When we were setting out to build a betting platform, we knew we weren’t just competing with other betting websites — we were placing ourselves in direct competition with any number of established entertainment channels. Operating in this “attention economy”, our direct competitors are the rich media streaming platforms, the social news aggregators and the video sharing platforms.

Early in the design process we asked the question: if we were competing for the same audience as Twitch, YouTube and others, then what could we learn from each of those entertainment platforms? What can YouTube teach us about building an esports platform? How can Twitch inspire us how to build a better esports betting platform? How can esports betting become a form of immersive entertainment?

2. What does it mean to be ‘esports authentic’?

The esports environment is unlike anything seen in traditional sports. While some large operators such as Valve and Riot retain some degree of ownership over their events, there is still a strong sense in the community that the games belong to the fans. Fans watch games for free, fans create their own content, fans provide their own statistics, and — in the case of Dota 2 — fans even contribute to tournament prize funds.

Two of esports’ “Big 3” games — Dota and Counter-Strike — can trace their roots back to the “modding” scene of the late 90s, when gaming enthusiasts would alter or overhaul existing games and share their work with other players for free. This open-source spirit of community participation is still the backbone of esports industry and any successful esports venture must be built on values of player engagement, open-source mentality and a genuine grounding in the community.

Although the esports industry is valued at almost $1 billion per annum, the community reacts very negatively to any sense that they are being exploited for money or treated unfairly and there is an expectation that players will have a direct voice in how new products and services are added to their community.

This provides an additional challenge to the Luckbox platform: how can we build a product that ties together all the aspects of esports entertainment?

The Challenge for Luckbox, reframed

When we took into account our understanding of esports as an entertainment industry and that esports has a set of values regarding “open source”, we were able to reframe our design challenge:

How do we harness the unique characteristics of esports to create a betting platform that sustains the attention of users accustomed to immersive entertainment experiences such as Twitch and YouTube?

“Most esports fans are outspoken about their opinions, whether it is about good game design, the best strategy in a tournament, or the chance that their favourite team will win a game. The esports community is competitive in nature, where people are always vying to be first, or to be better than their peers for a chance to bask in the glory of their victories. Luckbox’s platform can offer a natural outlet for this desire to show how much of a fan you are” Sujoy Roy, Luckbox Director of Esports

Providing multiple formats to view content and suggesting new content gives YouTube a sticky experience

The Process

Early in the process, we identified a number of sites that had successfully designed immersive entertainment experiences across multiple platforms. The phenomenal success of YouTube shows the value of giving users multiple formats to view their content, as well as the benefits of providing suggested content based on user behaviour. This model of curated content and custom viewing formats provides a strong template for successful player engagement.

While YouTube has long established a mainstream audience, Twitch is still viewed by some as a niche platform. But with an audience of 15 million daily active users — each spending an average of 95 minutes per visit — Twitch has become a staple of esports broadcasting. Twitch’s core demographic consists of 81.5% male users, 55% of whom are 18–49 year-olds.

The Twitch default UI - with collapsible widgets for chat stream, channels and friends — allows the choose their preferred viewing mode

While there is much to learn from Twitch’s customisable interface, flexible viewing modes and its integrated chat functionality, Twitch’s success highlights one of the main factors that makes esports unique — streaming rights.

Streaming

In most traditional sports, the broadcast rights for major events are purchased for billions of dollars by TV companies that resell access to customers on a pay-per-view or subscription basis. By contrast, live broadcasts of esports events are available on free to access channels such as Twitch and YouTube. This free-to-air model is one of the core tenets of esports broadcasting, and is very unlikely to change in the medium-term future. The open-source approach to esports streaming means that many amateur streamers redistribute official broadcasts with commentary in their native language. This provides a wealth of streams in multiple languages which can be freely shared using Twitch’s APIs.



Take as an example esports’ flagship event, The International. The official Twitch stream peaked at almost 750,000 viewers. During a match involving the popular Russian team Virtus.pro, one streamer rebroadcast the event with a Russian commentary and gained an audience about 25% as large as the official stream.



By comparison, the transition of the traditional sports betting model into the entertainment sector is hampered by costly broadcast rights, which prevent betting platforms from streaming live action. As a workaround, some websites offer in-play data visualisation, which gives users a basic understanding of the main action and major events. Other providers offer limited live streaming on their platform, but only to customers who have deposited money in their betting account. This paywall-like model would be untenable to an esports audience accustomed to free broadcasts.



While traditional sports are likely to disappear further behind the paywall, the viewership numbers regularly seen on Twitch confirm that esports and free-to-air streaming go hand-in-hand. Twitch proves that live streaming must be one of the pillars of any successful model of esports.

The other pillar? Statistics.

Betting sites have adopted real-time visualisation for a more immersive experience

Statistics

Statistics and real-time data visualisation have long been a staple of traditional betting sites. In part, these features compensate for the restricted access to live streams, but their popularity and prevalence suggests that statistics play a significant role in the traditional betting experience. In esports, the role of statistics is amplified by several magnitudes.

In fluid sports, such as football, it’s possible for statisticians to keep track of a limited number of data points in major tournaments. By the nature of esports, however, every single data point in every single game is recorded and can be instantly shared and analysed with a knowledgeable audience. As further indication of the participation model of esports, most esports fans allow their own gameplay skills to be recorded, and websites such as DOTABUFF, HLTV and Winston’s Lab provide extremely detailed statistics on every aspect of gameplay.



To an esports audience, statistics are not just indicators of overall performance that might be used to support a “gut instinct”, instead they are seen as essential and absolute measures of performance that inform betting behaviour and choices. The prevalence of statistics sites across all major esports proves that an esports audience is willing to invest time and energy into analysing data. To this audience, scrutinising statistics is part of the entertainment experience.