SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
In the second part of a joint interview on the use of official data, Bayes Esports’ Ondrej Silhavy and Pinnacle’s Rohini Sardana focus on creating added value for bettors, explaining why the esports industry must prioritise the creation of standards and neutral data marketplaces.
SBC: Rohini, how is Pinnacle using official data from Bayes Esports to build trust with your bettors?
RS: Esports bettors have traditionally been sceptical of the betting industry’s involvement with their passion, but showing them that we have their interests at heart, by potentially highlighting bad actors within esports teams and management, and generally pushing the quality of the wider betting experience forward, has proven to drive trust with various esports communities.
Our learnings in this space is that those companies which support esports and invest in its present and future receive a lot of goodwill from its various stakeholders and fans, while those that just pay lip service get found out pretty quickly. From the feedback we’ve received, both Bayes and Pinnacle have earned the respect of the community by doing things the right way and by investing where it matters, in this case data.
SBC: On a broader level, how can official data feeds help create added value for esports products?
OS: While a betting odds feed is the core of any betting product, official data unlocks new ways of engaging with your customers. Features such as widgets with statistics, live mini-maps showing movement of players, historical data with head to head performance…
All those tools enable operators to offer something valuable to their customers. Something that gives them a reason to login, and watch the match from their website. The possibilities are endless, and you see the market catching up with this. The end goal is to enable the customer to make informed decisions about placing their bets, and differentiating the operator from the rest of the market.
RS: For the customer, the enhancement of official data feeds will lead to a better in-play product primarily. With more data to hand, our modellers and traders can offer more markets, such as in-play player props, while being more confident in offering sharper odds across more markets and game titles.
Operators, by working with a supplier, such as Pinnacle Solution, that provides a high quality betting product and betting experience using official data feeds, can leverage the engagement benefits of a broader customer base.
Offering a top tier product on more titles, both pre-match and in-play, is key to bringing this unique esports betting audience, who arguably have higher standards than their average sports customer.
SBC: Ondrej, in your opinion, how important is it that the esports industry prioritises the creation of standards and neutral marketplaces when it comes to data?
OS: We think it’s very important, because it unlocks great possibilities for the whole industry. If you look just a few years back, as a data consumer, getting live data from all major titles was almost impossible. You had to deal with different technical, operational and commercial standards.
The reason for creating BEDEX as a data marketplace was not only to provide betting operators with a one stop for official live data. It was to also enable game publishers and tournament organisers to enable easy data distribution, and to have a new path towards monetisation of their work.
Moving from the “wild west” towards a standardised present is something that we are very proud of. And it is thanks to partnerships like the one with Pinnacle, that helped us to understand the needs, and to develop what is today an industry standard.
SBC: Where do you both see the future of esports heading when it comes to data?
RS: Without putting a timeframe on it, we’d like to see more publishers look to the betting world and the complementary value betting has to their esports titles, both for their customers’ enjoyment and from a commercial point of view.
The sensible monetisation of data rights should help publishers, operators and suppliers, be financially better off, by driving standards in integrity and product development across their own ecosystems.
OS: From our perspective, we hope to see a fast way towards the standardisation of data distribution across more game titles. The distribution platform we’ve built in the last years created a clear path for game publishers to distribute their data across the market, with a clear visibility of where and to whom it goes. This gives them not only full control over the data flow, but it also underlines the integrity focus.
Not distributing official data essentially means that you are giving up the steering wheel to someone else, without having any control. Looking ahead , we want to build on top of the results we’ve demonstrated with game publishers and tournament organisers like Riot Games or ESL Faceit Group.
