Virtual Football – More Than a Pandemic Fad for UK Bookies?
The global pandemic crisis may have led to a decline in wagering on real life sports matches, but eSports and virtual sports, like virtual football betting, have picked up the slack. That’s because UK bookies have been required to find alternative means to draw players to their sites and these markets seem to be the ticket.
That being said, virtual has already increased in volume for many brands even before COVID-19. For instance, Bet365, Coral and Betway are among several UK bookies that have put in a solid effort to enhance their virtual sports offering. This includes introducing promotions that target the simulated sports market, including sign up offers for new players.
Even London-listed gaming operator 888 Holdings is introducing new virtual sports games on 888Sport. It recently announced in June that it would be extending its partnership with Leap Gaming. The 3D virtual sports portfolio will include virtual football, tennis, horse racing, trotting, greyhounds, velodrome and speedway titles.
With so many leading football bookies in the UK looking to capitalize on the popularity of these simulated betting markets, especially when there is still no knowing when professional sports leagues, competitions and events will return to normal, there is a very good chance that virtual football and others will continue to thrive.
Why Are Virtual Sports and eSports So Popular?
Aside from the obvious lack of mainstream sports markets to bet on due to the coronavirus, it’s important to note that virtual sports and eSports betting previously gained popularity in the last decade among Millennials. This generation of sports bettors grew up playing (and often continue to play) virtual sports, eSports and fantasy sports.
In many ways virtual sports and eSports have changed the way we watch sports. Take eSports for example, instead of watching players compete on a field or race track, the players on these teams compete sitting behind PC screens as they play first-person shooter games like Counter-Strike, battle royale games like Fornite, or high speed strategy games like StarCraft.
Pre-pandemic, these events were held in massive stadiums filled with tens of thousands of fans cheering on the players as they attempted to win the huge cash prize pot. For now, during the COVID crisis, these events simply take place via a live stream on the internet as they once did, long before their popularity evolved them into multi-million-dollar-event stadium fillers.
As for virtual sports, as the name implies, these are digital games based on real sports, like football, tennis, greyhounds, horse racing, motor sports and so on. They are a selection of scheduled fixed odds games that use a random number generator (RNG) to decide the outcome. Punters watch the simulated game playout via video stream.
Punters like virtual sports for a number of reasons. Among the top reasons are that bettors are very familiar with the product and do not need to wait for a live match to watch their favorite sport. They simply login and access the virtual sports schedule to enjoy all the action. Even for those who aren’t familiar with this type of betting activity, it’s easy to take part. You don’t necessarily need to be knowledgeable about the sport to play. Additionally, typically bettors need to wait only between 90 seconds and three minutes to know the result of their bet.
Not Just a Pandemic Fad
Even though virtual football and other virtual sports may be new to some bettors, it has been steadily gaining ground over the past few years, long before the pandemic. For instance, players bet $600 million in the first 12 months after virtual sports betting was introduced in Greece in 2017. Likewise, in Italy, the share of virtual betting increased two times from 1.9% in 2017 to 3.8% in 2019.
Last year, Marin Wachter, the CEO and founder of virtual sports supplier Golden Race, revealed that virtual football was responsible for 79% of the company’s GGR (Gross Gaming Revenue) for 2019. Wachter believes that virtual sports has incredible potential to surpass sports betting revenue in the future, and he’s not the only one. According to E.B. Tucker, a senior analyst for Strategic Investor and Strategic Trader, based on US gambling trends in recent years, he believes that virtual sports betting will be the next $100 billion betting market in the nation.
Of course, for bookies to find success with virtual sports, they need to make sure that they are offering a quality product to customers, including cutting edge graphics, animations, streaming, a wide variety of sports and state-of-the-art RNG to ensure the fairness of the final outcome of the game.
Since this isn’t a problem for most of the major UK sportsbooks, virtual sports has proven and continues to prove itself to be a profitable business because of its low operating costs and consistent margins.
The reality is that the longer it takes for mainstream sports to return, the greater the odds that punters who are new to virtual sports will become more familiar with them and likely fonder of them as well. This being the case, the market’s growing fan base only serves to increase its profitability, which means its very likely that virtual sports will be more than a pandemic fad, with more bookies keen to invest in them for the long term.…
The post Virtual Football – More Than a Pandemic Fad for UK Bookies? appeared first on Eastern European Gaming – News – Interviews – Legal Market Updates – Premium Reports – Events – Directory.
Source: Eastern European Gaming
