(Newswire.net — April 9, 2017) — Ask the majority of sportsbook gamblers to name the top five sports to bet on and they will probably give you a list that includes some mix of basketball, football, soccer, baseball, hockey, rugby, tennis, athletics and horse racing, depending on their own tastes and on where they live.
Many of them will have heard of eSports, but few of them would ever dream of listing it as a top 5 sport. However, all of them would be wrong, because if you take the number of bets placed on any given week and the amount of money won and lost on individual sports, then eSports makes the list every time.
That will no doubt come as a surprise to many, but the truth is, it’s been heading in that direction for a number of years now.
The Dawn of eSport Gambling
This all began with Pinnacle, a sports betting company that began offering eSports betting, when the industry was in its infancy. They noted a trend that others had failed to spot. Simply put, more players were getting involved, more spectators were paying to see it, more TV channels were covering it and, as a result, the market was wide open for betting.
In the early years, around 10% of the bets were on eSports. In 5 years, it took a significantly larger proportion of their total bets. As things stand, there are more bets being taken on eSports on Pinnacle than there are on rugby, which would definitely make people’s list of the top 5 here in the UK.
Sites like E-SportsBetting.org, games like Hearthstone and events like Dreamhack have all contributed to its current success and will likely play a big role in its future success as well.
The Future
So, where is eSports heading? Well, if you listen to the people behind Pinnacle, the future is bright. Every year they take more and more money on this sport. It’s not that they are taking less money elsewhere, just that more and more people are getting involved with online gambling, purely to bet on competitive gaming.
Bet365, 888Sports—in fact, every other major sportsbook is now offering eSports gambling. These are not quite as big as Pinnacle, which is now seen as an industry leader for eSports gambling, but they are adding to a growing industry and proving that this is where the money is.
So, whether you’re a competitive gamer, a spectator or a gambler, this is the one to watch. If the experts are to be believed and if you follow the stats, it’s looking like eSports could soon rival soccer as the biggest sport in the world.