Digital games revenue grows 15% worldwide in October. Players spent $8.5 billion across console, mobile and PC in October, up from $7.4 billion in the same month last year. Growth was underpinned by a 28% jump in premium PC thanks to Destiny 2’s successful BattleNet launch, and the continued blockbuster hit of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battlegrounds. Gains were also strong in mobile (19%) with the continued rise of major games like Honour of Kings.
Subscribers to the SuperData Arcade have access to detailed performance data on the world’s most popular digital games across PC, console and mobile.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds sells another 5 million units. PUBG had its biggest month ever on the back of a seemingly unstoppable hype train. But has it met its match in Fortnite
Destiny 2 has a solid release on PC. Destiny 2’s much-anticipated Blizzard Battle.net PC launch proves very successful. High attach rates for deluxe editions drove the average selling price up.
Super Mario Odyssey launches on Switch.Mario sold 191,000 digital units in October, making it the biggest digital launch on Switch to date. However, digital download rates continue to lag those found on the Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
Single player games still have legs. While multiplayer-centric genres (FPS, MOBA, and Battle Royale) are in the spotlight, there is still room on the stage for single-player focused games. In October, South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins collectively generated over $160M through digital full game sales. However, we don’t expect these games to have as much success in the long run, compared to the multiplayer genres, as it is generally harder to monetize through microtransactions in a single-player focused title.
Battle of the Battle Royales: PUBG vs Fortnite. While Fortnite has seen a higher out-of-the-gate active user base thanks to its F2P status, the game’s long-term success vs. its major and earlier-released rival is uncertain.
Epic is a veteran game development company and PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds’ first major—but certainly not last—competitor. Fortnite: Battle Royale’s MAU has grown larger than PUBG’s in the month of October across PC and console. Still, Fortnite’s total revenue is a fraction of PUBG’s due to the former being a free-to-play title compared to PUBG’s $30 price point. But Fortnite has a leg up on the additional content front, having already introduced cosmetic microtransactions through an in-game cash shop late in October. The challenge will be converting its higher user base into spenders.
December will be an important month for both games; PUBG will be releasing exclusively on XB1 on December 12th and will be leaving Steam Early Access on Steam in “late December” with a new map. Fortnite will, presumably, leverage their cash shop and introduce Christmas-themed cosmetics and will have to fight PUBG for user’s attention on XB1.
Global digital games market grows impressively in August thanks to free-to-play MMO, console, and mobile.
Football season heats up:Madden NFL 18beats predecessor out of the gate.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’s Battlegrounds continues to dominate premium PC game sales, despite still being in Steam Early Access. PUBG is the number 1 premium PC game for the 3rd month in a row and has overtaken World of Warcraft in the total PC games rankings.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft reaches all-time high revenues due to their well-received and unique expansion, titled Knights of the Frozen Throne.
The worldwide digital video games market grew 11% year-over-year in August to $7.9B. The premium PC segment shrank 10% year-over-year, despite PUBG’s breakout success, due to tough comparisons against No Man’s Sky release and Overwatch’s first event and new map last year. Social and pay-to-play MMO segments continue to decline at a rate of 4% and 25% respectively. Console and mobile grew 11% and 13%, respectively. The free-to-play MMO market was the big winner this month, growing 28% year-over-year, as more publishers and developers adopt this business model.Read more...
Free-to-Play drives U.S. digital growth. In the U.S., digital games revenue grew year-over-year. This growth was underpinned by a rise in free-to-play digital revenue. This more than offsets the decline in pay-to-play, which was down on a difficult comparison against World of Warcraft: Legion last year.
PLAYERUNKNOWN's Battlegrounds sales accelerate in August. PUBG had another successful month, bringing total life-to-date sales close to 9 million units through August.
Hearthstone hits all-time revenue peak with "Knights of the Frozen Throne" expansion. Blizzard’s CCG reached a new high this month. This marks a 15% increase over their previous peak.
Overwatch PC monthly active users reach new highs due to successive updates. On the back of a string of updates that introduced a new character, two new game modes, and the return of the “Summer Games” event, Overwatch recorded its highest MAU yet.
