Inside Asian Gaming sat down with Marek Suchar, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Oddin.gg – a B2B provider of esports odds feeds, risk management and iFrame solutions – about the company’s unique offerings and how esports betting differs from betting on traditional sports.
Ben Blaschke: For those who don’t know Oddin.gg, can you tell us a bit about the company and the services you provide?
Marek Suchar: Oddin.gg is the leading esports B2B provider on the market. Where we differ from the rest of the pack is that we provide entrance solutions, starting with data and continuing with trading services, risk management and iFrame. Essentially, if you are a bookmaker and if you want to do anything in esports, when it comes to Oddin.gg you will not be limited by the offering. You can choose whatever you like. If you have your own trading team, you can take only the odds feed, or if you are new to the industry and you would like to get everything, from odds, streaming, scoreboard and risk management from the one provider, you can take the iFrame. This also provides additional benefits in terms of integration and the time you need to spend on it.
On top of that, other than the core esports – “Counter-Strike”, “Dota 2”, “League of Legends” – we provide services into other verticals such as eSims, which are esports simulators that are very popular right now like eFootball and eBasketball. This is under the hood of esports but the audience is slightly different.
When we speak about traditional esports, these are your regular fast-playing games for hardcore esports fans. But eSims tend to appeal to your traditional bettor who bets on real football and basketball matches. When there is nothing to bet on, they will search for this content because it is fast-paced, there are multiple opportunities to bet and there are results within five to 10 minutes. We have this all covered and we are also coming back and investing much more into the fast-betting verticals such as table tennis and eCricket.
The bookmaker can take all of these services from us, whatever they prefer, so we are a one stop shop for that.
BB: So you are starting to see more traditional sports bettors take an interest in esports betting?
MS: Yeah, absolutely. There was not a good understanding of esports from the betting industry. Many times we were asked how esports was going after COVID because viewership dropped, but it is important to separate the two verticals here. In terms of core esports, during COVID people stayed at home and played more, watched more, so essentially everything was on steroids, and this has continued since.
With eSims, the situation was slightly different because during COVID there was no real soccer to bet on, no basketball to bet on, so in this time eSims shined. Then after COVID was over and real sports came back, a huge part of the volume moved back to traditional sports.
But these verticals have shown they can be a massive vertical for the bookmakers – we are seeing partners where this kind of vertical can be easily 10% to 20% of the regular soccer or regular basketball – but yes after COVID there was a drop and the perception from bookmakers was that esports dropped. In reality there is still very, very meaningful volume in terms of percentage of the portfolio, and the core esports just continue to grow.
BB: There are a thousand companies doing what you do for traditional sports but very few in the esports space and even fewer offering such variety. How do you go about building a company like this from scratch?
MS: I will say that it is based on passion. The company was founded by people that are very familiar with the esports ecosystem. They love the games, they play the games – our CEO has been playing “League of Legends”, I’ve been playing “Dota”, so essentially the team has a passion for esports.
We were looking at the verticals where we can leverage our expertise in the game, because even though esports has progressed it is still hard to make money. So who can make money? Publishers, twitch streamers and betting verticals.
That’s why it was a combination of our expertise – our founders were developers and data scientists. So we founded the company and because there was no legacy software, we started as a greenfield. Essentially everything is built in-house and is constantly being developed, which gives us full control of the tracking capabilities, of management tools, of our iFrame, of how to input the data, how to process the data models, all of that.
You also need to have a different approach in esports to traditional sports, because in traditional sports, football for example, there are sometimes small innovations but you still have 22 players on the pitch. In esports, the game itself constantly develops through patches. Roughly half a year ago there was a huge patch in “Dota 2” that enlarged the map by 33%. Imagine if the football field was suddenly 33% larger or smaller: this would have a huge impact on the odds models with things like Over/Under.
So it’s not something that happens in traditional sports but in core esports it is part of the game. It’s definitely a different beast. We needed to address different things that providers don’t need to address with, traditional sports, and we did this through the expertise of our traders and through the partners that we work with because we have risk management and we are seeing the incoming bets in real time. We constantly see what is happening in the market and from this position continue to grow in a way by understanding the ecosystem, seeing where the volume is going and which additional titles we can invest more into when it comes to our offering. As I said, esports is a completely different beast, but it is a beast that you can manage if you have a strong hold on it and you have the passion.
BB: How do you go about ensuring player engagement in the context of your offering?
