ODDIN.GG
Oddin.gg bets big on esports boom with new products and a regulatory push
Vlastimil Venclik tells Paul Ryder about
Oddin.gg’s rapid growth in the esports betting space and its efforts to partner with regulators to drive the industry forward.
which grades like number three and before in the sports book portfolio, and we are here to support any sport. Which means esports.
We have the best product in terms of margin, profitability, uptime and odds. We have a full article integration so we can offer what nothing on the market can offer to bookmakers. We are ready to help them understand esports. We are ready to help with the regulation, and with the integrity of esports. I like to say that we are kind of in the middle of betting and esports, and we connect both worlds. We help them to understand each other.
How did you end up at
Oddin.gg? Six years ago, we got together with a bunch of friends from different jobs, and we said, “Look, eSports is a big growth area. Esports is growing. We need to do something there.” I was studying cybernetics somewhere. I worked with AI and other stuff.
So we got together, we started Oddin. gg and we said, “Let’s do B2B, let’s do something for esports, with odds feeds and risk management and so on.” So it’s been a very interesting journey. We started as a company of 10. Now there are over 300 of us, so it’s quite nice, and I would say we’ve made big progress.
What are your plans for the future? Esports is growing, let’s say, 20% a year. It’s a really big growth industry right now. There is a prediction that there will be over 80 billion in the betting handle in 2026,
16 NOVEMBER 2024 GIO
What is your new betbuilder product? I’m also really thrilled that we can announce our new betbuilder, which is a purely esports betbuilder. We’ve built everything from scratch. We own the tech, we own the models. It cost us a lot of time, and a lot of work to do it. I’m really proud that we can launch it. We’ll be launching it on November 1, and it’ll offer you a new way to engage and work with your customers. The betters can now do multi-same-game bets. It’s something very unique and specific for esports. I hope that because betbuilders are big in traditional sports, it will bring in more audience and more interesting opportunities for bookmakers in esports.
What else are you doing to help your partners succeed?
Being a successful operator in both esports and international sports, you need to have a strong partnership with the regulators and strong partnerships with the integrity providers. We are trying to help regulators understand what esports are, and how they should regulate them. We are actively speaking with them, and we are actively getting licences. We have five licences
already. We got Ohio recently, which was quite a long process for us, but it’s a big state. It’s very important to have it. We are working on five more this year, and let’s say 10 licences next year. It’s quite a big regulatory push. We speak with each regulator there, trying to help them understand which esports leagues should be regulated or not, how they should approach underage betting, underage players and so on. We try to do this education, so then the bookmakers can just integrate the product and accept esports bets. So that is one piece, and the second piece is integrative, where we see all incoming tickets. We are working with teams. We are working with organisers, and with everybody in the esports ecosystem to help them understand esports metrics and any integrated issues with the players, with the teams. By doing this, we are really helping the esports ecosystem and the whole esports scene grow so it can be accepted by regulators and players.
What are your thoughts on the future of sports betting?
I believe that the USA will be the biggest regulated esports market on the globe. It’s just a question of two, three years, and then it will just exponentially grow year to year. Esports is not big right now, because there is a complicated history.
The growth is there, and the USA needs to be ready, because the esports growth elsewhere now is huge. In Latin America and Brazil, it is booming. Europe is doing quite good. It’s big in the Nordics and Asia. We’ve even got customers in Africa. It’s a global phenomenon. I would say that you cannot operate and you cannot be successful in betting without an esports strategy.
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