Madden NFL 18 sells over 220,000 digital units at launch. Sales were up compared to last year's launch month units for Madden NFL 17. We also estimate modest additional content growth on the back of new in-game DLC packs available this year.
Digital Console: Additional Content in Today's Market
There’s plenty to bet on this week but not all sites have every tournament and esport listed. Even if they do, it’s worth shopping around to see what good value esports betting odds are on offer. Here’s a rundown of what the esports bookies are up to this week.
Betway
So far this week, Betway has only listed odds for CS:GO, League of Legends and StarCraft 2. I’m sure they will release some more of their special bets, especially for the CS:GO DreamHack Malmotournament, as it’s clear they are big fans of the game.
Bet365
Bet365 has been pushing boundaries again this week by being the first major bookmaker to release odds for a Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) event, namely the PUBG Gamescom Invitational. Team SoloMid is currently the favorite at odds of 5/1 (6.00) with Cloud 9 and Team Liquid at 11/2 (6.50).
The majority of odds listed on Bet365’s site are League of Legends(LoL) games as they have a variety of markets for each event. As an example, for the LCK Regional Qualifiers alone, there are 20 different bet types.
SkyBet
SkyBet has a healthy selection of LoL games on offer as well as odds for the CS:GO Pro League, Dota 2 Pro Dota Cup, StarCraft 2 – Global League and Hearthstone LB Brawl. Although its odds aren’t always the most competitive, SkyBet does have some markets available that many other bookmakers don’t.
Pinnacle
Pinnacle has similar esports available to SkyBet this week but with the addition of some markets for the Warcraft 3 – Golden Championship Series. There is a variety of CS:GO tournaments on offer at Pinnacle but as usual, very few betting markets to choose from. Interestingly, its only CS:GO matches are of the Star Challenge tournament, despite there being multiple better options to choose from.
Unikrn
At the time of writing, Unikrn has markets for CS:GO, StarCraft 2 and LoL. I would expect more from an esports-specific bookmaker but fingers crossed Unikrn adds some more odds to the site throughout the week.
Betspawn
Betspawn is certainly one of my favorites again this week, with great odds and a ton of esports tournaments to choose from. There are odds for eight different CS:GO tournaments listed on the site already, as well as odds for Dota 2, LoL, Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, Warcraft and Crossfire. It is a seriously underrated bookmaker and always worth looking at when deciding whom to bet with.
GG.bet
GG.bet seems to be releasing its PUBG odds a little later in the week, perhaps taking notes from Bet365, which was the first to list odds for the event. Elsewhere on the site, there’s plenty to choose from in multiple esports, despite missing a few decent tournaments from the list.
Unibet
I mentioned last week that Unibet was worth keeping an eye on when comparing odds, and that’s still sound advice. Its odds will move regularly and sometimes you can pick up some great value on top esports matches. For this week so far, it has listed odds for CS:GO, StarCraft 2 and LoL.
In British Columbia Canada ?
You can check out our local BCLC site : https://www.playnow.com/ for wagering on all your esports action.
Bookmakers work out the probability – the chance – of popular events occurring, like the English Premier more obscure stuff like betting on Brexit or who’ll win eSports matches. They turn that probability into odds which punters can place eSports bets on, but crucially bookmakers offer slightly poorer odds than the real probability of either side winning.
Bookmakers work by offering slightly poorer eSports odds than the real probability of either side winning.
Say CS:GO Team A are playing CS:GO Team B. They have played 10 times recently, with Team A winning six times and losing four times.
Keeping it really simply and assuming conditions are the same, basic probability would suggest that Team A has a 60% chance of winning (6 / 10 * 100), while Team B has a 40% chance.
Bookmakers wants to make a profit so rather than offering odds that reflect the probability (based on the form) they exaggerate each team’s chances. So bookmaker odds for the matchup may suggest a 62% chance of Team A winning and 42% for Team B.
This is how that looks with Decimal odds (which most European bookmakers use).
