One of the major themes of the SBC Digital Summit’s first day has been, without sports, how are iGaming operators providing their customers action to bet on? That was the question at hand in the second panel of the day, hosted by Ebbe Groes, CEO of EveryMattrix, “Off the bench – what is there to bet on?” He was joined by Dominik Beier, CEO of Interwetten, Alexander Martin, CEO of SKS 365, Minja Bolesnikov, CEO of MaxBet, and Tyrone Dobbin, Managing Director of Sportingbet South Africa.

The lack of mainstream sports has hurt an industry that was already going to take a huge hit from the COVID-19 crisis. Martin noted that SKS365 has had to close all their retail shops in Italy, but even through online channels, sports betting down is down by 60%.

Beier noted that there has been a reason to smile though. Since the beginning of April, Interwetten has seen an increase in interest, after the big shock of the lockdown starting in March. Live betting has increased from 70% of the business to 90%. But as punters start to figure out how to bet on niche products like table tennis, margins have decreased by 25-30%.

Table tennis being the darling of the moment, Bolesnikov wondered if these new products will last once the pandemic is over.  In reality, so many products that the industry expected to be the new bread and butter of the moment have had to give way to entirely unexpected things. “Previously, we’ve always known what esports are, it’s counterstrike, it’s DOTA, its first person shooter games,” said Dobbin. “But the move to FIFA, NBA2k…that came as a big surprise.”