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NASEF Takes the Helm of United States Esports Federation (USEF)

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NASEF is now leading the United States Esports Federation (USEF) and will be taking U.S. gamers into the worldwide esports competition arena. The Board of Directors of the International Esports Federation (IESF) recently voted for NASEF to manage the United States Esports Federation. USEF, now a wholly owned subsidiary of NASEF, will strive to develop a competitive powerhouse with talented, hardworking, principled U.S. esports athletes.

ā€œIESF has great confidence in NASEF as it takes charge of USEF and leads the way for U.S. athletes in our world esports (WE) competitions. There is great potential in the United States to build highly competitive esports teams and generate excitement for worldwide events. NASEF is poised to apply its principles and experience to spearhead growth and spirited engagement in the competitive arena,ā€ Vlad Marinescu, President of IESF, said.

NASEF History

NASEFā€™s high standards and core philosophies are a key foundation as it oversees competitive events for esports professionals. These athletes will compete for titles and earn prize money by representing the United States in the World Esports Championships and other worldwide events in 2023 and beyond.

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In the past year, as IESFā€™s worldwide education partner, NASEF has provided significant value to member countries and leaders. Its model of building an esports ecosystem with varied career pathways built around a magnet of gamers and gameplay has become a core educational focus for many IESF member nations. NASEF continues its firm commitment to this model in K-12 schools. NASEF now will also shape the structure and implementation of United States professional esports as the exclusive pathway to IESF world championships. Elite gamers will have the opportunity to enter tournaments where winners will represent the United States of America and compete in worldwide title events.

NASEF Board Chair Todd Harris has been a leader in the games industry for decades, as founder and developer of popular video games and companies, a pioneer and architect of Atlantaā€™s scholastic esports movement, and currently co-founder of a video and event production company.

Harris said: ā€œGlobal esports competition is thriving, and the U.S. should be well-represented. NASEF is thrilled to take the helm of USEF and foster positive growth and a winning spirit among competitive players.ā€

ā€œNASEF has always focused on helping students build life and career skills through esports. For a select number of elite players, professional competition is their path to success. Weā€™re excited to bring USEF into the NASEF family and have it serve as the pathway for U.S. players to compete around the world,ā€ said Gerald Solomon, Executive Director of NASEF and now also serving as President of USEF.

Tournament Plans

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NASEF assumes leadership of the USEF immediately, with Clint Kennedy as Managing Director. USEF plans to send teams to the upcoming IESF World Esports Championships in Romania in the following titles: Mobile Legends (MLBB), DOTA 2, Tekken 7, eFootball 2023, CS:GO (M), and CS:GO (F).

NASEF will be working with U.S. and global partners to strengthen USEF to be the proud platform for US esports athletes. NASEF will build strong ties with game developers and sponsors to ensure a solid foundation for personal, team, and federation growth, and to serve as a platform for U.S. esports athletes.

eSports

Influencers, Content and eSports: Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Strategies in the eSports Ecosystem

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Influencers, Content and eSports: Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Strategies in the eSports Ecosystem

 

The sports betting industry is undergoing significant growth worldwide with restrictions loosening and new markets emerging. New opportunities create fierce competition among sportsbooks, and this has led to them devising increasingly expensive and aggressive advertising campaigns.

Public figures and influencers have become a popular go-to for sportsbooks promotions, such as Michael Jordan partnering with DraftKings or Jamie Foxx with BetMGM. Big names are costly, and sportsbooks havenā€™t realised the ad spend used on these campaigns is going to waste. Without the right precautions in place, up to 22% of ad spend is lost to fraud according to Juniper Research.

The big budgets behind high-profile brand campaigns need to translate into real user engagement. To achieve this, sportsbooks must ensure their digital channels are optimised to capture the surge in interest these campaigns generate. Without proper management, this potential can be lost to inefficiencies like invalid traffic, diluting the impact of their investments.

 

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Ad Budgets Going to Waste

In todayā€™s competitive landscape, sportsbooks need to make every click count. In 2023 alone, The American Gaming Association estimated that over $1.9 billion was spent on advertising campaigns in the US. With such a large amount of spend in play, itā€™s crucial that sportsbooks see as big a Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) as possible.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns are vital for sportsbook growth but can be disrupted by invalid traffic (IVT). IVT includes both malicious activity, like fraudulent bots, and unintentional actions, such as users repeatedly clicking on ads without intent to convert. These interactions inflate impressions and skew campaign performance data, leading to higher customer acquisition costs (CACs) and inefficient allocation of ad spend. Effectively managing IVT ensures that ad budgets drive genuine engagement and measurable growth.

