Now that we know there’s a potentially strong market for esports betting, the industry is doing its best to understand how it can cash in long term. Steven Salz, CEO and Co-Founder of Rivalry, has catered his offering to the market and knows it very well, and he joined our Becky Liggero Fontana to discuss the mind of the esports bettor.

Rvialry operates in many markets across the world, allowing Salz some insights into which have shown the most interest in esports. “Our biggest markets at Rivalry are predominantly the Latin American region, a few of the European countries and then you know we lightly touch CIS, so call it Russia, Ukraine,” he said. “But you know at least 50% plus of our business on any of the month is out of South America.”

But what doesn’t necessarily work, Salz noted, is just throwing up an esports offering and expecting it to do the same in every country. You have to know what’s popular for a given demographic. “As a perfect kind of dichotomy, you have like Mexico and Brazil,” he started with as an example. “So of the three biggest or most viewed esports being League of Legends, Counter-Strike and DOTA, which also is the three most bet on esports, in Mexico there’s really no Counter-Strike or CS:GO player base that’s really too significant, nor is there really a huge audience. It’s the same thing actually for DOTA, but League of Legends is quite big there. So League of Legends betting and League of Legends viewership is much bigger in Mexico than any of the other titles, whereas in brazil, Counter-Strike, which has been around for 20 years, is practically religion there.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjtIVbXEcY]