Amir, thanks for joining us. You recently moved from the COO position to CCO. Tell us about that.
Thanks for having me. I’m very excited to be here again at ICE London and I recently took over the role of CCO. We also had a third C-level executive join the company, which we’re very excited about; it’s an old colleague of mine from my Google days. I spent about 13 years at the company, joining to take over sales and marketing. Basically, filling externally facing commercial roles to support us, you can see that 2023 for us is all about going out big and making our message heard. There are exciting times ahead for us with these appointments.
What are the latest e-sports developments and trends in the US?
I think esports betting in the US continues to be something where folks have high hopes. I think you have to consider the US as a continent in itself, right? It’s like Europe, each state is basically its own country, its own market. Over 30 states, I think, allow for online betting. Out of those 30-plus, we have nine states that allow for esports betting. I think the most known for it are New York, Colorado and Ohio as the frontrunners.
We hear Ohio is doing great in terms of volume, actually, and in terms of turnover. What’s also surprising is Nevada is opening up in terms of esports betting. In general, I think the US is turning more pragmatic in the sense that you need to lower the barriers of entry, especially for younger companies.
You know, the markets, state-by-state, are still structured in a way that even suppliers of content, data and products go through very extensive screening; which just kills any kind of innovation at its core. I expect that once the regulations and the requirements drop for suppliers, regarding products, we’ll see innovation pick up very rapidly. We’ll see more companies get funded in that space and then also an influx from all the European companies. Right now, it’s selected companies from the European or international space.
Your CEO Martin Dachselt has been on Huddles before and spoke a lot about the importance of data. What can you tell us about data scraping?
If we’re looking back at history, it’s not that long ago, maybe four or five years, that a phone application had just allowed you to connect with what is happening live within a match. For this, you need that data to be collected. It’s part of that magic that happens in our heads, whereas the actual infrastructure needs to be presented in a way to show that the person who collects the data makes it available. What these guys want to do is to develop technologies to scrape data off of any kind of video feed they would see. So any kind of mechanism to collect data and sell it, without the knowledge or permission of the data holder, is what scrapers are all about. It’s a disconnected ecosystem.
“These scrapers take that and sell it to betting operators. Not just small betting operators... I’m talking Flutter, you know, I’m talking William Hill”
On the other hand, you have the publisher of the game. They have their intellectual property (IP), their game titles, sports leagues and so on. Then somebody that’s not related to them collects that data without consent. And an incomplete way has to be imperfect, right? In esports titles like Counter-Strike and League of Legends, there are data points that aren’t even seen on the screen. Scrapers can collect data like a certain gold count per player and so on. These scrapers take that and sell it to betting operators. Not just small betting operators... I’m talking Flutter, you know, I’m talking William Hill. I’m talking about these massive companies. There’s a genius force of scrapers that go out and sell this great product, right? Based on that, you run into several kinds of issues.
One of the most obvious issues is integrity. At the end of the day, you don’t know what’s happened, right?
There’s something happening in this match, something changing, nobody will know what will happen. Down the chain, you have players changing and the odds change. Your probability is changing because something happens. You don’t know whether a match has been recorded or not when it gets put on. Maybe that match took place yesterday, and you’re seeing it now on Twitch and scraping it off of their people. The result is just you’re the only one not knowing as a betting operator, which is a horrible scenario. So integrity-wise, you have a big issue that leads to regulatory issues in the US.
For this reason, you need to have the data straight from the source in some kind of way. It also needs to be validated so that the score you’re settling on is actually correct. If you don’t do that, you just lose your licence. This is because, quite simply, it’s illegal betting, which a lot of folks don’t know. Then, of course, it’s this part of not being future-proof. This generation wants something more interactive, fast-paced and so on. Our infrastructure is arguably the most well-performing in the market right now. We understood that we basically couldn’t use what Sportradar was using, so, as the most established player, we built our own live data infrastructure, and we’re still adapting it.
How do you push the benefits of esports betting to those just used to traditional sports betting?
I think at this particular stage, what strikes me is you don’t need to have that conversation with the likes of bet365. You don’t need to have that conversation with Pinnacle, for example, or with bet365. I think it’s a simple case of sitting down and seeing what will happen. The products are there, the content is there and the turnover is there. You just need to take it seriously. It’s all very good to find and meet folks who can educate you on the topic. Everybody in the space is more than willing to do so and then find the right product mix, as well as have somebody help with user acquisition and the setup of strategy.
I really think we have a leg up in terms of being an esports specialist rising in the ranks of companies and becoming more valuable to our clients. I think most of the esports odds suppliers are fairly young, and they’re still not at an age where they would influence the bigger companies, the bigger groups on that level. If I talk about Flutter – and I need to come back to that example because I believe that this is a massive group with no esports strategy... they’re buying from PandaScore, right? I mean, how does that go together?
