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ESPORTS BETTING PANDASCORE & YOUGOV
PandaScore: tracking esports
Esports data provider PandaScore puts last year’s betting surge into perspective as CEO Flavien Guillocheau explains how providing data and odds to sports books is driving revenues.
teams to help with coaching and their data-first communication strategy as well as working with our fantasy betting customers as it’s becoming so popular and fun.
Flavien Guillocheau, Chief Executive Officer, PandaScore
Could you tell us more about PandaScore?
PandaScore is an esports focused data provider. Our mission has always been to help the esports ecosystem develop by providing a wide range of data through an AI and tech-first approach. We work with key players including top professional esports teams, media companies and scorekeeping apps, amongst others.
Last year, we launched a dedicated product for bookmakers, our esports Odds feeds powered by our AI and data modelling. Our Odds product has been very successful since launch, with successful integrations with Ladbrokes AU, Betcris and more.
Who is your primary customer - the wider media, esports teams or tournament organisers?
As a data provider we aim to provide to a wide range of customers. We love our work with pro
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However, I’d say that our biggest revenue driver would be providing data and odds to sportsbooks. Te stakes are already big for them and they really need to work with an esports focused provider to succeed in this space.
How sophisticated is PandaScore's AI technology to track global matches and competitions?
We’ve been working on different parts of our AI tech for the past five years. I’d say it’s pretty sophisticated and, most crucially, tailored to esports. It’s pretty rare for a start-up of our size to have a 10-person team focusing on AI and Machine Learning.
To see how powerful our tech is you have to look at how it’s designed and several key performance metrics. Our idea since the beginning is that the AI should be as autonomous as possible, which means that if 20 matches happen at the same time it should scale and work without hurdles.
It also needs to track what’s happening on the screen when the stream interface or overlay evolves and so on. On those finer adjustments it’s not 100 per cent autonomous yet, but we are getting there. To give you an idea of our current performance, on League of Legends we create 300 data points in half a second with our AI with 99+ per cent accuracy.
What type of data and statistics do you keep?
Anything related to what’s happening in the game. Team score, players information or performance, live information about the game, we’ve got it. To compare the granularity of data we collect to sports, it would be the equivalent to tracking the position of every player on a football field, but also tracking when they are passing the ball and with which foot. We’re doing this on LoL, CSGO, Overwatch and others.
The sports hiatus proved a shot in the arm for the growth of esports betting. How much of that momentum has been maintained?
When sports was 95 per cent shut down last year, naturally the bet volume in esports reached an all time high. What we can see is that the esports bet volume after the sports hiatus is much bigger than before. Most of the time we hear that esports is at least top five for bookmakers in betting volume and that they expect it to reach the top three in the coming years. I’d say that esports betting still has a lot of momentum and will continue to grow.
How significant a role does betting play in the wider esports economy?
Betting has an essential role in esports for so many reasons. Regulated betting is key as it will provide punters with more protections compared to unregulated betting sites.
It’s also important to integrity too - a lot of time and money is being spent monitoring markets for match fixing and similar challenges.
Betting is also significant to the industry because it can help finance esports’ growth. Betting in sports is one of the biggest sponsoring sources. Esports teams are still iterating their business models as they grow, with different organisations prioritising different revenue streams. Bookmaker sponsoring has the potential to be a significant source of income for teams.
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