This is a guest contribution by Mark McGuiness, founde of eSports Bet. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

Stand first

Betting on eSports continues to grab the media spotlight, with more and more iGaming operators clamouring to offer eSports betting products on their platforms. Could eSports disrupt the current online betting industry that hasn’t changed in the past 15 years? Industry eSports betting consultant Mark McGuinness explains.

Competitive video gaming isn’t a new phenomenon. If anything video gaming has done a lot of ‘pivoting’ as they would refer to it in Venture Capital, speak.   In the early 1980’s the iconic Space Invaders held the 1st large-scale video game competition for 10,000 players in the USA. Fast forward to the early nineties and advancement in technology allowed true online multiplayer capabilities.  This was perhaps the birth of eSports, transforming the stereotypical image of a computer nerd, eating pizza and whiling away a misspent youth in his bedroom in solitude to one of a digital eSports athlete.