This is a guest contribution by Mark McGuinness, co-founder of esportsbet. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

More and more mainstream gambling operators are adding eSports betting services to their 24-hour betting options menu. In Asia, eSports has been hugely popular and culturally for years. Could betting on eSports transform Asian focussed sports betting behemoths as they seek to increase their profit margin and target Asian Millennials?  Industry eSports and digital betting consultant Mark McGuinness explains.

It may appear to most that looking at the media at that moment that North America invented eSports. There is no doubt that the American’s are giving the ‘sport’ the Hollywood panache. However the reality is before the eSports moniker arrived, the origins of video gaming are entwined in Asia way back to the 80’s with the Taito Corporation and the iconic Space Invaders. To games console manufacturers and publishers such as Sony and the PlayStation, the mighty Nintendo and the Gameboy and, of course, the Wii; to Namco Bandai, Capcom, who makes the popular franchises for Resident Evil and Street Fighter.

Asia has dominated the video games market since 2007, with its value expected to rise to 39.74 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 according to market research firm Statista. If you needed more convincing in 2013, Statista estimated 282 million massively multiplayer online (MMO) gamers in the Asia Pacific region. This reportedly generated 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in MMO games revenue which were seven billion more than the North American market.