Exploring the Role of Skill-Based Gaming in the Sports Gambling Landscape

Introduction

It’s hard to imagine the sheer scope of the sports gambling industry. It’s easy to digest the numbers, but it’s hard to measure the true cultural impact, particularly on sports, which has been monumental. As profits continue to soar in the sector, what was once considered lesser-revered industries have emerged as unlikely candidates to take the baton and sustain this powerful growth.

Skill-based gaming is a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment industry, and these kinds of games are putting up viewing figures and prize pools akin to established globally recognized competitions. Multiple factors determine the flight path for where the industry is heading. Still, with different markets grappling for supremacy, ultimately, it is the gamer who benefits from the array of competition. It’s not just video gaming this applies to; skill-based gaming extends to other types of gambling games, most notably poker.

Skill-Based Gambling - Poker & Beyond

Although most casino games involve chance, poker is one of the few where players can leverage strategy and skill to try to influence their position and skillset. Luck still plays a big part but when people play poker for entertainment they can choose their strategy and approach, rather than just relying on luck alone. Poker has long been a seminal feature in gambling, dating back over a century to when people would gamble against each other in the saloons of the Wild West, through to the 20th-century successes of Las Vegas and some televised tournaments, and now in the modern day where playing poker with cryptocurrency is just the latest stage in a timeline of innovation and success.

Playing poker with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies involves the same approach as a standard casino, but players use your digital assets as an alternative means of payment. Crypto poker at Ignition highlights how straightforward it can be to use a cryptocurrency wallet to play poker. By implementing all of the elements that have made cryptocurrency a trillion-dollar market, such as decentralized networks, no third-party security, and instant peer-to-peer transactions, gambling continues to be at the forefront of cutting-edge pioneering technology in finance.

Decentralization isn’t just changing the world of casino gaming, though. It’s branching out into other facets of gaming, with play-to-earn and blockchain games developing a growing audience, with many looking to implement the idea of decentralized gaming into their designs.

Professional Video Gaming as a Legitimate Profession

While those who aren’t too savvy in the world of gaming might scoff at the idea of video gaming as a legitimate, professional competition, there’s no denying the unbelievable numbers that it puts up. An explosive rise in global popularity and size has led to some of the most prominent names in entertainment and sports looking to invest in a sector that has gone from selling out small convention centers to stadiums in under a decade.

Culturally speaking, professional video gaming, commonly called eSports, is a global affair. eSports teams tend to stem from an eclectic mix of nations, such as the United States, China, Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea, plus many of the Scandinavian countries. Free roam and first-person shooter games dominate the current eSports gambling landscape.

Dota 2 currently holds the Guinness World Record for the highest prize in a professional eSports tournament. However, it is a game that has set the record in the past and may well break it again within the next two or three years as investment in the industry gallops relentlessly to new groundbreaking points. With so much money at stake and millions of people watching the games live online from every corner of the international gaming world, gambling markets are the latest ancillary industry invigorating the sector and inspiring further growth and ideas.

Conclusion

All available evidence points to skill-based gaming becoming a serious player in the sports gambling landscape. In just over ten years, it’s gone from a promising million-dollar idea to a multi-billion dollar enterprise, considered by many investment institutions and entertainment experts as one of the most innovative markets to emerge this century.

Wherever a popular, professional competition emerges, a gambling market will underpin it. For a host of gamers who grew up playing games on older consoles, who didn’t have the opportunity to watch the best teams tee off against each other, being able to bet on the outcome of console games is something that seemed a long way off back in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Gamers have become used to this scene of online games with competitive tournaments broadcast globally, so a higher portion of the population will now be more adept at how video gaming works, resulting in more significant audience numbers, which in turn should organically swell the number of potential bettors seeking out eSports markets to bet on.

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