What are people betting on now that most sports are on break? Try Russian table tennis, Korean baseball, and other activities.

Online gamblers have turned to different competitions like Russian table tennis and Korean baseball as well as betting on everything from video games and reality television shows to political news and even the weather as most live sports have been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

TOPIC FACTS

According to Pascal Lemesre, a spokesman for U.K. betting exchange platform Smarkets, “[English] darts and esports have seen big increases in betting volumes, along with football [soccer] leagues that have kept playing like the Belarusian Premier League.” Since the lockdown started, horse racing has continued to be our most actively traded sport, accounting for two-thirds of volume.

According to OKBET Table Tennis Betting, many betting companies, including DraftKings, had to really dig and get inventive with new offerings during the pandemic. We searched everywhere for whatever we could find because we wanted to keep our customers interested.

For instance, a charity golf match featuring Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, Phil Mickleson, and Tom Brady has generated a ton of interest and may surpass the amount of wagering that DraftKings saw on the major golf tournaments from the previous year.

He claims that esports betting has “made its mark” and experienced a significant increase. Along with daily fantasy for video games like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, virtual NASCAR races have proven to be wildly popular.

Additionally, there has been a lot of interest in placing political wagers, such as on who will prevail in the U.S. presidential race of 2020, who Democratic nominee Joe Biden will select as his running mate, and how long UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold that position.

Smarkets data shows that almost $2 million has already been traded on the election, with Donald Trump still holding a 5% advantage over Joe Biden. Kamala Harris is currently the front-runner to serve as Biden’s vice president, narrowly beating Amy Klobuchar in the polls.

Since the Democratic debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in the middle of March, DraftKings has provided free-to-play betting pools centered around a variety of political events, as well as reality television programs like Survivor and Top Chef, and even the weather in specific states.

IMPRESSIVE FACT

There has been a noticeable increase in betting on the results of viewers’ favorite TV shows, as evidenced by data from BetOnline, which shows that there was even a flurry of wagering on the final episode of The Last Dance, with odds on whether Michael Jordan would cry during the interview or how many people would be shown smoking a cigar.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
As major sports like NASCAR and German Bundesliga soccer begin to resume, sportsbooks are experiencing tremendous pent-up demand. The Smarkets’ betting volume on soccer, which typically accounts for 45% of it, dropped to 23%, but interest in the Belarusian Premier League and Nicaraguan soccer, both of which continued to play matches despite the pandemic, kept it there. According to Smarkets, betting volumes on the German Bundesliga increased 428% last weekend compared to the previous round of games before the coronavirus.

ESSENTIAL QUOTE
Customers will migrate if you don’t have all the typical content, according to Avello. The good news is that we’re always looking for new content, so this will benefit us.

IMPORTANT HORIZONS
According to the company, DraftKings saw record betting during the NFL Draft last month (13 times the volume from the previous year), and there has also been significant interest in the recent comeback of Ultimate Fighting Championship events. The demand should increase even more, according to Avello, because we’re starting to return to our core events. “We got good action on the stuff we did,” he says. For example, if the MLB returns and the NBA and NHL begin their postseasons this summer, “it could be one of the bigger summers that we’ve ever had.”