Apply Your Sportsbook Edge to Esports

You already know how to run esports betting. You're just not doing it yet. 

No sportsbook operator would apply the same strategy to the English Premier League and the Argentine Primera División. Audiences differ. Competition formats differ. The timing of volume peaks differs. What drives margin in one league doesn't transfer automatically to another.

That’s essentially Sportsbook Operations 101. What many don’t realize, though, is that esports today is not that different.

The category label is misleading

Esports sits under one menu item in most sportsbooks. That's a design decision, not a commercial one.

Just because titles like Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, League of Legends, VALORANT, and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang are all esports—and they’re all increasing in performance year over year—the commercial engines behind that growth look nothing alike. It would be like expecting football and tennis products to behave the same just because they’re both ball sports. 

The real question for operators then becomes not "how do we handle esports?" It's "how do we handle each of these, the same way we'd handle any other part of the book?"

What the data actually shows

• Counter-Strike 2 is driven more by team loyalty than tournament prestige. Matches featuring well-known lineups generate consistent activity whether they're played at a championship or a mid-tier qualifier. The parallel for traditional sports operators is straightforward: this is fan-driven betting behavior, and it responds to the same things.
   
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang grew 62% and was significant enough in scale to include in this year's analysis for the first time. Average stakes are lower than PC titles, but the real story is about structure, not spikes. Domestic leagues across Southeast Asia run on weekly schedules and sustain engagement through the year. For operators with Southeast Asian customer base, these regional leagues are where most MLBB volume actually lives. Prioritizing international events over regional ones risks missing where most MLBB volume actually sits.
   
• League of Legends: LoL recorded 46% volume growth, comparable to mid-tier European football leagues. The more telling detail, though, is the impact that a format change—the addition of Fearless Draft—had on the performance. That one format change reshaped how matches played out and significantly increased in-play engagement, contributing to a 166% year-over-year rise in average stakes at Worlds. Operators who had live trading infrastructure in place for that moment captured it. Those who didn't, didn't.
   
• VALORANT and Dota 2: Each of these titles are following their own patterns, with performance concentrating around elite competition and flagship events. Predictable, as long as you know to look for it. 

The playbook already exists

Whether esports is already in your book or you're still deciding whether to add it, here’s what this means for you: 

• If you already run esports: the same logic you apply to structuring football coverage across different leagues applies here—allocate trading resources based on where volume concentrates and build promotional activity around what drives bettor engagement. In other words, focus on teams in CS2, regional leagues in MLBB, format-driven events in League of Legends. You invest in live infrastructure ahead of peaks you can see coming. 
  
  None of this requires a new operating model. It requires applying the one you already have.
   
• If esports isn't yet part of your offer: the barrier is lower than it looks. The unfamiliarity of the titles is real, but the commercial logic isn't unfamiliar at all. Esports in 2025 behaves like a set of distinct sports within a broader portfolio — each with its own audience, its own competitive calendar, its own volume patterns. That's a problem you already know how to solve.

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The question for 2026

The data from 2025 shows clear separation across these five titles. That separation will become more pronounced, not less, as the market matures.

For operators building their strategy now, the relevant question is simple: is your esports approach structured around how these titles actually behave, or is it still managed as a single category with a single playbook?

Our esports experts can help make sure you have the solutions to succeed. 

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