Investing into influencers and celebrities also forces sportsbooks to bid on brand keywords to prevent their competitors stealing potential users searching for them. Up to 29% of PPC budgets are spent on this bidding according to Wordstream. As competition for brand keywords increases, PPC budgets are depleted without generating any new net revenue.

As campaigns become more expensive than ever, sportsbooks canā€™t afford to let profits fall to ad fraud. Instead of cutting budgets, sportsbooks should focus on analysing their campaign strategy.

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Problematic Navigational Traffic

Navigational traffic is also presenting a significant challenge to sportsbooks alongside ad fraud. Navigational traffic refers to existing customers clicking on branded keywords to log into their accounts. While this seems convenient and harmless enough, this behaviour drastically inflates CACs. Like ad fraud, this can skew the effectiveness of PPC campaigns. By utilising paid search results instead of organic links to navigate to the site, costs are driven up without contributing to new user acquisition.

In addition to the challenges posed by navigational traffic and ad fraud, the competitive landscape for first-time depositors intensifies the need for strategic bidding on Google search. Brands investing heavily in influencers or sponsorships of major sporting events to generate awareness and drive potential users to search for them. However, without securing top placements in paid search results, these prospective customers may be intercepted by competitors before reaching the organic search listings. This creates a critical juncture where the effectiveness of a brand campaign hinges on converting that intent-driven traffic into first-time depositors, ensuring marketing spend achieves its goal of meaningful user acquisition.

First-time depositors are a critical metric for sportsbooks, and this issue directly impacts the cost efficiency of acquiring them. High CACs make marketing budgets less effective, reducing overall ROI.

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Shoring Up Your Defences

Before launching costly ad campaigns, sportsbooks should adopt a multi-faceted approach to address ad fraud. IVT typically goes unnoticed, so to prevent this sportsbooks should monitor and analyse their campaign traffic for any suspicious activity. It is possible to identify IVT by looking out for signs such as irregular spikes in traffic from unknown locations or high pageviews. Fraudulent traffic can then by highlighted and removed.

The advancement of technology has made ad fraud more difficult to identify, and legacy fraud tools fail to detect IVT. They donā€™t analyse traffic at the impression level or consider the context of the business advertising. Sportsbooks can leverage ad-verification platforms to compensate for this. This allows sportsbooks to analyse and report suspicious traffic in real-time. Fraud can then be blocked before it has a chance to harm budgets.

Sportsbooks can also deploy tactics to reduce the impact of navigational traffic on CACs. Methods include encouraging existing customers to use mobile apps or direct bookmarks to log into their accounts instead of paid search campaigns. This decreases their reliance on PPC campaigns for navigation and protects budgets.

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Keeping Profits in Sportsbooksā€™ Hands

Influencer and celebrity campaigns have proven to be a popular and useful tool in reeling new users and profits. However, if sportsbooks donā€™t have the essential precautions in place, they risk losing these profits to advertising fraud.

To make the most of their advertising efforts, sportsbooks need to prioritise their traffic. Implementing sophisticated tools to analyse traffic and filter out fraud will allow sportsbooks to protect their interests and focus on driving future growth. This way, they can secure their position in an increasingly competitive landscape.

 

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Written by: Chad Kinlay, Chief Marketing Officer, TrafficGuard

A driven, open-minded, creative senior marketer with a strong sense of dedication and commitment. With over 15 years of progressive international experience in marketing and communications management, Kinlay has a credible history of commercial success.

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eSports

Community Gaming Joins Forces with Moonton as Official Esports Partner for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

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Community Gaming Joins Forces with Moonton as Official Esports Partner for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

 

Community Gaming (CG), the leading esports platform for automated tournament payouts and sponsor of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bangā€™s professional league for the Latin America Region, MPL LATAM, now supports developing esports communities in Latin America in collaboration with Moonton.

This partnership is a significant boost to CGā€™s existing advantages associated with its grant program, a partner-backed initiative to provide organizers with economic resources based on the performance and growth of their local gaming communities. Tournament organizers can apply to receive platform support, prizes, in-game currency, items, and tournament professional assistance including ā€œTournament Mode,ā€ a special setting on Mobile Legends: Bang Bang that grants organizers enhanced features, such as unlocking all available skins in the game for players to fully enjoy a complete and unique MLBB pro tournament experience.

