COVID-19 has caused many sports leagues to be canceled, but E-sports and virtual games are benefiting from this dangerous epidemic.
The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic is causing people to socialize. Organizing sports tournaments with large numbers of people had to be canceled to avoid the risk of spreading the disease. Currently, the Belarusian football league or the table tennis tournament in Russia are the rare traditional sports tournaments that still take place.
But E-sports and online competitions have not suffered any impact from the need for social exclusion. Even electronic competitions are attracting a large audience because it is a popular entertainment option during the time of self-isolation at home.
According to Bayes E-sports Solutions, the number of sports betting has decreased by more than 60% following the outbreak of COVID-19 earlier this year. Some bookmakers even suffer a discount of up to 90%.
But the surprising thing is that the odds of betting on FIFA 20 matches are taking up a large amount and replacing betting on Premier League or La Liga matches. Likewise, the matches in action games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, or League of Legends have all attracted huge odds in the past.
CEO Ebbe Groes of betting software company EveryMatrix said that the number of bets on E-sports increased within a month of the COVID-19 pandemic. EveryMatrix offers all E-sports game betting software for dozens of online betting sites, from German MyBet to Russian 1xBet. Before COVID-19 spread around the world, Groes only recorded 1% odds on E-sports. But over time, that rate increased to 35%.
Meanwhile, e-sports betting site Loot.bet recorded a 20% increase in daily odds on e-sports amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, online betting accounted for 75%, but in March 2020, this number increased to 83.
A bit of a gambler is now finding it easy to find video games that allow betting on the betting sites. Someone who likes Nascar is betting on eNascar, a racing race built on an iRacing simulator. Meanwhile, the NBA 2K Player Tournament online, held among the top 16 NBA players, including Kevin Durant and Trae Young, for the purpose of donating to charity against COVID-19, has also appeared on the betting pages with many different odds.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Las Vegas casinos laughed at the so-called prospects of growing e-sports bets. But now, with global sporting life in a vegetative state, Las Vegas has changed its mind.
One month after traditional domestic sporting events were suspended due to COVID-19, the Nevada Betting Control Board (GCB) approved bets on 4 E-sport games and allowed a number of options.