We are all aware of the pandemic that has hit the world and the devastating impact it has had on the economy of the world. With physical stores shutting down and a lot of companies that have had to file bankruptcy. Although, when mentioning the COVID-19 it’s hard to have anything positive to say. Therefore I’m here today to talk about a branch that has had very positive numbers during the pandemic.

• One of the biggest game our there and a classic one, CSGO has seen numbers up to 1,305,714 playing the game at the same time, breaking DotA2’s record at 1,291,328.

• Another record to mention is the Twitch record of hours watched on the platforms in a single game with a 1-week number of 148,7Million hours watched. The last time we saw these numbers were in the era of the Fortnite hype with 152Million hours watched in a MONTH. These new numbers happened during the release of the new game Valorant from the developer Riot Games. Even though this game was something people were looking forward to, we have to give COVID-19 some credit for the viewership numbers.
   
• I’m the co-founder of Topgamersguide, a site where we help readers find, for example, Valorant betting sites that suit them or general tips within the game they play. We’ve seen the site double it’s traffic from February to mid-April when the corona hysteria was at its peak. As a webmaster, I’m well aware that the traffic might fluctuate from time to time but with a 100% in traffic in 2 months, I couldn’t be more sure that this is the effect of people being home from work or not enjoying a beer at the bar and instead spends more time in front of the computer.

The increase in different bookmakers

As mentioned we’ve had an increase in traffic and with that we’ve seen an increase of bettors referred from our site. From this, we’ve seen a higher conversion rate on the esports niched providers than the traditional sports betting sites that have adopted esports. The difference here from before the pandemic isn’t big (~5%) but we do see how the smaller, newer & niched sites are taking a more and more from the esports market.
However, we do see quite a jump in conversions to the sites that allow skins as deposit methods, this might be because new players that are not used to gambling want to entertain themselves with some betting and using their skins might be a simpler barrier to break.
We do see more deposits happening since the pandemic, perhaps since more people are home but we also see a big increase of withdrawals from our referrals which might be caused due to the uncertainty of the job situation or similar during these times.

The increase is not only in betting, but it’s also in esports overall, even in esports universities.

Increase in traffic

Other from the traffic increasing we’ve seen a few trends from when the pandemic happened:
- Traffic from CSGO related article has surged (New record from people playing the game & 195% positive change YoY)
- Traffic from games with younger audiences like Roblox has increased a lot. (Doubled in traffic)
- A big increase of US & UK Traffic

Will the trend continue?

If this trend is something that will continue is highly uncertain and I can’t give you a yes or no answer here since we don’t know where the pandemic is going right now. Even though the pandemic is affecting the work that I do positively it’s not something I wish to continue and a second wave could mean a serious economic crisis in a lot of countries that have done everything they could in the ‘’first wave’’. If there would be a second wave, perhaps people would be more careful with their money and spend less money on betting and such. But on the other side, esports would be one of the few sports to still bet on and it could have a positive impact since it would get more attention for bettors in other sections.

When the pandemic is over

My guess from working as an affiliate and webmaster within esports is that we will see esports thrive more after the pandemic as it has got attention from people that have looked for some way to enjoy themselves during a lockdown and so on. We’ve also seen that this is a branch to trust during hard times which can attract more sponsorships and investors into esports.

Now, stay safe out there and if you’re in lockdown, try out some gaming to entertain yourself!