Wei Xu, regional esports operation manager at Moonton, said: ā€œWe are excited to announce the partnership with Community Gaming. Community Gaming is the most accepted esports platform in our community in Latin America. We hope this partnership brings new experiences to the players.ā€

As MPL comes to its end this year, CG will also be collaborating with MLBB professional teams for a flash $4000 prize tournament set to enhance the visibility of the companyā€™s services. This event marks a pivotal moment set to highlight CGā€™s preparedness to impact the professional MLBB scene.

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Community Gaming and Moonton are no strangers to mutual cooperation. In the past both companies have partnered to develop the Dawn of Heroes Series, a set of events in 2021 and 2022 that offered qualifying slots to MLBBā€™s Signature Competition, Liga LATAM. The companies have also worked together on Peruā€™s University Tournament INTERU 2023 and currently Community Gaming hosts significant activity of MLBB Tournaments from over 12 countries on a monthly basis.

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Esports player age verification should be simple

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Esports player age verification should be simple

 

Despite the continuing professionalisation of esports, misconceptions about player age persist ā€“ particularly of underage pros playing in professional esports.

Back in 2021, the PandaScore whitepaper dug into the data around player age in professional esports and found that the average age of a pro player was just under 24 years old. By comparison, the same report noted that the average age for a menā€™s professional footballer was about 26 years old.

While there is no great gulf in player ages between esports and traditional sports, thereā€™s more apprehension around this topic once thereā€™s a keyboard or controller involved. There are good reasons behind this focus, but the truth is that a simple and straightforward product makes player age verification easy.

The reason behind the focus on player age

Compliance with player age requirements has been a particular concern as legalised sports and esports betting rolls out across the US. These are completely reasonable concerns, partly because of the state-by-state nature of American regulation, but also due to past compliance issues in the likes of ITF tennis.

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Age compliance isnā€™t a challenge unique to esports. It does have younger players in the same way tennis does, so it’s a space that operators consider a potential risk area based on precedent. While it’s understandable to be vigilant about ensuring age compliance across your whole book, the reality in esports is itā€™s just like any other sport.

However, with this greater attention, itā€™s crucial for esports suppliers to have a simple, high-quality solution that is flexible for any jurisdiction ā€“ and not just treat it as a spreadsheet-based, tack-on service.

Importance in the US

Itā€™s abundantly clear that if you want to ensure compliance in the US space, player age verification isnā€™t a nice to have, itā€™s an integral part of your product. Across each jurisdiction player age verification can vary ā€“ something weā€™ve seen in Europe as well such as Swedenā€™s rule that a match must have 60% of players over the age of 18 for an operator to offer match bets.

In sports, itā€™s fairly straightforward to implement but has been an oversight from sports data providers in the past. Itā€™s quite easy to provide, it just requires collecting data from multiple, reputable sources outside of the match itself.

PandaScore has been collecting player age verification data since it was founded in 2017 to ensure compliance no matter the regulation, no matter the jurisdiction.

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Embedding player age verification in your product

Ensuring age compliance was a founding principle for our product suite ā€“ we included it as a key datapoint in our API, which is the bedrock of our broader offering. Suppliers should have this embedded in their products, rather than an additional service.

PandaScore believes that offering player age verification as part of an API and integrated into your service means you can be more confident in your compliance not just for individual esports titles, but from match to match.

For us itā€™s simple: one of PandaScoreā€™s founding principles is to not rely on only one single data source, but leverage multiple quality data sources that we can trust. We have a longstanding and highly developed process that guarantees a level of accuracy for player age verification thatā€™s in line with regulation and gives operators the confidence that theyā€™re compliant. Our practice of using multiple data sources means that double and triple-checking information to ensure player age compliance is in our nature.

With player age verification built into an API, operators can leverage the data to match the compliance needs of any given jurisdiction. This can be done by integrating player age data via the API, it can be included in their feed via our odds product with the flexibility to add exclusions where necessary, or if an operators wants it in a simper form, it can be done via request.

Player age verification might seem like a simple item, but is a compliance matter thatā€™s essential to operating in a proper fashion. Noting the concerns and greater focus on player ages in esports, itā€™s something thatā€™s important to get right: player age verification should be entrenched in esports products themselves to give operators the flexibility and simplicity that they need.

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Author: Oliver Niner, Head of Sales at PandaScore.

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