Virtual Football: The King of Virtual Sports

Currently, with the lack of real sports events due to the COVID-19, we are observing a huge increase in virtual sports bettings these months, with a 74% growth on Golden Race online tickets selling.

However, we believe this won’t be a temporary stopgap: it will be a way to add incremental revenue to the betting businesses on a long-term basis and a before and after point for the sports betting industry. In fact, when the pandemic ends, virtual sports would probably keep growing and running for success.

There are many sports that have become virtual with big success: horse and dog racing, boxing, basket… But football is, just like in real sports, the king also in the virtual field.

Why is virtual football so attractive to bet?

The biggest part of virtual football’s success is due to real football’s plethora of fans all over the world. Still, there is a group of special characteristics that also make virtual football extremely appealing.

There isn’t a secret formula, but we would like to think that it has something to do with the latest technology developed by Golden Race to make virtual football as realistic as possible; an immersive experience with a real sportsbook lookalike.

The latest motion capture technologies, real team moves from professional players, real sports camera angles, incredible visual and sound FX, voice-over from commentators in all major languages, realistic odds and a familiar betting interface, among others, make Golden Race’s the most authentic 3D football simulation in the market and the industry top revenue virtual football, generating more than 20 million bets on a daily basis.

Case Study: Italy

There is a case study that perfectly illustrates how virtual sports can represent a huge increase for operators' income: Italy.

Before the pandemia, in the European market we were facing situations where between 15% to 20% of the monthly profits generated at a betting shop were driven by virtual sports. In other regions, like Latin America and Africa, these percentages were much higher.

Italy is the most developed regulated market for virtual sports in the world, where Golden Race joined the market in 2017. 

Serving only one client, as we have an exclusivity agreement, we cover 54% of the whole Italian market and we became market leader in 2019. If we talk only about real sports betting, our partner is in fourth place in the market, but putting sports betting and virtuals together,our partner is number one in Italy. In numbers, more than 6% of the whole sports betting volume in Italy is produced by our virtual sports.

This success is largely due to how attractive our virtual football leagues are: players can bet on their favourite teams every few minutes, without having to wait for the real game. Since the odds and results in our virtual games are as close as reality as possible, along with the familiar sportsbook interface of our betting solutions, the experience of betting in our football league has become immersive and generates the same number of tickets to our partner than the real league!