SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Unfold the fascinating story on how esports odds are set with Abios, the world’s leading esports data and odds provider. In this exclusive interview, Anton Janér, Abios’ Managing Director and Co-founder, and Peter Torsson, Abios Engineering Manager, discuss how odds are set, the building blocks needed to create a cutting-edge offering and how they envision pricing to evolve with the help of new technologies.
Just as for sports, esports odds are typically set by traders assisted by mathematical modelling, each expert in their respective discipline, whether that be Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends or Dota 2. They follow each change in rosters, team performance and player history to determine pre-match odds while monitoring ongoing matches for in-play betting.
Each time something changes that may affect an outcome, they adjust and tweak the pricing in an effort to try to make the odds reflect the likelihood of an event occurring and that no unwanted arbitrage opportunities occur.
While the trading process may seem straightforward, product expectations from end users and sportsbooks increase each year. Sportsbooks are commercially incentivised to develop their offering for high-turnover sports such as football or basketball to perfection. Bettors who bet on esports often also bet on sports, which means that improvements in regular sports betting also increase their expectations of their esports betting providers.
Moreover, as new actors are potentially entering the sports betting industry, the stakes are higher than ever for sportsbooks and suppliers looking to attract and keep their audiences.
Utilising data and automated odds compiling to meet ever-increasing product demands
To remain competitive and ahead of the game, Abios utilises the fastest data sources in the industry from tournament servers through agreements with rights holders, to create its odds. For a vast number of matches, traders no longer manually adjust prices based on what they see.
Instead, mathematical and ML models react instantaneously to granular data points, automatically tuning the prices of the entire offering at minimal latency. A process that is only overseen by expert traders.
Peter Torsson delves into the process of creating odds for tournaments.
“The first thing our systems collect is the tournament information, including which teams and rosters will play. Then it fetches information on each specific team and player, including their long-term and recent collective and individual performance,” he said.
This data feeds into the primary models, allowing Abios to create accurate initial odds. Their systems continuously update probabilities based on real-time data that comes in prior to the match, and later, as matches are played, ensuring their odds are always accurate.
Using automation to introduce a new toolbox for traders
Anton Janér described the new role of traders as automation is rolled out: “Following Jevon’s Paradox, as new technology is rolled out that introduces efficiencies, it creates more output and more demand. More often than not, it empowers employees to do more with less. We have seen this with various AI tools and, to a large degree, within trading.
With increased automation, each trader can monitor more matches while continuing to ensure pricing models accurately reflect the underlying events occurring in each game. They also watch out for edge cases and arbitrage risks in the market, both of which still benefit greatly from the expert human touch.
As such, automating certain aspects of the pricing process empowers traders to increase their capacity and trade more markets while increasing end-product quality and output.
Janér outlined: “With automated modelling, we can increase uptime for live markets, as automated price changes can respond to events faster than humans. With some aspects of the trading work becoming automated, we can also increase the matches and events covered by each individual trader, scaling our offering while ensuring the high-quality only expert oversight can currently provide.”
The blink-of-an-eye delivery of mathematical models in front of the end-user
In live esports matches, events that shift odds can happen every second, sometimes even in succession. In these instances, the mathematical models that calculate each market need to be able to read through the match data feeds and shift the odds accordingly. The updates are then sent continuously through APIs to partnered sportsbooks.
With millions on the line, it’s paramount that this process runs smoothly. As such, the integration process is a vital touch point between odds supplier and sportsbook, ensuring the right processes are in place to quickly resolve issues down the road and ensure that operations run smoothly across even the most demanding matches.
All esports tournaments don’t operate with the same rights holders, meaning operators need multiple integrations to access official data sources.
“With every extra data source comes an integration process, as new parsers need to be set up to decode and normalise each data source to work with the internal sportsbook systems delivering the odds to the end user, Torsson said. “This can cause more technical debt down the line, as these codebases must stay up-to-date and bug-free to create a smooth experience for the end user.”
“For Abios’ odds customers, one of the key benefits with our setup is a normalised data structure regardless of which underlying game, tournament operator, or data provider they come from,” Janér added. This consistency simplifies the integration process for sportsbooks, as they can plug into one system to access content from a vast majority of tier one esports, normalised across every tournament and game.
Future-proofing esports betting through innovative product features
While the underlying technology is important to ensure the reliability and accuracy of high-uptime live markets, Abios systems are purpose-built to enable and support the invention of new market types and sportsbook features.
Torsson said: “The esports betting user doesn’t live in a vacuum. The digital product environment and betting industry is evolving rapidly, not the least with the recent developments we’ve seen with adjacent industries such as investment, crypto and finance dipping their toes into the market.
“This comes with lots of market innovation and competition. Betting isn’t just 1×2 markets anymore. Today’s users are used to having more options when it comes to the entertainment services they consume. To stay competitive, this needs to translate to their esports offering.“
Janér explained how Abios aims to remain relevant in the increasingly competitive market environment: “At Abios, we’ve always looked at the best products in adjacent industries and in sports, and developed our portfolio of data-driven esports products to reach the same level.”
“Innovation is ultimately the most important part of a technology business, as it pushes the envelope of the industry and enables new revenues.”
Abios has worked tirelessly in recent years to bring the esports betting experience on par with the best sports products. This includes bet builders with player props and high-uptime live markets for top tournaments, creating engaging experiences for end users that mirror the fast-paced action of esports.
With its products on a similar level to what can be seen in sports, Abios takes on 2025 with the mission to innovate in the field and bring the features only seen at the forefront of sports betting into esports.
Janér concluded: “As the esports industry matures and reaches the mainstream, alongside new market entrants driving new product innovation, we believe exciting times lie ahead for the esports betting industry. We are fortunate to be in a position to have our partners with us as we work on very exciting live betting features pushing what’s possible in betting, but more on that later.”
