CS:GO Skins Are a Precursor to Betting with Real Money

BEOGRAD, Serbia - Jan. 24, 2017 - PRLog -- According to the poll conducted at the Gamopo (http://www.gamopo.com) betting portal on a sample of 1,000 users, 42% of real money eSports betting enthusiasts had actually gotten into eSports betting through the, once-burgeoning, virtual item (skin) betting, mainly trading in-game items of the popular CS:GO title.

As a reminder, CS:GO's skin gambling market, which was once worth more than $2 billion is now on a downward trajectory, even though plenty of skin gambling websites are still in business.

A total of 421 polled players, aging from 21-33, claim that their eSports betting hobby started by wagering in-game items (in the community known as skins) through popular jackpot, coin-flip and match betting platforms.

The main question of the poll was "How did you get started with betting on eSports?"

There were many different replies but only 3 big clusters that are statistically relevant:

• 42% started by using skin betting sites and then evolving to real money betting
• 19% first started with real money betting, however they are a bit older on average compared to the first group
• 12% started with free to play fantasy eSports and moved on to match betting

This poll proves that, as the hype around skin betting started to subside (largely due to Valve providing cease and desist orders to several popular skin betting sites) the biggest cluster followed the market impulse into another hobby — real money betting on Counter Strike, Dota 2, League of Legends and other similar eSports titles.

The next big question obviously is when, and if will the remaining skin betting enthusiasts merge with the real money eSports betting segment.