Fair Assessment
Team A
6 wins / 10 matches
60% Chance
Decimal Odds of 1.66
Team B
4 wins from 10 matches
40% Chance
Decimal odds of 2.50
Bookmaker Assessment
Team A
6.2 wins / 10 matches
62% Chance
Decimal Odds of 1.61
Team B
4.2 wins from 10 matches
42% Chance
Decimal odds of 2.38
Now you might think ‘If I bet on Team A and they win I am still quids in!’ That is true, but because you aren’t getting paid out in true proportion to the riskiness of your bet, if you keep placing more bets over time the bookmaker’s edge will eventually mean that you will lose.
Imagine flipping a coin with a friend that is slightly biased towards heads. The coin would land on both sides, but heads would show up slightly more than chance, and if you kept flipping you would eventually lose your shirt.
The cost of placing a bet
That amount that the odds are tweaked – the edge the bookmaker has in their favour – is called the margin. That is the cost to the bettor of placing a bet.
If you go back to the example above the sum of the Fair Assessment of the chances of Team A and Team B is 100%. But in the Bookmaker Assessment the total chances are 104%. The margin is therefore 4% in the bookmaker’s favour. So long as they take bets on both sides in proportion to the odds they will make 4% of the total sum of bets.
This should ring some bells with anyone who has used skin-betting sites because they are doing a very similar thing by a change a commission on bets.
Why payouts are so crucial
When you look at the eSports odds comparison tables on Beo we display the Payout for each matchup, rather than Margin. The higher the Payout the better the value. Margin shows the odds from the bookmaker perspective – what they take – whereas the Payout is what you, the bettor, gets. Payout is the inverse of Margin, so a 4% margin means a 96% payout.
What this means is that if you bet £100 across both sides, in proportion to the odds, (not advisable) you would only get £96 back. The Payout is the only way to compare eSports odds, so you should pay close attention to it when you choose where to place your eSports bets. It isn’t the only consideration, but it is one of the most important.
I've been known to have the occasional flutter on a sports ball match or an equine quickness test. But while I was perusing some of the major betting sites recently, looking for an intriguing offer or some half-decent odds, I stumbled upon something curious. The world of eSports has quietly worked its way into betting markets. But is either industry ready for the coming together of slapping cash down in hope of complete strangers outperforming rivals and these little things called video games?
William Hill is amongst the first bookies to offer odds on eSports events. "[The idea] was actually from a couple of young guys who work down in the Darwin office, in Australia," Rupert Adams, International PR Manager at the company, tells me. Two 20-year-olds, gamers in their spare time, got in contact with compilers at William Hill's head office in Leeds—compilers are responsible for deciding whether a new market is going to be created for people to bet on. The two Australians go to gaming tournaments every now and then, and wondered why there wasn't a way to combine work with pleasure. Would it be possible to bet on video games?
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That was a few months ago—and today, you most certainly can bet on eSports. Which makes perfect sense, as the audience is there. According to SuperData Research, there are over 134 million eSports viewers worldwide as of May 2015. The market in Europe is worth $72 million, North America $143 million, and Asia is the biggest at $374 million. A lot of people are watching, and a growing number of sponsors are pumping money into the eSports industry. So it was never a matter of if eSports would be getting betting markets, merely a matter of when.
We are still in the early days though. William Hill is neither losing nor gaining money from its eSports markets right now. Rupert tells me this is always the way for new markets at the start. "If you had told me ten years ago that people would be betting on the winner of The X Factor, I wouldn't have believed you. But now we make £1 million [$1.5 million] from the final."
I was interested to learn about which new markets get picked up—after all, it's not every day that an entirely new sport comes around. "Other than one-off markets, like whether we'll have a white Christmas, or who's going to win The X Factor, it just doesn't happen often," Rupert says. "I guess the last big one I can remember was for WWE Wrestling." (Which seems odd to me, considering there are a group of people who actually know the outcomes of those bouts ahead of time.) Betting on eSports is certain to increase over time, but whether it will ever get as big as gambling on football games and horse races remains to be seen.
