Esports have quickly grown from a specialised pastime to a worldwide phenomenon that influences everything from professional sports to entertainment. Digital tournaments are challenging conventional ideas of sportsmanship, competition, and athleticism since they draw enormous audiences and provide substantial cash sources.

In addition to captivating millions of fans globally, this developing sector is changing the sports industry’s economic environment and posing new opportunities and difficulties for players, fans, and corporations alike. Let’s explore the ways in which this virtual battlefield is redefining sports culture.

What are the Key Features of E-sports?

Electronic sports, or esports, differentiate themselves from traditional sports with a number of important characteristics. The digital platform, where games are played on PCs or consoles and allow for worldwide participation and viewing, is a major component of its attractiveness. Professional teams and lone players compete in well-known video games of all kinds, including first-person shooters, real-time strategy, and multiplayer online combat arenas. These competitions are extremely well-organized.

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The utilisation of live streaming services and niche esports platforms, which enable real-time broadcasting to a global audience, making esports accessible to millions and cultivating a thriving community of watchers and supporters, is another distinctive feature. In addition to increasing audience involvement, this internet connectedness fosters a complex web of broadcast rights, sponsorships, and merchandise.

The Growth of Esports

Esports’ rapid expansion has drawn interest from a wide range of stakeholders, including all BP Group Casinos, who see the opportunity for significant financial gain in this rapidly expanding sector. In an effort to capitalise on the excitement of a younger, tech-savvy audience, casinos are exploring more and more to include esports betting in their services as esports competitions draw greater viewership. The popularity of esports has increased even further as a result of this integration; major event prize pools now match those of regular sports.

Casinos are utilising this trend to broaden their clientele and improve their entertainment offerings, as seen by their smart partnerships with well-known gaming events and esports teams. This mutually beneficial partnership highlights how much esports have impacted the gaming and entertainment industries as a whole and indicates that these industries will continue to expand and innovate in the years to come.

Esports as a Career: Opportunities and Challenges

A career in esports presents both significant hurdles and a wealth of potential. As the sport grows, it generates jobs for coaches, analysts, broadcasters, and marketers in addition to players, demonstrating a diverse ecosystem that caters to a range of interests and ability levels. Similar to conventional athletics, players may become celebrities and perhaps earn large sponsorships and prize money. But there are challenges along the way. The competitive environment is extremely tough, and maintaining a high standard of performance may be psychologically and physically exhausting.

Furthermore, compared to other occupations, players usually have shorter professional lifespans, necessitating ongoing skill improvement and flexibility. Resilience and strategic preparation are necessary in this environment if one is to effectively traverse its complexity and maintain a long-term career in this fast-paced sector.

Esports vs. Traditional Sports

Traditional sports and esports both have the fundamental excitement of competition and spectatorship, but they differ greatly in terms of execution and culture. Traditional sports have a rich history and are fundamental to both community identity and world culture. They are built on physical prowess and involve either outdoor or court-based activities. On the other hand, esports flourishes in virtual surroundings, stressing fast reflexes, strategic thinking, and collaboration. This also applies to the audience: esports supporters mostly view tournaments online, creating a social media community, whereas traditional sports fans often watch games in stadiums or on television.

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The availability of esports, which everyone with internet connection and the necessary gear can play or watch, stands in stark contrast to many traditional sports, which are sometimes financially and geographically inaccessible. These distinctions show not just how different one is from the other in terms of appeal, but also how each may improve fan interaction and reach by learning from the other.

Predictions for the Next Decade in the Esports Industry

The esports business is expected to experience revolutionary expansion over the next ten years, driven by new technology and evolving societal attitudes. There are rumours that virtual and augmented reality might completely change the way fans watch esports by providing immersive experiences that combine digital and physical media. There’s also talk of artificial intelligence taking on a bigger role—possibly in strategy, coaching, and even in producing tailored watching experiences. With more money coming in from media companies and traditional sports teams hoping to take advantage of the lucrative esports business, global growth is also imminent.

Furthermore, more organised training and development programmes that resemble those in traditional sports may be implemented as long as academic institutions continue to acknowledge esports as a valid career path and varsity sport. These advancements have the potential to significantly elevate the field’s professionalism and stability of professions within the business.

How did the idea of creating Extendy come about? What inspired you?

It all began around 5 years ago when representatives from two different areas of interest came together. On one side, we had an experienced team of IT developers, product managers, designers, and other professionals who together could create products of different complexities. On the other side, a team of media buying experts with years of experience of driving large volumes of traffic to others’ products, and who wished to reach new heights in this area.