MS: Very good question. Just for context, this is one of our philosophies and one of our visions. If you look at millennials, they are used to fast-paced content and content on demand.
Whenever I want something, I can get it. I have Spotify where I can search for every song that I want to listen to. I have YouTube where I can watch anything that I want. I have Netflix where I watch every movie that I want to instantly. And when all this started out, betting on esports was nowhere close to that kind of user experience. Often the uptime across the game was even lower than 50%.
Imagine going to bet on the games and suddenly the lines are not available. There’s nothing to bet on. So, of course, that was not engaging. And when it came to the live markets, there were just very few – maybe major winner, series winner, but not number of kills Over/Under or anything like that.
We have found that 80% to 90% of betting on esports is live, so yes, people bet before the game starts, but the majority happens when the action happens, and this is where we talk about the product being engaging. When you go to Twitch, when you are watching the game, you want to be able to bet when you want to, and we’ve come quite far in that regard. Our uptime right now is more than 80%, so bettors can bet whenever they want on whatever they want. Now we have more than 15 live markets in “Counter-Strike”; we have introduced player markets.
Where we are seeing the industry going now is bet- building in live and we are also working on betting within the stream. You won’t just have the odds outside of the stream but within the stream.
One particular thing that we are going to address in the upcoming two years is that many of the esports events, specifically online, are delayed in terms of the stream. Imagine if the stream is delayed by two minutes and I, as a bookmaker, already know the result but you as a bettor do not. This is something we need to address and bring closer together so it becomes truly engaging. What I want to see is bettors being in the game, understanding what is happening and betting on upcoming actions because the odds are coming through at the same time. I want to provide that opportunity but because of the delay in the stream, yes I can provide it to you, but it won’t be as engaging. I don’t want to have that edge on you.
BB: It sounds like your traders are very specialized?
MS: That is true. I’m a huge “Dota 2” fan and I believe I have a good understanding of what is happening in the game, but when I take a look at “League of Legends”, I have no idea what is happening. I know the object is getting to the tower but understanding the heroes, more than 100 of them, is really hard. We have specialized traders for specialized titles and we have more than 70 of them. There is no way they can cover all of the titles, but they are definitely specialists in their particular games.
BB: What are you seeing in terms of betting on esports in Asia?
MS: What we know when it comes to Asia is that it is extremely popular and it is mainstream. In South Korea, in the Philippines, you can go to clubs and watch the esports games there, which in places like the UK is unheard of. They are much more advanced when it comes to the acceptance of esports in Asia, much more than the western world. And anywhere there is that much passion and that many eyeballs, there are opportunities around betting as well. That’s what we are seeing.
BB: And what trends are you seeing in Asia in terms of how they like to bet or what they like to bet on?
MS: When we speak about games like “Counter-Strike”, this is an extremely fast-paced game based on rounds, and what we are seeing there is that people prefer to bet regularly on their units. And similar to traditional sports, there’s a huge spike whenever there is a big tournament being played: the Majors in “Counter-Strike”, TI (The International) in “Dota 2” or the World Championship in “League of Legends”.
When it comes to the betting itself, what we are seeing is that the main moneyline is still the main revenue driver, but at the same time people are more and more excited about side markets, specifically when the game is already decided. You might already know there’s no way back for one team and the game is going to end in the next five minutes. The odds are $1.01 and you don’t want to bet on it, but you can still bet live on other markets with meaningful odds. People are finding these options to still be entertaining and engaging.
The other thing we are seeing is a big pick up when it comes to player markets, and we are looking forward to seeing what happens there once we launch our bet builder product.
BB: So what can we expect from Oddin.gg in 2024?
MS: We will continue working on adding new titles like “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” and “PUBG Mobile” – titles that in the western world are probably not well recognized but in Asia everybody knows about. There are millions and millions of players playing these.
We will continue growing the number of live markets that we offer to provide additional user experience for the bettors. We will also be working on the iFrame – adding new features and expanding our data landscape.
Also, when it comes to eSimulators, we are adding much more content. We have been having huge success with eFootball and eBasketball, and we have recently added eCricket and Counter-Strike dual. This is one-to-one on a 24/7 stream so when nothing is being played, people can come and bet on this kind of content.
And yes, when it comes to Asia, we are right now assigning and integrating customers like OKbet and Dafabet, so we are seeing a lot more traction in Asia.
We will be looking at expanding in the Philippines in terms of traction, innovation and other partnerships.
