Esports : Should you have an esports tipster in your portfolio?

The Rise of the Machines

In March 2019, 18 months ago, the gross gambling yield for esports betting was just £50,223 ($63,493).

in March 2020, 12 months later just as the pandemic was starting to take hold in Europe, it had risen by 30-times that amount to £1.5 million. ($1.9 million).

In only one month, in April 2020, it tripled even that figure rising to £3.3 million ($4.2 million).

Just one month later it was £4.6 million ($5,8 million).

The year-on-year increase from March 2019 to March 2020 was a rise of almost 3000%, showing that even before the pandemic took hold, esports betting in the UK was a rapidly expanding market.

Even then, the increase from March 2020 to April 2020 was still a massive 124% increase in a single month, showing how popular esports betting while traditional sporting events were unable to take place.

Will it continue its popularity as a betting market? Only time will tell.

Esports Tips

Several established tipsters embraced esports into their services during the pandemic.

But two tipsters jumped firmly onto the bandwagon to provide tipping services dedicated to Esports betting.

Bettinggods’ Esports Betting Guru and Tipstrr’s Aurum-21-esports.

Here’s a quick rundown of both of these paid tipster services and one from Blogabet who has been tipping for free since Jan’18.

Esports Betting Guru from Bettinggods

Esports Betting Guru is run by a guy from the Netherlands called Dan who Bettinggods informs me “…is a full-time data scientist..” and “..has discovered a new way of betting that is completely smashing the bookies” and “…is going to be an absolute game-changer“.

A new way of betting? Absolute game-changer? Intriguing, right?

Dan started proofing his selections to Bettinggods on 26th June 2020 and was launched to the public 4 months later on 19 Oct’20 based on a history of 138 tips.

Two things to note already.

1. That’s not very many tips
2. Only 4 months of proofing? Whatever happened to Bettinggods’ proud commitment-to-integrity boast on their website it says “Every tipster who applies to the Betting Gods network must undergo our rigorous vetting process for at least 6 months. During this period, we look at profitability, reliability and consistency.“

The 138 tips involved 79 different Esports teams and 5 of those teams were involved in half of the tips: Vitality, Furia, Big, Heroic and EG. But, I suppose this is only to be expected right now since the sport is very much in its infancy.

The month-by-month performance of the 138 tips shows good Win Rates on the average odds. Profits and ROI are a little erratic but generally it’s a reasonable picture.

The full month of October closed out with profit and ROI taking a bit of a bit of a nosedive in the last couple of weeks.

Interestingly though the Win Rate remained practically unchanged.

The average stakes have been 3 points with average odds of 1.87 producing an all-time ROI of 12%.

There have been 4 trebles, 3 doubles, and in the very first set of tips one four-match accumulator on very low odds favourites which lost.

The current Win Rate of 66% translates to a very short Estimated Longest Losing Run (ELLR) of 5 and suggests a very low betting bank of 40 points to start following this service.

The p-value (chance versus skill indicator) is 1.07%. This low value would normally indicate that the ROI being achieved here is not due to chance. But with so few tips thats debatable.

When we hit the 500 tips mark it may be a whole different story but at 1 to 2 tips per day it’s going to be Spring 2021 before we know any better.

The normal cost for the Esports Betting Guru service is £17 per month but currently, there are two trial offers.

A 15-day trial for £1.99 or 105 days of trial only £20.99 – that’s less than £1.40 per week for 15 weeks.

And as with all Bettinggods tipster services, there’s a 30-day refund, no minimum contract and you can cancel anytime.

Aurum 21+ Esports from Tipstrr

Aurum 21+ Esports has been tipping 1 or 2 tips per day esports since Apr’20.

Over those 7 months, there have been 317 tips with 75 (25%) of those being multiples.

The average stakes have been 3.5 points with average odds of 12.83 producing an all-time ROI of 22%.

The month-by-month profitability statistics can be split into two phases.

April and May were a great start with 364 points profit. That’s almost 90% of all profit made by these tips in the first two months.

The 5 months sInce then has hit a bit of a plateau. A modest 6% ROI with profits very much up and down.

The 22% WIn Rate indicates an ELLR of 28 losing bets in a row and consequently, a high betting bank of around 1,300 points would be advised.

The high p-value of 2.8% based on 317 tips at such high odds suggests these results could quite easily be due to chance.

The subscription costs for Aurum 21+ Esports are relatively high at £59 per month although there is a “first 30 days for just £21” introductory offer.

GoodGuyKugi from Blogabet

Out of the top 15 esports tipsters on Blogabet with over 300 tips, there were five which with ROI’s of 6% and over.

Three of the five had stopped tipping in March, May and June of this year (bananarama, EsportsBestOdds, and BetsLoL) so there was little point in analysing these further.

This left two tipsters. ePredicts (39% ROI) and GoodGuyKugi (16%) still in the running.

That was until the stats revealed that ePredicts was making all his profit on live in-play betting and he’d only made 102 tips since going paid-service and the last 3 months had produced nothing but losses.

That left GoodGuyKugi whose monthly breakdown is shown below.

You’ll notice very low numbers of tips in some months and even missing months where there have been no tips whatsoever.

This is clearly just a personal interest for GoodGuyKugi. He doesn’t charge for these tips. You simply couldn’t run a subscription service this way.

But taking a positive view, you’re getting an all-time 16% ROI for free.

Worth following? Maybe.

There have been a few live in-play tips and combo bets which have only produced losses so ALL the profit has come from 319 singles bets.

Based on this sparse tips results history the 42% WIn Rate indicates an ELLR of 11. The p-value would be over 3% high enough to suspect the 16% ROI could just be down to luck.

Conclusion

If you’re into League-of-Legends and Counterstrike then maybe esports betting is right up your street.

But finding a good sports tipster to follow right now might be difficult.

Blogabet’s GoodGuyKugi is free but it’s far from a dependable source of regular tips.

It’s simply too early to speculate on Esports Betting Guru from Bettinggods – the profits and ROI looks promising but there’s just far too few tips to base any solid opinion on.

Tipstrr’s Aurum21+Esports is expensive and it showed early promise but there’s little evidence of anything sustainable in the longer term.

Esports Betting Guru and Aurum21+Esports clearly take very different approaches to tipping. One with low odds and a high WIn Rate needing a very small betting bank. The other with high odds a low Win Rate and needing a big betting bank.

You can find out more about these esports tipsters here