We’ve all witnessed how eSports are revolutionizing the gaming world, however competitive gaming has impacted the complete digital entertaining scenario, every day there are more sport broadcasters interested in covering eSports tournaments and there’s also one industry that has kept the finger on the line on the eSports expansion, we are talking about online gambling. As soon as online casinos saw the increasing audience of competitive gaming they discovered a great niche of customers and now this trend has become one of the main drivers of the growth of the online casinos market.
The eSport scenario for console gaming is very promising, both Sony and Microsoft are investing in new features to promote competitive gaming among users and creating more tournaments. These innovations are meant not only to recruit more professional players and motivate users to play at a more competitive level, console games are also looking to increase the audience of the competitions and this will be a shared point of interest that online casinos will follow. As the audience and coverage of these games tournaments is increasing, it’s becoming easier to find betting options on Xbox and PlayStation games at online casinos.
Both Xbox and Playstation have been focusing on enhance the competitive gaming among their users, first is important to note the expansion of the tournaments and championships managed by their platforms and there’s also one big move that will mark a new age for competitive gaming coverage; both companies partnered with the giant of eSports tournaments: ESL, to let users have access to their tournaments directly from their consoles.
What’s more, the number of games played on these two consoles that are offering bigger tournaments is also increasing rapidly, one of the clearest examples is Paladins, this game launched in 2016 already had created their Paladins Premier League for PC in 2017 and recently has announced their Console Series of $250,000 for Xbox One and PS4 with monthly tournaments of over $19,000.
So, new tournaments and competitions appear from everywhere and for everyone interested in eSports and if you’re a fan looking to add some adrenaline to watching the championships you’ll find several ways to bet online. In fact, the competition between eSport gambling platforms is very intense. First you have online casinos which main added value is to allow you to gamble in other games or bet in other sports from the same account, however the offer can be limited as they are still figuring out how to attract the gaming audience, they’ve realized eSports can’t just be incorporated as another sport option for their listings as the gaming community has a distinct consumer behavior and is looking for specific added values that might not always be available at online casinos. In fact, recently there has been a boom of new and smaller betting platforms specialized only in eSports that offer a distinct experience for the gaming community.
One of the reasons why specialized platforms are gaining more audience for eSport betting than online casinos is the betting variety. As we explained earlier the number of eSports tournaments and championships is increasing rapidly, and it might be hard to cover all the major events that punters are looking for. But coverage is not only about offering users the opportunity of placing bets in one match, one of the tools specialized platforms use for captivating more users is not only covering the widest number of events but also offering a free live broadcast of the matches directly from the betting platform.
In conclusion, we can expect a rising expansion of eSport betting coverage and betting modalities at online casinos and specialized gambling platforms with a special interest on PlayStation and Xbox eSports that are expanding their competitive gaming. It will be very interesting to follow the efforts of the gambling platforms to gain a bigger market share of this attractive industry. Just to give a full picture of what online gambling platforms go for in this market; according to Forbes in 2016 the gaming audience was estimated in 2 billion gamers and the eSport community in 385 million, experts expect the eSport community to reach the 589 million for 2020.
