Heather Wardle, Elena Petrovskaya and David Zendle. This article helps Altenar shed light on characteristics and behaviours that underpin your Esports bettors and why adding Esports to your offering could boost player retention rates and overall revenue.
If you’d like to discover more about Altenar and its Esports addition, contact the award-winning, tier-one sportsbook software provider today for more information.
Varying Engagement & Varied Content | Altenar
According to Wardle, Petrovskaya and Zendle's paper, ‘Esports bettors may also vary in terms of their engagement with specific video game practices.’ This point works in favour of Esports betting because it entails that many gamers naturally, through the process of play, engage in gambling-like activities, like buying loot boxes, as well as, betting and trading skins.
Loot boxes and skin trading are a hot topic when it comes to many discussions around Esports bettors and their behaviours, however, ‘situating esports betting within broader gaming-related consumption is therefore important.’ To understand a rather misunderstood subsection of bettors that is slowly emerging into one of the largest participating groups.
This paper aimed to undergo an ‘exploratory analysis that sought to examine the demographic, socio-economic, gaming and gambling profiles of esports bettors.’ And as a result, Altenar found that the results would be of interest to many operators looking to add Esports to their offering, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
- Esports bettors were more likely to be male: 74% vs 49%
- Esports tended to be older: 78% aged 20-24 vs 63% of non-gamers
- Esports bettors tended to be nonwhite/white British ethnic groups: 26% vs 17%
- Esports bettors often came from more deprived areas: 33% vs 20%
- Esports bettors were also seen to be students: 59% vs 42%
- Esports bettors experienced higher impulsivity scores: 3.1 vs 2.1
- Esports bettors are less likely to be economically inactive: 10% vs 15%
The findings continued …
- 61% of Esports bettors played digital games more than once a week
- Esports bettors were more likely to have purchased loot boxes
- 58% of Esports bettors purchased and traded skins
- Esports bettors are more engaged with gambling in general: 39% gamble more than once a week and 50% gamble on five or more different activities in the past year.
These numbers have likely doubled since the 2020 paper was published, but the detailed insight to Esports bettors is invaluable as the product grows in popularity
It appeared that for an operator to offer Esports to pander to a growing audience and wealth of emerging bettors, would not only increase profitability but increase player retention as a result.
Defining an Esports bettor must go further than the numerical values, however, it appears that this emerging bettor could be the kind of player operators have only dreamt about.
If you’d like to learn more about adding Esports to your online sportsbook or Casino, contact Altenar today.
