Esports Betting Outpaces Viewership Growth At Esports World Cup 2026
Esports betting activity is expanding roughly twice as fast as the audiences watching it, according to new data gathered around the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC), the $75 million prize-pool event that ran across 24 games and 25 tournaments in Riyadh and Paris this year.
Speaking to InterGameOnline, Oddin.gg co-founder Marek Suchar said the seven-week tournament's packed calendar kept bettors engaged well beyond the headline matches, with fans following clubs such as Team Falcons and Natus Vincere into fixtures outside the EWC itself. That pattern, he said, is reshaping which markets operators need to prioritise.
More Than Match Winner Market
Suchar told InterGameOnline that match winner is no longer the most popular market in esports betting, a fact he said still surprises newcomers to the space. Across the five biggest esports titles, match winner now accounts for only 25% to 33% of bets, while map winner has overtaken it in Dota 2, making up as much as 51% of total wagers there.
He said bettors are increasingly focused on what happens inside a game rather than only its final result, a trend he described as accelerating.
Player and utility bets in Counter-Strike 2 grew by up to 80% between two major tournaments last year, Suchar said, while in Dota 2 combination bets pairing map winner with total kills or match duration quadrupled in volume.
VALORANT player props became a core part of that title's market almost as soon as Oddin.gg introduced them, and Riot Games' Fearless Draft format has increased match-to-match variation in League of Legends, pushing live betting activity higher through the season.
DATA.BET's Own Numbers Back Up The Shift
The InterGameOnline interview lines up with turnover figures DATA.BET published for its partner network earlier this year.
The supplier reported that betting turnover rose 70.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, with gross gaming revenue nearly doubling, placed bets up 33.2% and combination bets up 72.1%. Its four largest titles, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, League of Legends and Valorant, all posted double-digit growth, while smaller disciplines outside that group grew 245% by profit.
By contrast, EWC 2026 viewership, while still growing, moved at a noticeably slower pace. Esports Charts recorded a 10% rise in hours watched in the tournament's opening week and a 34.4% increase in week two versus the 2025 edition, healthy growth, but well short of the pace of the wagering increase DATA.BET logged across the same stretch of the calendar.
Casino Games Hub
Emerging Regions Drive New Volume
Suchar also pointed to Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) as a title now big enough to feature in Oddin.gg's annual review for the first time, crediting betting volume growth of 62% to Asia's mobile-first audience and MLBB tournaments staged in Indonesia and the Philippines.
He described North America as a fast-growing esports betting market, while Europe remains the more established base with operators already offering a wider range of markets. Brazil's regulated market, he added, has raised expectations across the region even as its complexity keeps it a challenging market to enter.
For sportsbooks, the takeaway Suchar offered is that a single tournament lifts handle in the short term, but building a sustainable esports betting vertical depends on following teams and players across the full year-round calendar rather than treating marquee events in isolation.
Gambling.com tracks the latest odds and esports betting news as operators adjust their markets to match where bettors are actually spending.
