The Money Behind Esports Betting with Marek Suchar

[00:00]  1. Intro: meet Marek Suchar and Oddin.gg

Host:  Today’s guest is not afraid of betting on the future of iGaming. Marek Suchar of Oddin.gg built a powerful esports betting layer. How? Let’s ask him.

Host:  You are a co-founder of Oddin.gg. Tell us about yourself.

Marek:  We have a separate CEO, but I am one of the founders and Managing Director for Partnerships, so everything around data purchases and speaking to partners, bookmakers and platforms, both sourcing the data that fuels our solutions and selling it. I am a father of three, and I came from the financial world; I spent almost a decade at Citibank across product, project, sales and marketing, which gave me the background to wear too many hats when we started Oddin.gg as a team of four founders.

[01:47]  2. Confess or Call: match-fixing in esports

Host:  New game, Confess or Call. Answer, or spin the wheel and make a prank call. First question: do you personally know of fixed matches in esports, CS or Dota 2, that you can share?

Marek:  Our risk management team could sit here for two hours on the cases they have identified. That does not mean there are many; it means we understand the market well. Roughly 76 percent of the volume bet on our lines goes through risk management, so we see bets in real time. Oddin.gg was the first to pick up suspicious activity at the Dota 2 Lima Major. Over the first map we identified something shady and informed the organizer and publisher of our suspicion. We were watching a team closely, and eventually they were banned by Valve, a couple of weeks after the event, for cheating.

[04:18]  3. What Marek would never reveal publicly

Host:  What is one thing you would never say about iGaming on a big stage?

Marek:  We are a trusted partner to many clients, so even though we know their esports betting volume month by month in detail, that is something I would never share: how big one book is compared with another, where they are growing, which jurisdictions. We keep that very dear and would never share it with anybody.

[05:17]  4. Can traders bet using insider knowledge?

Host:  Can you bet yourself, and can you use insights?

Marek:  First, I am terrible at it. At one International I bet on the team I thought would win and they lost, then bet on the map and they won the series; I was on the wrong side the whole time. Beyond that, we have a strict policy: no one at Oddin.gg can bet on our clients’ lines, or our clients’ clients’. We once allowed a narrow exception for traders to bet on tennis, because that is outside esports, agreed with the bookmaker. As we grow and sign more partners, our traders actually have less and less space to bet, which not everyone is thrilled about.

[07:04]  5. Confess or Call: “buying NAVI and Vitality”

Host:  Marek spins the wheel and lands on a prank: call your head of partnerships, say Oddin.gg is exploring buying NAVI this year and possibly Vitality right after, and ask what numbers we would be talking about and whether we could move in the next two weeks.

Marek (on the call, in Czech):  We are looking at buying NAVI, and maybe Vitality after. Can you check the numbers and whether we could move in two weeks?

Host:  Sorry, this is a prank call for the Bet It Drives show. You did great, and we could not follow it all because you were speaking Czech. It is like our earlier episode where Max from CoinsPaid pretended to sell the Sagrada Familia for crypto.

Marek:  The problem is he usually trusts me when I say we want to buy something, so now he may not. Please, everyone, keep trusting Marek; he did that under pressure.

[10:24]  6. Rapid Fire: would esports survive without iGaming money?

Host:  Rapid fire. Would esports survive without iGaming money, yes or no?

Marek:  Clear one. If you look at sponsorship in esports, betting is one of the top two or three categories; the whole space grew up with betting from the very beginning. So the answer is obvious.

[11:21]  7. Are esports audiences gamblers or fans?

Host:  Esports audiences, more gamblers or fans?

Marek:  A bit of both, but I think the proximity to gambling is higher in traditional sports. The younger, gaming-native generation is more exposed to randomised mechanics through skins and treasure chests. Personally, Dota 2 over CS2, no question; I started with Warcraft 3, then Defense of the Ancients, then Dota 2. Shooters are not really my thing.

[12:32]  8. What frustrates Marek about iGaming?

Host:  After many years here, what still frustrates you about iGaming?

Marek:  There are people who talk the talk and people who walk the walk, and in iGaming it is often hard to tell them apart. I am glad that after years of us talking about esports and bringing value, people started to see who actually walks the walk. What still frustrates me is that a lot of companies, including in our vertical, are still just talking the talk while nowhere near walking it.

