by Marek Suchar, Co-founder and Managing Director of Oddin.gg.
They say seeing is believing. But in esports betting, much of what determines outcomes isn’t always visible on the main broadcast. Economy swings, rotations, entry setups, etc… many of the key decisions that shape a round happen off-camera, yet bettors need to be able to react in real time.
That wasn’t a major issue when pre-match dominated, but today live is the defining moment. In 2024, an average of 85% of esports turnover across Oddin.gg partners came from live betting, compared with just 15% pre-match. Bettors don’t want to prepare for a match. They want to react inside it.
The disconnect is that most sportsbook streams still behave like traditional broadcasts. One camera, one angle, one storyline. Meanwhile, esports matches unfold across several map locations at once, and tactical decisions often happen long before the visible duel. That mismatch forces bettors to make live decisions using non-live context.
This isn’t a content problem. It’s an architecture problem.
Viewing gaps are now commercial gaps
Many operators already stream esports directly inside the sportsbook. That was a major step forward. But most streams still deliver a passive broadcast experience designed for casual spectators rather than decision-makers. In a vertical where most turnover happens live, passive viewing becomes the bottleneck.
The moment a bettor leaves the sportsbook to watch a replay, check a minimap, or open another window to find information, we see three patterns: session length breaks, decision confidence weakens, and the next live opportunity sometimes disappears entirely.
This is exactly where the most valuable part of esports betting now sits. Engagement isn’t only about offering more markets. It’s about making those markets feel meaningful the moment bettors place them.
Operators are already improving esports offerings—more titles, faster data—but the core engagement challenge increasingly lives between watching, understanding and acting.
Esports viewers aren’t passive audiences
Esports fans don’t consume digital content in a passive way. Across streaming platforms, social video and on-demand entertainment, they’re used to choosing what they focus on, rewatching key moments and following the part of the action that matters most to them. Gaming itself reinforces this habit, since players constantly switch perspectives and make sense of spatial information in real time.
Traditional broadcast streaming inside sportsbooks hasn’t always reflected that behaviour. A single feed presents one narrative, even when multiple storylines unfold across the map. That works well for general viewing, but live bettors often want a clearer sense of why something is happening, not just what’s happening on screen.
The opportunity now is simply to align the viewing experience with the way esports fans already interact with digital content elsewhere: more active, more exploratory, and more focused on the information that supports real-time decisions.
Why clarity has become the most valuable engagement layer
Live betting rewards perception. But perception requires context. That context often isn’t visible inside a standard broadcast window.
Solutions like Oddin.gg’s esports Widgets already address part of that need by bringing relevant match information, live stats, and contextual insight directly inside the sportsbook experience, without forcing bettors to search for information elsewhere. This has become especially important with the growth of player-focused markets—such as total kills—where bettors naturally want to follow the specific player linked to their selection.
This is also why features such as Oddin.gg’s BetBuilder for pre-match and live have taken off. They let bettors express what they actually believe will happen instead of selecting from generic templates. And when bettors can act on their own reading of the match, they stay engaged longer because their decisions feel connected to what they’re seeing.
However, even with strong contextual products, some of the most decisive in-round details still happen off-screen. That gap is now becoming the next frontier for operators.
The market is moving toward betting-native viewing
The interesting development over the last year is that interactive viewing is no longer a theory. A new generation of “betting-native” viewing layers is now starting to appear inside real sportsbook environments, enhancing existing streams rather than replacing them.
Oddin.gg recently introduced BetPeek, an interactive viewing layer that lets bettors explore live Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) matches inside the sportsbook. Instead of being tied to a single broadcast, they can switch perspectives, scrub back a critical moment, check tactical positioning, or look at an X-Ray view during rotations. It transforms viewing from broadcast consumption into active exploration.
During recent CS2 tournament cycles, more than one in five active bettors used BetPeek, spending around seven minutes inside the interactive viewer and generating two to three times higher engagement compared with standard streams. Usage also increased across later rounds, meaning bettors returned voluntarily.
For operators, BetPeek is already available inside Oddin.gg’s end-to-end esports betting stack, and can be enabled through the same integration workflows used for other Oddin.gg solutions. Once active, it requires very little ongoing effort from the operator side and becomes part of the esports viewing experience where supported events are available.
This isn’t about streaming. It’s about alignment.
Esports betting has always required rapid live decision-making and complex tactical interpretation. For years, the interpretation side happened outside the sportsbook. Bettors switched tabs, searched for context and then came back to place a bet, if they still could.
Now we’re finally seeing viewing and betting moving into the same space at the same time. And when that happens, “engagement” stops being a marketing term and starts being a structural advantage.
Operators who bring context inside their ecosystem don’t need to push bettors to stay longer. The clarity keeps them there.
What this signals for decision-makers
Active viewing won’t replace odds or markets. It simply becomes the foundation that makes those features relevant in the first place. The question isn’t whether interactive viewing becomes standard in esports betting. It’s how fast operators adopt it as engagement pressure increases.
We believe the next competitive edge won’t come from adding more markets or louder UI elements. It will come from reducing friction between watching, understanding and acting.
When those steps become one continuous experience, live value grows naturally because bettors already behave that way everywhere else. BetPeek is simply the most visible evidence of that direction today.
Final thoughts
Esports bettors already bring high game knowledge and digital fluency. The more sportsbooks respect that knowledge through live clarity, personalised betting and interactive control, the more engagement grows naturally. The role of the operator isn’t to push bettors into action; it’s to let them understand what’s happening without leaving the sportsbook environment.
That’s where the future of esports engagement is moving: participation, not observation. And that future is arriving faster than most of the industry expected.