Stanislav Silin: “Esports needs more innovative bet models or betting types”

Focus Gaming News chews the fat on the future of sports betting with Stanislav Silin, chief executive officer at sportsbook software provider Altenar.

Exclusive interview.- Altenar took the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to regroup and launch a new version of its sportsbook with select operators.

With the platform now being rolled out to a wider group of clients, Focus Gaming News caught up with chief executive Stanislav Silin.

“It was an opportunity to regroup and do some housekeeping,” Silin says of the pandemic. “We took the opportunity last year at a slow time around April/May to launch our new version of the sportsbook with a select group of customers, and until now we’ve had very good feedback.”

Regarding Altenar’s new sportsbook, he says: “The new version is better in terms of technology, geographically distributed in terms of the application delivery network.

“From the features aspect, it’s also using a newer engine for content aggregation so it can have multiple sources, multiple content, and odds providers can feed into it. That overall has the capacity to create a much better product that we can roll out in the coming months.”

Altenar is now in the process of migrating more operators but is happy to support multiple products at the same time, letting operators make the move when they’re ready.

“Customers’ migration timeline really depends on them. They have to be ready; they have to be comfortable,” Silin says.

Virtuals, simulated reality and esports betting

So what’s Silin’s take on the evolution of sports betting during the Covid-19 pandemic?

“It’s very interesting. What’ve we’ve seen during the coronavirus lockdown is that there’s been a push not just for virtual sports  – virtuals aren’t really the only new trend that’s out there; there’s simulated reality events, there’s more esports.

“There are, I would say, different flavours of synthetically generated content and I think there will be more.

“It might actually not make a difference whether it’s synthetically generated or it’s real, and obviously you can’t have a Premier League match every single hour of the day.”

“Esports needs more innovative bet models or betting types to make it simpler.”

Stanislav Silin, CEO at Altenar.

What’s holding esports betting back from reaching a larger audience is the complexity. Silin feels new betting models are needed to broaden its appeal.

“The younger generation which may have grown with esports may be an important aspect of the sports betting market in the future, but I think there’s some more innovative bet models or betting types that need to emerge to make it simpler,” he says. “I think esports is very much a niche market for those that understand it at this point in time.”

He notes that young esports players may have more buying power in the future and could become betting customers, but there needs to be something new to appeal to them.

“There has to be something for them that is not just this gambling feel to it,” he says. “There has to be more competition in it, because I think they’re a different type of demographic.”

Check out the full interview with Stanislav Silin on the Focus Gaming News YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!