Few suppliers are eager to acknowledge that their products may compete with established betting categories.
For Gal Ehrlich, CEO of BETER, however, recognising that new betting content can attract activity away from traditional sports is an important part of understanding its commercial appeal.
As sportsbooks increasingly look beyond established sporting calendars, Ehrlich believes operators must consider not only how additional content influences player behaviour, but also what that activity contributes to their bottom line.
“To be honest, when you’re adding more content, there’s always some level of cannibalisation,” he acknowledged.
Yet rather than viewing this as an obstacle, Ehrlich argues that shifting activity towards fast-paced betting products can make commercial sense, particularly when those products offer stronger margins than traditional sporting events.
He explained: “The margins that you can have from a product like eLeagues are way higher than you can have on a regular football match, like the Premier League in the UK. For years, operators have focused on shifting sportsbook bettors to casino, as it is more profitable. Now they can shift bettors to eLeagues within the sportsbook sphere and gain a similar increase in profitability.”
It is a distinction that raises an interesting question for sportsbook operators: should success be measured by how much additional betting activity a product generates, or by how effectively it improves the profitability of an existing customer base?
For BETER, which exclusively delivers more than 740,000 fast-paced sports and esports events annually, the answer is increasingly tied to the role that continuous content can play within the wider sportsbook offering.
BETER’s esports portfolio includes the ESportsBattle eLeagues, featuring eFootball, eBasketball, eHockey, and eTennis. Its sports portfolio includes the Setka Cup table tennis competition and the BSKT Cup basketball league.
Rethinking the sporting calendar
Traditional sports betting has always operated around periods of concentrated demand. A Premier League weekend, Champions League evening or international tournament can generate significant interest, but the spaces between those fixtures present a different challenge.
Ehrlich believes major tournaments demonstrate why demand for sports-related betting content can extend beyond the matches themselves.
“First of all, the passion for betting and gaming around sports is enormous,” he said. “The World Cup provides the most highly viewed events. It’s the top tournament you can imagine.”
However, he added that the tournament also creates gaps in the sporting schedule, with other competitions receiving less attention or temporarily stopping altogether.
Ehrlich explained: “Traditional sports are not always available throughout the day, and there are many time slots when the range of betting opportunities is limited.”
For operators, this creates an opportunity to introduce complementary content rather than relying exclusively on the availability of traditional fixtures.
“The demand is greater than the World Cup games themselves, so you need to provide another layer of complementary events,” Ehrlich continued.
BETER explored this relationship through its eFootball offering, recreating all 104 World Cup fixtures before their real-world counterparts took place.
According to Ehrlich, the initiative revealed an appetite among customers to engage with simulated versions of upcoming matches.
“When you take a real game and play it beforehand in our eLeagues, simulating England versus Argentina or any other match, you see a spike in interest.”
He added: “Players like to experience this before the real games happen. They like to sit in a social community with other fans and bet against one another, having that reference before the real game starts.”
When cannibalisation becomes a commercial opportunity
While operators naturally want additional content to generate incremental activity, Ehrlich believes the relationship between traditional sports and eLeagues is more complicated.
Rather than assuming that every bet placed on fast-paced content represents new spending, he acknowledges that some activity will inevitably move away from established products. The difference, he argues, lies in the potential commercial return.
BETER’s eLeagues offering is built around real players competing in sports video games, rather than automated virtual sporting events. That distinction is important to Ehrlich, who is keen to separate the format from traditional virtual sports.
“We don’t use the word virtual,” he stressed. “Virtuals are RNG-based and autoplayed. We call them eLeagues because, ultimately, there are real players playing.”
Ehrlich suggested that operators have a financial incentive to encourage engagement with fast-paced content, even where that involves some substitution of traditional sportsbook activity.
He added: “I believe many of our customers see BETER’s content as an increasingly important part of their sportsbook offering, helping them maintain player engagement throughout the day, expand betting opportunities, and ultimately drive stronger commercial performance.”
Scaling content without compromising quality
For BETER, expanding its offering is not simply a matter of delivering more competitions.
Ehrlich explained that the company has developed a framework covering the entire lifecycle of its fast-paced events, allowing it to replicate established processes as production expands into new locations.
He stated: “One of the things we’ve focused on from day one of building BETER is that it’s not about the tournament or the competition. It’s about the framework that enables it.”
That framework encompasses player recruitment, team balancing, venue management, trading, integrity monitoring and distribution.
Football alternatives: Finding the next opportunity
While eFootball remains an important component of BETER’s portfolio, Ehrlich believes future growth will require a more diversified approach.
The company’s Setka Cup table tennis and BSKT Cup basketball competitions demonstrate how fast-paced formats can extend beyond sports simulations. However, identifying the next successful product is not straightforward.
Ehrlich explained that launching a new discipline can require between 12 and 18 months of development, particularly when BETER is entering a category without an established commercial benchmark.
He explained: “In many cases, we’re the pioneers. We’re the first to bring such a product to market, so there’s no reference point to look at and see what has been successful.
“You might have padel becoming very popular culturally, but you still don’t see it having a large footprint in the betting industry.”
BETER’s development of an eAmericanFootball offering reflects this approach, with Ehrlich identifying the sport as particularly important to its North American strategy.
Nevertheless, he revealed that interest has also emerged from South Africa and Latin America, suggesting that demand for certain products may extend their intended markets.
Ehrlich stated: “It’s not enough to be the first. You must have a good, premium-quality product.”
Looking ahead, Ehrlich expects BETER to continue expanding its content portfolio and technological capabilities, including machine learning and computer vision.
He concluded: “Our strategy is to further diversify our portfolio, increase our quantities and expand our event volume, with more countries, more venues, more cities and more players.”