SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Official or unofficial data? An ongoing battle which has raised many questions. But whilst official data is typically more costly, its benefits outweigh its downsides according to Agnes Wasikowska at Bayes Esports.
As the Lead Product Manager, Wasikowska has helped oversee the development and execution of the company’s new esports odds exchange product, BODEX. The platform will provide a unified odds interface that aims to remove some of the burden associated with software development.
Speaking at SBC Summit Barcelona, Wasikowska touched upon the launch of the new platform and the ways in which this will help create a more sustainable future for the esports industry.
Discussing some of the biggest disadvantages associated with unofficial data, she told SBC: “There is a misconception that using unofficial data is equally as good as using official data. This is not true – especially when it comes to esports. The main reason being that esports matches have so many different data points and events happening simultaneously.
“Essentially, you can track where players are, what items they have, what they are currently doing.
“This is not the case for traditional sports where there is much less data available. So in esports, when you have all of these data points, there is no way to have a scout in the stadium that can simply write down what’s happening. You have to have access to the actual server where the match is running so that you can extract that data. That’s the first advantage – the granularity of the data.
“The second one is the time advantage. So scraping, or getting that data from unofficial data sources, basically puts you approximately 4030 seconds behind the market. That essentially means that you’re already losing before you’ve even started putting the odds out to your customers.”
In order to combat unofficial data, Bayes Esports recently partnered with big names within the esports industry – including Abios, BETER and Pinnacle. By doing this, the data supplier wants to create an “ecosystem” that helps propel the esports sector further.
She shared that this is among some of the company’s plans for the next few months, with other developments in the pipeline for 2023.
“Aside from the core business model that we have, which largely focused on live data in the past, we are now moving more and more towards providing the full product suite. So we’re rebuilding a lot of products ourselves. One such example is the video product stack, analytics, applications,” she added.
“But my personal favourite is something that I have ongoing right now, which is around content production. So we’re looking at combining video streams and data to create content around esports automatically – essentially, [it will compile] video clips, social media posts and that’s something that’s very dear to my heart as well.”
Watch the full interview HERE
