eSports
THE ESPORTS AWARDS UNVEIL THE FIRST WAVE OF FINALISTS
The Esports Awards announces a return to a live event on November 20th with Dr Disrespect, G2 Esports and Hector ‘HECZ’ Rodriguez among the first wave of the finalists in the community award categories
Voting for the community categories is open now at www.esportsawards.com/vote
The Esports Awards, the most prestigious night in the esports calendar, is pleased to present the first set of finalists for this year’s awards with Team Liquid, PUBG MOBILE, Sjokz and Valkyrae all being named. The Esports Awards is also happy to share that it will officially be returning for a physical award ceremony at the Esports Stadium Arlington, Texas on Saturday 20th November.
The first set of finalists were announced in the Esports Awards’ second Spotlight Show of the year which was hosted by Thom ‘F.’ Badinger with co-hosts Soe Gschwind and Mitch ‘Uber’ Leslie. The show was packed full of exciting content and interviews including Nyvi Estephan interview with Brazilian Free Fire player Bruno ‘Nobru’ Goes and FDot talking to streamer sensation and Twitch record-breaker, Ludwig.
The full list of community awards finalists are:
Esports Apparel of The Year
- 100 Thieves
- Team Liquid
- G2 Esports
- Cloud9
- FaZe Clan
- Ateyo
- Fnatic
- Spacestation Gaming
- Fallen Store
- Team Vitality
Esports Content Creator of The Year
- HECZ
- LS
- Ashley Kang
- Thorin
- Macie Jay
- UpUpDownDown
- BananaSlamJamma (BSJ)
- Musty
- Sunless Khan
- iFerg
- Coconut Brah
- NadeKing
Esports Mobile Game of The Year Presented by Verizon
- PUBG Mobile
- Free Fire
- Brawl Stars
- Clash Royale
- LoL Wild Rift
- CoD Mobile
- Arena of Valor
- Mobile Legends
Esports Personality of the Year
- HECZ
- Ocelote
- Sjokz
- Nobru
- Nadeshot
- FalleN
- Interro
- Perkz
- Goldenboy
- Baiano
- JohnnyBoi_i
Streamer of The Year
- Valkyrae
- XQC
- MortaL
- Ludwig
- Nickmercs
- TheGrefg
- LOUD Coringa
- Summit1G
- Dr Disrespect
- Ibai
- Shroud
- CouRage
“I am really excited for us to share the first set of finalists for this year’s awards which I am delighted will be returning to a live event format at the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas. We look forward to safely crowning this year’s winners and celebrating 12 months of resilience, growth and innovation. Get ready to witness the biggest night in esports celebration.” said Michael Ashford, Managing Director, Esports Awards
Throughout the year the Esports Awards will be bringing you Spotlight Shows packed with the best content and interviews hosted by the biggest faces from the esports industry. The Esports Awards 2021 key campaign dates are:
- June: Finalists for the Industry Awards
- July: Finalists for Creative Awards
- September: Finalists for the Pro & On-Air Talent Awards
- October: The Go-Home Show building up to the main event
- End of Year: The Esports Awards 2021 Ceremony
The Esports Awards is excited to welcome Matrix Keyboards back as a partner for the 2021 awards. Matrix Keyboards will be sponsoring both Esports PC Player and PC Rookie of the Year awards. Cementing its commitment to supporting mobile esports, Verizon will also be back as the sponsor for Esports Mobile Player of the Year & Esports Mobile Game of the Year. Other sponsors for the Esports Awards 2021 include Koyo Store, Sizzle Creative, Touch of Ginger, SCUF, Arlington CVB and SecretLab.
Nominations for all other categories are still open over at www.esportsawards.com/nominate. The Industry Awards nominations will close in June, Creative Awards nominations close in July and Pro & On-Air Talent Awards nominations conclude in September.
eSports
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 haven’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.
Ad Budgets Going to Waste
In today’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, it’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 can’t afford to let profits fall to ad fraud. Instead of cutting budgets, sportsbooks should focus on analysing their campaign strategy.
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.
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 don’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.
Keeping Profits in Sportsbooks’ Hands
Influencer and celebrity campaigns have proven to be a popular and useful tool in reeling new users and profits. However, if sportsbooks don’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.
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.
eSports
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 Bang’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 CG’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 “Tournament Mode,” 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: “We 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.”
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 company’s services. This event marks a pivotal moment set to highlight CG’s preparedness to impact the professional MLBB scene.
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 MLBB’s Signature Competition, Liga LATAM. The companies have also worked together on Peru’s University Tournament INTERU 2023 and currently Community Gaming hosts significant activity of MLBB Tournaments from over 12 countries on a monthly basis.
eSports
Esports player age verification should be simple
Despite the continuing professionalisation of esports, misconceptions about player age persist – 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 men’s professional footballer was about 26 years old.
While there is no great gulf in player ages between esports and traditional sports, there’s more apprehension around this topic once there’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.
Age compliance isn’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 it’s just like any other sport.
However, with this greater attention, it’s crucial for esports suppliers to have a simple, high-quality solution that is flexible for any jurisdiction – and not just treat it as a spreadsheet-based, tack-on service.
Importance in the US
It’s abundantly clear that if you want to ensure compliance in the US space, player age verification isn’t a nice to have, it’s an integral part of your product. Across each jurisdiction player age verification can vary – something we’ve seen in Europe as well such as Sweden’s rule that a match must have 60% of players over the age of 18 for an operator to offer match bets.
In sports, it’s fairly straightforward to implement but has been an oversight from sports data providers in the past. It’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.
Embedding player age verification in your product
Ensuring age compliance was a founding principle for our product suite – 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 it’s simple: one of PandaScore’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 that’s in line with regulation and gives operators the confidence that they’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 that’s essential to operating in a proper fashion. Noting the concerns and greater focus on player ages in esports, it’s something that’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.
Author: Oliver Niner, Head of Sales at PandaScore.
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