How Oddin found its edge in esports betting

When Marek Suchar describes how Oddin found its footing in esports betting, he talks about a company that had to adapt quickly and often. “We were crazy enough, and we got the angel investor crazy enough to invest,” he said, reflecting on the company’s origins as a consumer-facing bookmaker before pivoting entirely to B2B.

Suchar’s background is far from real-money gaming’s usual path. Before co-founding Oddin in 2018, he spent nearly a decade at Citibank in various sales and marketing roles. But he was also a lifelong gamer—playing StarCraft, Warcraft, and Defense of the Ancients (which later became Dota 2)—and saw an opportunity to merge that personal interest with professional ambition.

Oddin was initially built to run its own esports sportsbook, powered by proprietary odds models and trading infrastructure. But as the founders quickly realized, competing as a bookmaker would require massive marketing and licensing budgets. “We pivoted literally,” he said. “The founders are essentially data scientists and developers… and we were already starting to build the backend for odds calculation.”

That decision proved to be the company’s turning point. Today, Oddin provides the infrastructure behind much of the industry’s esports betting products, offering everything from data feeds and odds modeling to risk management, content, and marketing services. As Suchar described it, “If you want to have one proposition for everything you need as a bookmaker, you go to Oddin.”

He also explained how esports bettors differ from traditional sports audiences—not just demographically, but behaviorally as well. “If you bet on esports, that means that when it comes to Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and League of Legends, you started with playing that game at some point in time with your friends, with your family members,” he said. “Then you moved into watching the game… and eventually you would start betting on those teams or on those players as well.”

Oddin’s acquisition of a marketing agency was born from that realization. Traditional agencies didn’t understand esports culture, he said, so Oddin built in-house expertise to help partners navigate team sponsorships, influencer campaigns, and fan engagement that feels credible to the community.

On the product side, esports betting is increasingly dominated by live, in-play wagering, which now represents roughly 80% of Oddin’s volume. “In Dota 2, within 20 seconds the entire situation of the game can change from one team completely winning to completely losing,” Suchar said. That volatility creates unique challenges for traders, requiring constant model updates and real-time feedback loops between data and risk teams.

Looking ahead, Suchar expects continued market consolidation and a growing share of handle coming from esports. “We would expect much more consolidation on the market happening in the upcoming months,” he said, noting that some operators now see esports among their top five sports by volume.

Oddin itself has scaled to more than 300 employees worldwide and remains profitable. The company is now exploring adjacent verticals that build on its technology in AI, content, and iframe development. “In the next 12 to 24 months, Oddin will not be as you perceive it right now,” Suchar said. “It will be part of a larger group we are building.”