[13:32]  9. Do partnerships exist to clean reputation?

Host:  Do some partnerships and sponsorships exist only to clean a reputation?

Marek:  I believe so, but that is much more a B2C question. On the B2B side we are more under the radar; Oddin.gg is, put simply, a provider of probabilities through an API in real time, and we are proud of the roughly 30 partnerships we work with. The reputation-cleaning dynamic is far more prominent in B2C.

[14:27]  10. What is next for esports betting?

Host:  You have seen trends come and go. What is the next chapter for esports betting?

Marek:  Consolidation is happening; some companies went bankrupt last year because they did not bring enough value, and that will continue. There also needs to be a reset around esports data. We spend a lot of time educating regulators in the US and Europe, because esports is often misunderstood as underage betting and match-fixing, and we have the hard data to show that a regulated market does not allow betting on underage players by underage bettors. We are already winning US licenses. Beyond that, the big opportunity is fandom: today when you watch on Kick, Twitch or YouTube you see the game the way the observer wants. We have introduced solutions where you watch the game your way, in your language, with a lot of localization and personalization, and betting is offered as an option, not forced. Esports has an advantage: it is digitally native, all zeros and ones, so the data comes straight from the server rather than from cameras on a field.

[19:02]  11. Growth opportunities: e-football and e-basketball formats

Host:  Where is the growth rate, and what formats drive it?

Marek:  Several sides, some not yet open. In the US there is a huge opportunity for e-football, betting on the electronic version of American football, and e-basketball, which can be human versus human. These run around the clock. Real American football has few, high-value games and a long off-season; the electronic version lets you bet fast-paced almost all the time on the sport you love, and we have seen the same with e-cricket. So there is a lot of opportunity there.

[20:11]  12. Replay betting and fast-cycle sportsbook formats

Marek:  Replays are growing popular too: something that already happened, watched in a short version. There is a big crossell between sportsbook and casino, and the question is how fast-paced you can make sports games so people get that emotional boost. At ICE we are introducing Penalty Arena, which has nothing to do with esports; it is proper football penalties, but fast-paced, a round every 60 to 90 seconds, and social, because the audience as a pool of voters decides where the ball goes while the goalie tries to save it. We are esports-native, but we are enlarging the market with younger-generation, fast-paced, social, innovative content.

[23:08]  13. Streaming platforms and mainstream esports adoption

Host:  In the US, sports are already on Netflix and Apple TV. Could giants enter esports the way PayPal is entering payments?

Marek:  Betting is ultimately about eyeballs: the more people watch, the more will want to bet. The more esports comes into the mainstream and the easier it is to watch a match live, the more betting follows, because it is an extra layer of passion and engagement. In places like Denmark and South Korea esports is already mainstream, with athletes invited by presidents; for others it is about to come. We estimate global esports betting handle close to 100 billion dollars, and we are not stopping anytime soon.

[25:02]  14. Non-negotiable red flags

Host:  What are your red flags, the lines partners should never cross?

Marek:  Integrity, both in the game and in business. We once had a trader put “322,” a notorious match-fixing number, in his handle, and we did not appreciate that. We have been in bad deals, but because we shook hands we never walked away, and we have had others try to walk away from deals with us. You have only one reputation in life, more so in betting, and that is the line we would never cross, even when it hurts us financially.

[27:01]  15. Founder mindset

Marek:  We started Oddin.gg from zero as four founders, during COVID, when it was hard to meet people in person, and in iGaming everything is about trust and relationships. I do not slack, and I expect everyone to go full speed: when we go to ICE we want meetings pre-planned and to speak to as many people as possible, not sit in hotels. I want to create space where people can flourish and have my full support, but a couple of people we said goodbye to because they were not on board with that pace and commitment. If you want to come and work hard, you are welcome; if not, I will be your red flag, and you will not stay with Oddin.gg for long.

[29:41]  16. Wrap-up

Host:  Marek, thank you for this enjoyable ride through Barcelona. It was insightful for me.

Marek:  Many thanks for having me, and for the well-prepared questions; they were not just random esports questions, so you clearly know the space. I really enjoyed it.

Host:  This was yet another great episode of Bet It Drives. Take care and see you all soon.