Lounge’s Seven-Month, $1 Billion Handle
Betting On Lounge in 2016: By The Numbers
TOTAL HANDLE
103M
SKINS
In the first seven months of 2016, the final time period in which
Lounge operated skin betting at full capacity, the site took in
approximately 103 million skins in handle.
An analysis involving the listed prices of hundreds of thousands of
these skins determined that the average real-world value of an item
bet on Lounge was approximately $9.75.
TOTAL MATCHES
~2,800
Based on these figures, Lounge took in the USD equivalent of $1
billion in betting handle during the first seven months of 2016,
over a period that involved roughly 2,800 professional CS:GO
matches spanning dozens of events and hundreds of exhibitions.
Despite widespread investment in esports and the growth of all
forms of skin wagering in 2016, this period did not feature the
highest consistent betting volumes in Lounge’s short history. The
site’s 2016 single-match high handle of 321,000 skins, for example,
was bested more than 80 times by matches in 2014 and 2015.
This could be attributable to the rise of numerous skin wagering
options competing for consumers’ attention, or to the erosion of
consumer trust following skin gambling scandals. Regardless,
month-over-month betting volumes and average handles were on
the rise headed into the summer of 2016.
Then, at the height of the professional CS:GO season, just as the title
eclipsed League of Legends and Dota2 to become the mostwatched esport on casting platform Twitch, Valve decided to take
action against skin gambling sites.
Figures obtained over seven-month period in 2016 before Lounge shut down
Four tournaments—the Intel Extreme Masters tournament in
Katowice, the Major League Gaming tournament in Columbus,
the ESL One tournament in Cologne, and Turner and WME/IMG’s
ELEAGUE in Atlanta—attracted 18.3 million skins, or 18 percent,
of the 103 million total items wagered during the period.
TOTAL HANDLE (USD)
$ 1B
PER-MATCH HANDLE
,000
37SKINS
PER-MATCH HANDLE (USD)
$ 358,000
2