PandaScore adds real-time play-by-play to esports data feed

Flavien Guillocheau, PandaScore

The esports data provider PandaScore has announced the launch of its Live Event Coverage for League of Legends. 

This means it is now possible to follow updates on an extended number of in-game events with a feed that includes things such kills, turrets or drakes and Nashors kills for ‘a wide variety’ of competitive League matches, in real-time. 

This offer will ‘soon be available’ on Dota 2 and Overwatch too. 

This new feature is a huge addition for the betting segment, first they can add more markets and follow the trends during the match. Second, they have the possibility to manage their markets and adjust their odds in live automatically. It’s a first step toward a true market management automation.

Flavien Guillocheau, CEO at PandaScore said: “Our customers frequently ask for a wider range of Live market. We build this event feed to change radically the vision of esports market for bookmakers. This industry is changing rapidly, making it more challenging for industry participants to keep pace. We have the ambition to help every project who wants live data. This release is a crucial step toward true Live betting in esports which for now is sporadic.”

Live trading has been a feature on online sportsbooks now for more than a decade, and with more recent and ongoing advancements in the way sports data is collected and utilised, it’s improving and evolving too.

With the popularity of esports betting on the rise in recent years, it was inevitable that live trading for esports would soon follow, and there are plenty of esports books focusing their efforts on this front already. The challenges are inherently different when it comes to live esports betting as opposed to traditional sports betting, and brings a whole new set of challenges. Moreover, with the game themselves changing (with patches and such) these challenges will be on-going, and this is not to mention the new titles appearing on the scene with relative regularity. 

The way Martin Berthelot, Head of Esports at PandaScore, explained to us what he sees as the difference:If you have ever played or watched a tennis game you will know that the objective is quite simple; score points. There are many different way to do it but ultimately both players are concurrently aiming at achieving the same objective, whilst this is not true in all esports. Let’s take for example a map in League of Legends; the final objective for both teams is simple; destroy the enemy’s nexus. However there are also a number of sub-objectives like turrets, drakes, Nashors, and inhibitors and stats you can track like hero items, summoner spells or gold to keep in mind (to name just a few).

“This means that whereas in traditional trading a trader is usually in charge of keeping at bad a few of parameters at bay to keep the model in line with the market, in esports there are a lot more factors to consider.” 

He concluded: “Even the most experienced trader would have a hard time offering more than a few markets and an equally hard time to keep those markets open and correctly priced. This unfortunately often leads to an underwhelming product which will often fail to engage the target crowd of esports fans that is used to games that offer some of the highest levels of engagement.”

Esports Insider says: The more companies that are well-versed in esports that we have building new products around leveraging live data and creating reliable and fun products to enhance esports betting on both a bookmaker, and in turn consumer side, can only be a positive in our books. Let’s hope the PandaScore League of Legends product delivers, and that the incoming Dota and Overwatch options arrive sooner rather than later.