BETER CEO says fast-paced eLeagues can lift sportsbook margins despite cannibalisation

BETER chief executive Gal Ehrlich has acknowledged that adding new betting content to a sportsbook inevitably brings some cannibalisation of existing products, but argues the commercial case for fast-paced content remains strong. Speaking in an interview with SBC News, he said the key question for operators is whether success is judged by the volume of extra betting or by the profitability of the existing customer base.

Ehrlich said margins on products such as eLeagues are considerably higher than on a regular football fixture like a Premier League match. He drew a parallel with the way operators have long tried to move sportsbook customers toward casino because it earns more, suggesting bettors can now be steered toward eLeagues without leaving the sportsbook environment and produce a comparable profitability uplift.

BETER says it exclusively supplies more than 740,000 fast-paced sports and esports events each year. Its esports lineup includes the ESportsBattle eLeagues, covering eFootball, eBasketball, eHockey and eTennis, while its sports offering features the Setka Cup table tennis competition and the BSKT Cup basketball league. Ehrlich stressed that eLeagues involve real players using sports video games, and said the company avoids the word virtual because virtual sports are RNG-based and autoplayed.

The executive also discussed gaps in the traditional sporting calendar. Major tournaments such as the World Cup attract huge interest, he said, yet they also leave periods when other competitions get less attention or pause, and traditional sports are not available throughout the day. Complementary events can fill those time slots, in his view.

To test this, BETER recreated all 104 World Cup fixtures in its eFootball product before the real matches were played. Ehrlich said simulating games such as England versus Argentina produced a spike in interest, as players enjoyed having a reference point and betting against other fans in a social community before the real kick-off.

On scaling, Ehrlich said the company's focus has been on a framework rather than any single tournament. It covers player recruitment, team balancing, venue management, trading, integrity monitoring and distribution, which allows established processes to be replicated as production expands to new locations.