By sharing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, it quickly became clear that by joining forces, we could create a great product both for ourselves and for the entire market. And this is how Extendy came about — it’s a platform for creating online casinos for media buying  teams.

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Now, after developing and testing this product over these past 5 years, we are eager to talk about it and provide access to certain teams.

Why do media buying teams need their own casino? Isn’t it more profitable to have 4-5 different offers and not be tied to one specific one, even if it’s their own?

We’ve conducted hundreds of interviews with media buying experts and so many of them agree that having your own product is more economically advantageous in the long term. The key here is the long-term perspective and there currently is a strong demand in the market for creating one’s own casino.

Real, big, and stable earnings do not begin when you discover a couple of working combinations that return investments and start generating profit within six months. Rather, it’s when traffic grows after acquiring a new player, or when deposits cost nothing. This can only be achieved in one way—by investing in your brand, marketing, SMM, reactivating former users through CRM channels, and so on, increasing the share of organic traffic every day.

When media buying teams drive traffic to someone else’s casino, all the benefits of this free organic traffic go to the casino owners, not to the media buying experts. By having your own casino, and approaching promotion and all operational processes correctly, these benefits will go to you, as the owner, allowing you to significantly increase your profits and reach new heights.

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What are Extendy’s key features?

The main aim is that media buying teams need only think about driving traffic. When it comes to all other operational aspects, they can rest assured that they will be taken care of.

We dedicated thousands of hours creating an infrastructure which would allow media buying teams to receive an online casino with fully autonomous, operational systems. We guarantee the seamless and efficient operation of every system, whether it’s user support, CRM, payment processing, anti-fraud mechanisms, etc. Extendy takes care of all this allowing teams to focus solely on traffic acquisition.

Another feature of the platform is the technical solutions offered for more effective traffic monetisation. Since the technical and media buying teams collaborated so closely during the platform’s creation, this helped us to conduct hundreds of experiments and implement the best practices into the final product version. This includes optimizing conversions at each stage of the funnel and the “Traffic Light” technology which predicts the LTV of users from a specific campaign in a short period. This allows teams to quickly stop the campaign in case of a red prediction or scale it in case of a green prediction.

Additionally, we have the AppAI technology for mobile traffic which analyzes the profile of the attracted user and the ad they clicked on to enter the product. Based on this data, a unique flow is created for each user, allowing for significant increases in conversion rates and faster return on traffic investment.

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We are continuously improving the platform. The R&D team conducts experiments daily, develops new features, and implements them for our clients to enhance the efficiency of every dollar invested in traffic.

If someone wants to create their own platform instead of working with someone else, how much would it cost to develop such a platform?

I can’t give an exact figure, but I think it would cost at least $25 million if we’re talking about an all-inclusive platform like Extendy. But the difficulty isn’t so much in the investment as it is in the team, expertise, strategy, timing, focus, and other factors that aren’t immediately obvious.

A platform is a complex IT product that would take several years to develop. And while you’re developing it, significant changes could occur in the market which could affect your prospects. You need to accept these risks from the start.

Therefore, it’s obviously better to focus on what you do best—driving traffic—and let the platform handle everything else.

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You mentioned earlier that the platform is already open, but not for everyone. What does this mean?

At the moment, we’re in closed beta and ready to work only with large media buying teams. Currently, our priority is a limited number of projects to which we can devote maximum attention.

Any past projects and clients you can mention?

The online casino brands BDMBet, BetOnRed, and CryptoLeo were launched on Extendy. We are delighted that they have gone on to become popular casino brands in their GEOs and we will do our best to scale this success.

We’re also working with some clients who prefer to remain anonymous, and several other brands which will soon be launched. We’re expecting to launch around 10 online casinos by the end of the year.

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Thank you! Could you share your plans for the platform’s development and how media buying teams can get in touch?

If you represent a large media buying team, feel free to reach out to me, or you may fill in an application on our website and we’ll be in touch.

As for upcoming plans, as with any IT product, we have a long list of tasks and long-term plans that will expand our clients’ capabilities, both technically and product-wise. These include tasks for increasing profits and reducing traffic payback periods, improving user experience and design, increasing technical stability and speed, and much, much more.

I’d be happy to discuss more details in person! In fact, we’ll be at the iGB Amsterdam, SBC Lisbon, and SiGMA Malta conferences later this year. See you there!