Marek Suchar, Group Head of Strategic Transition and Growth at Oddin.gg, explores the differences and intricacies of different esports titles and the myriad of ways that players engage with them in a betting context. Operators, he argues, must understand that esports is no longer a one-size-fits-all, but that if approached correctly, remains a massive growth avenue.

No sportsbook operator would manage tennis, football and basketball with one trading desk, one promotional calendar and one set of assumptions about how bettors behave. But that’s still how many operators treat esports.

The 2025 data makes that approach difficult to defend anymore.

Oddin.gg’s analysis of billions of bets across Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), Dota 2, League of Legends, VALORANT and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) found that all five titles grew in betting volume last year, between 18% and 62%. On the surface, that looks like a rising tide. 

Yet once one looks closer, the picture is more nuanced. The forces producing that growth were fundamentally different from one title to the next.

That detail changes the question operators should be asking. At this point, the case for covering esports is settled. The real question is whether the internal structure behind that coverage matches what’s actually happening across titles.

Oddin.gg research: Five titles, five commercial engines

Consider how differently these titles generate betting activity.

CS2: where the audience follows rosters

CS2 grew 30% in betting volume year-over-year , with average stakes reaching €41 at major events like the StarLadder Major. But the more revealing pattern was where volume held up between flagship tournaments. 

Bettors increasingly follow specific teams and players rather than simply betting on the biggest event available. Matches featuring well-known rosters generate activity at both championship finals and mid-tier qualifiers.

That makes CS2 behave more like club football, where loyalty to a lineup sustains engagement across competition tiers. For operators, this means deeper player-level markets and team-focused promotions tend to outperform campaigns built purely around tournament branding. 

Trading depth becomes especially important when popular lineups compete across multiple tiers because those are the moments where the audience is already paying attention and remains ready to bet.

MLBB: built on weekly regional schedules

MLBB told the opposite story. The title grew 62% year-over-year and earned its place in this year’s analysis after reaching a scale comparable to established PC titles. The average stake sits at €16, well below the PC titles, but the volume is remarkably consistent. 

Weekly domestic leagues across Southeast Asia keep bettors engaged throughout the year rather than concentrating activity around a handful of international tournaments.

That consistency is the commercial story. Operators who focused only on international MLBB events missed where most of the betting activity actually occurred. For sportsbooks with a core base of players in the region, consistent regional league coverage is one of the biggest drivers of returns.

League of Legends: where rule changes move the numbers

League of Legends recorded 46% volume growth year-over-year, with average stakes hitting €77 at Worlds, comparable to mid-tier European football leagues. The introduction of Fearless Draft at Worlds also reshaped gameplay dynamics and helped push the year-over-year increase in average stakes to 166%.

For operators, the takeaway is that live trading infrastructure and responsiveness during format-driven peaks carry more weight than expanding pre-match coverage. And when rule changes reshape how a game unfolds in real time, the ability to keep live markets accurate and available becomes the differentiator.

VALORANT and Dota 2: two more variations on the theme

VALORANT grew 18% year-over-year with €47 average stakes at Champions 2025, performing strongest when marquee rosters competed. The title rewards operators who can identify and promote high-profile matchups, because those are the moments that attract the attention of bettors.

Dota 2 delivered 31% year-over-year volume growth, with an average stake of €28 at The International, sustaining engagement through a combination of flagship events and consistent tier-one competition throughout the calendar. It occupies a middle ground: big events matter, but the year-round schedule keeps volume from collapsing between them.

Each title produces its commercial results through a different mechanism. Anyone managing a multi-sport sportsbook already handles this kind of variation. What changed in 2025 was that esports data began showing the same kind of separation.

The simplification, not the complication

The natural reaction to hearing that five titles require five approaches is to treat it as added complexity. 

More titles to understand, more strategies to manage, more operational overhead. But that framing misses what actually changed.

The cost of the uniform approach

The complexity was always there. Operators who treated esports as a single category were absorbing it as an unexplained inconsistency. Revenue would spike around one title’s flagship event, then flatten for weeks. Promotions that worked for CS2 audiences would underperform with MLBB bettors. 

Trading setups tuned for pre-match volume would miss in-play surges driven by format changes in League of Legends.

The uniform approach masked the problem. The inconsistency was still there; it was just harder to diagnose.

What 2025 actually provided

What changed was visibility. The data across these five titles is now granular enough to show exactly where the differences lie and what drives commercial performance in each case. Operators already rely on this kind of clarity when they allocate resources across football leagues in different regions, or when they treat tennis differently from basketball on the promotional calendar.

The operational muscle for managing this kind of variation already exists. Sportsbooks already apply different approaches across football leagues, tennis, and basketball. Esports is now at the same stage, with the data clear enough to support those decisions.

Where this leaves operators in 2026

The differences across these five titles became measurable in 2025 and are likely to become more pronounced.

The question for operators is straightforward. Does your structure reflect how these titles actually behave, or is esports still managed as one category with one playbook?

For a deeper breakdown of how these patterns translate into trading, product, and strategy decisions, the Oddin.gg 2025 Esports Betting Review provides the full analysis in English, Spanish and Portuguese.