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I decided it was time to speak to someone who had experience from the other side of things. Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis is a former professional League of Legends player. As the jungler for Counter Logic Gaming Europe, he played in the Season 2 World Championships against some of the world's best. With his playing days behind him, he is now Vice President of Business Development at Unikrn, a company dedicated to offering eSports betting.
"We aim to provide a safe, legal, and responsible environment for people to bet on eSports," he tells me. "During my tenure as a professional gamer I was always passionate about the business aspects of eSports, and when making the transition into the next chapter of my career I had the opportunity to visit Unikrn's founders Rahul Sood and Karl Flores, as well as the rest of the team in Seattle, and knew these were the guys I wanted to work with."
"Also, there is a wealth of evidence out there which points to betting increasing engagement and viewership in sports," he continues. "There are some examples already happening in eSports, despite there not being a platform dedicated to it like ours. I see Unikrn as one of the catalysts in helping eSports grow and bridge the gap between the mainstream and hardcore audiences."
I ask if he sees the mainstream sites, such as Bet365 and William Hill, as competition for Unikrn, or whether he thinks gamers were more likely to turn to his company, since it's a dedicated eSports platform.
"The difference between those mentioned and ourselves is that we are completely vertically integrated in eSports. We are also hardcore gamers—you'll often find our CEO squeezing in as many games of League of Legends as he can. We seek to bring the level of legality and safety that these mainstream sites bring, at the same time as being gamer focused and re-investing into the eSports scene."
With the eSports industry growing all the time, I've always thought that betting was an obvious step in its development into the mainstream, and Stephen agrees. "Betting is one of the next logical steps in eSports. There is an emerging body of research in traditional sports, which if you've ever bet on traditional sports, you will know about. For one thing, betting increases engagement. People are more likely to watch to the end of games, people are more likely to watch less-significant games, and this is already very evident at some eSports tournaments." I know all about that, having added an extra dimension to Argentina against Iran in the 2014 World Cup by putting a little of my own money on the line.
Gameplay from 'League of Legends'
I wanted to get Stephen's views on whether the eSports industry was ready for betting, both in terms of it still being in its infancy, and the fact that many eSports fans are not of legal age for gambling.
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"It's a good question, and we should all be wary of younger people betting in any sport, never mind eSports. That is why we've partnered with TabCorp, which is one of the largest wagering firms in the world and, for the past nine out of ten years, has been recognized as the most responsible wagering platform in the world. They have strict verification processes, so betting goes through us on the front end but is completely checked by them on the back end."
After leaving the professional gaming scene and moving over to Unikrn, Stephen posted an AMA on Reddit, answering questions and concerns that his fans had. In it, he spoke about a strong desire to combat match fixing, something that has been a massive problem in the past. I asked him to elaborate.
"Competitive integrity is something I am very aware of as a former professional gamer, and the team here at Unikrn is making that a top priority. Not only will we blacklist anyone who is directly or indirectly involved in the competition—that's coaches, analysts, players, owners, league organizers, admins, whoever—but we are also working on a comprehensive competitive integrity certificate which leagues and tournaments that we offer betting on must adhere to, or else we will not offering betting on their tournaments."
Unikrn has measures in place to prevent any sort of foul play. "We're also monitored by LuxBet, and they have decades of experience to catch irregular betting patterns that we can flag on our system. There are various other checks and balances we will be implementing, but I can assure you we are taking competitive integrity very seriously."
Having spent so many years in the eSports industry before getting into the betting side of things, Stephen believes that gambling won't have a negative impact. "I believe that betting will create more engagement, not only for the hardcore gamer but also for the casual. I love eSports—it's given me so much, and I wouldn't have joined Unikrn if I thought its practices were detrimental to the health and prosperity of the scene."
It appears, then, that the eSports industry and the gambling industry are ready for each other. Some may scoff now, but in ten years it's pretty likely that we'll be just as ready to bet on who's going to win the 2025 League of Legends World Championships as we are on whether we'll be getting snow on Christmas Day. And if the right measures are in place to protect young people and prevent cheating, then I, for one, don't see a problem with it. Now, to find the Dotaequivalent of the Honduran national soccer team and make their matches all the more exciting.
