Over recent years we have become increasingly accustomed to seeing the BetBuilder tab appear as an option for matches on our favourite sportsbooks, but the product has so far eluded the esports punter.
Until now. Sportsflare, a New Zealand-based tech company focused on providing innovative new betting experiences for esports, has become the first to offer same-game parlay betting around the most popular competitive video games.
This includes Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), which boasts 44% of esports betting turnover, as well as Dota 2 (33%) and League of Legends (18%).
So if you think you can interest your players with the opportunity to predict a CS:GO map winner, most kills and whether or not the map goes to overtime, all in one swoop, you can now group these same-game picks to offer them considerably higher payout potential.
You might instinctively feel that this leaves the operator vulnerable to sharp bettors with in-depth knowledge about a single esports event, but one look at how this plays out on the sports betting scene will confirm it is, in fact, the opposite.
The more selections actually lowers the exponential risk of exploitation posed by sharp bettors, with the parlays (or multis if you are so inclined) also placed at much higher margins than your traditional single bets.
But less of the sharp bettors, as this product is more likely singing to the recreational or casual punter. A punter chasing that big payout, or one looking to switch up the traditional consumption of esports betting to focus on the performance of their favourite players.
Sportsflare quoted a typical margin of 20% (or 120% overround) for esports BetBuilders, which will of course pique the interest of any operator. Added to that, integration of the product is expected to cause turnover to climb to an eye-catching 130%.
Far from ceding control to the player, the operator is actually just creating a brand new, increasingly engaging betting experience for its esports fans, which will – in all likelihood – end up favouring the house.
Sticking with this theme of control, punters with an affinity for the sports BetBuilder will also be familiar with pre-built bets. Initially, their presence was a necessity for products such as Sky Bet’s RequestABet, as traders reacted to ‘requests’ to price up the same game multis (yes, I prefer multis to parlays).
With more automation of pricing, the need for pre-built bets perhaps dwindled but they are still used extensively by sportsbooks to draw interest – often offered selectively in the form of ‘price boosts’ (and in turn, with lower overrounds).
Sportsflare has, therefore, also built in what it terms ‘pre-rolled’ markets. This means esports operators can offer pre-grouped prices for popular combinations of traditional markets such as H2H winners with increasingly fashionable player props.
The tech specialist is even allowing operators to start out by integrating frictionless pre-rolled markets, before upgrading to the BetBuilder with its full functionality.
For operators making the move into esports, it is certainly time to spice up your BetBuilder inventory with a product covering thousands of fixtures all year round.