The eSports betting operations are back and running on Ladbrokes’ website. Yesterday, without any notice, the leading bookmaking operator on the territory of the UK removed its eSports offerings from the company’s portfolio. The drop out made the “big four” tournaments on the games of Dota2, CS:GO, LoL and StarCraft also unavailable. World of Tanks games were also not available for players to bet on.
As there was no previous announcement of such actions, most analysts were perplexed by the drop-out. Various theories appeared, including the one that Ladbrokes has made the decision to reduce its product offerings by dropping eSports services for good. However, with the eSports betting operations now available once again on the provider’s website, it seems that everything is back on track now.
Although the selection of eSports games offered by Ladbrokes is not as large as the one provided by some of its competitors such as bet365, Betway and Skybet, the removal of these gaming operations raised some concerns in both players and market experts. After no eSports betting option was displayed at the side bar listing the currently available sports for placing bets, a customer query was sent to the UK-based bookmaker on the matters of the eSports betting operations’ removal, but the company did not provide detailed information about its decision.
Hours later, the eSports category has been returned to the drop-down side bar menu on the website.
The temporary drop-out was surprising for the market analysts, as the majority of international studies of the industry have recently showed that eSports betting is having a stable growth, especially thanks to the younger players.
Ladbrokes has still issued no official statement of the matter, but it responded to some news reports regarding the closure of its eSports betting operations yesterday. It has not shared any intentions of reducing its product offerings by removing the eSports operations on a permanent basis, but has lifted the curtain a bit and said that they had been processing an upgrade in their sports betting product.
This basically means that the company has not decided to stop taking eSports bets on the vertical and it remains focused on its goal to make more markets available to its customers.
- Author
Olivia Cole
