If a sports fan were to hop in a time machine and travel half a decade into the past, there’s a good chance they’d encounter heated debates on what was (or wasn’t) a sport if they stayed for any length of time. Five years (or more) ago, a sports fan’s Twitter timeline often devolved into back and forth mocking of sports like auto racing or golf that don’t require the speed or agility of traditional athletic activities like soccer, saying that they couldn’t be considered sports because of it.
Funnily enough, that discourse has almost completely died down in the past few years. While it’s an impossible task to pin down the whims of sports fans looking to tease each other (much less to extract any rational motive from social media users), one potential reason for this paradigm shift is the widespread advent of sports betting in the United States.
Before that point, the question of what was or wasn’t a sport was largely a subjective one: while various qualifiers could be applied, like the need for athletic talent or quick reflexes, there wasn’t a one size fits all definition (and certainly not one for everyone to agree on) of what a sport consisted of.
Sports betting leveled the playing field in terms of definitions: you can’t place a sports bet on something that isn’t a sport, so competitions like auto racing, marksmanship, and golf, often derided by fans of other sports, gained another dose of legitimacy in the eyes of the general public.
The Emergence of Esports
Esports are another pastime long dunked on because of the toxic macho energy that surrounds many discussions of sport. As state governments and sportsbooks begin to push to expand the definition of sports betting to include them, however, they could see themselves welcomed into the fold in a similar fashion.
For those who like to follow the financial side of things, it’ll be fascinating to see how the esports betting market shakes out as it continues to grow. Right now, many of the traditional sports betting platforms like BetMGM, Caesars Palace, FanDuel, and DraftKings are late to the party as it pertains to betting on video games: while they cornered the traditional sports betting market with fast action as states moved to legalize the pastime, they’ll need to continue to pace the industry to maintain their place atop the wagering pyramid hierarchy.
The Challenges and Regulations
Because the sports wagering industry is a growing market, most state legislators are tinkering with how they want it to operate every year, altering how much they want to charge in taxes or what type of bets are allowed. Horse racing is another form of competition that is only just opening up to mobile bettors: while betting at the racetracks (an in-person endeavor, obviously) was one of the few forms of sports wagering allowed during the federal ban on the pastime, it has taken some time for horse racing to be included in the same breath as sports like football and baseball on betting apps.
Right now, most esports betting takes place offering a wide range of betting options and features, providing with fast and secure transactions for effortless deposits and withdrawals using PayPal betting sites. For the most part, it isn’t as easy as simply delving into another corner of the market. In the United States, the business world is carefully regulated on multiple levels by the federal and various state governments. In some cases, laws themselves need to be changed or added to in order to pave the way for sportsbooks to expand how they operate.
The Untapped Potential
The simple fact of the matter is that money talks, and betting on esports is a massive untapped market. Look at the live betting and prop bets offered in one single NFL game, then multiply that 100 or 1000 fold: imagine if you could bet on the number of kills that streamers like Ninja rack up in a single round of Fortnite, or which Call of Duty League team will win their next match. While the NFL has a maximum of 16 games each week between all 32 teams, Ninja can account for that many Fortnite matches in a handful of hours. With games taking place around the clock and numerous famous video game streamers, esports has a potential betting market share that could dwarf those of traditional sports.
The race is on, then, as legislators and sportsbooks alike turn to esports as the next frontier in the rapidly growing market: whether traditional betting platforms will seize the initiative or become left in the dust by entrepreneurial esports enthusiasts remains to be seen. It might take a year or two for the industry to reach full stride (and inch along in a state-by-state basis), as pertinent legislation can take quite a bit of time to pass, but the market is there and brimming with untapped potential.
