What is virtual sports in bookmakers
Many people confuse virtual sports with eSports, but they are different things. In esports, real people play computer games against each other (even if they are sports). Virtual sports are artificial competitions that are held by a computer based on a random number generator or popular simulators. Today we understand what virtual sports are and whether it is worth betting on it.
What disciplines are in virtual sports
The first virtual matches were presented in bookmakers back in the first half of the 2010s, but virtual sports gained particular popularity at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. At this time, there were almost no real competitions and crowds of players quickly mastered artificial sports.
The most popular virtual sport is, of course, football. Here everything is the same as in the real world. During the pandemic, this whole area was booming, and you could find virtual competitions in hockey, tennis, volleyball, basketball, baseball, various races, and even horse racing.
After real sports came out of vacation after the first wave of the pandemic, the interest of bettors in virtual sports has noticeably cooled down. In Russia, this type of betting was completely banned, and now it is not offered in legal bookmakers. But still, COVID-19 is not over yet and it is quite possible that virtual sports will soon again become the focus of bettors around the world.
What is virtual football
There are three types of artificial football:
- Playing FIFA between real players (this is eSports);
- Computer simulation of football matches (this is cyber football);
- Virtual football from providers.
Everything is clear with esports, we have considered it in other materials, and today we will not touch it. The essence of e-football is that on the popular simulators FIFA or PES, individual matches are launched, controlled by the computer. The power rating of the teams here is the same as in these PC games. The same lineups that match the real ones, the same graphics and infographics. But the match time is compressed to 5-15 minutes of real time. Again, do not confuse esports football with FIFA and PES esports battles in which real people play against each other.
Classic virtual football is a separate tournament, which only remotely resemble the competition existing in the world. The software shell for virtual football is provided by special providers, just like for slot machines in offshore casinos.
The most popular providers:
- Sportradar;
- Global Bet;
- Leap;
- Golden Race;
- Kiron Interactive;
- Other.
The graphics here are simpler than in FIFA, and the list of events is much more modest. Usually, only outcomes, double chances, basic totals and handicaps are available in the line. Sometimes even the exact scores and the authors of the first goal scored.
Each virtual tournament has a specific set of teams that bear the names of real clubs or national teams, but at the same time have nothing to do with them in terms of tournament strength or real form. Championship formats are different, but, as a rule, during the tournament, all teams play each other twice, in a round robin system. Matches of one round start at the same time and last only 2-5 minutes.
Each subsequent round starts a couple of minutes after the previous one, so that the players have time to place their bets. Thus, a full "season" passes in just a few hours. As a rule, each new season starts from scratch, without taking into account the results of “past years”.