Betty Zhao: Virtual sports gaming ‘like a little seed’ that grows really fast

In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Stephanie Raquel, LT Game COO Betty Zhao discusses virtual sports gaming and its rising popularity in Asia.

Virtual sports gaming has gone a long way from fantasy sports drawn using paper and pencil to the electronic games that have started gaining popularity, particularly in Asia.

Betty Zhao, COO of gaming provider LT Game, likened virtual sports to a seed that is growing fast.

“The high frequency virtual sports gaming is growing really fast. It’s like a little seed and you can see it will be spread everywhere,” Zhao told CalvinAyre.com. “We can already see that the virtual sports gaming is growing really fast in the last couple of years since 2013.”

And Asia, according to Zhao, is a good market for virtual sports gaming.

“Over Asia, we think virtual sports gaming has really good potential,” she explained. “China, for instance, the lottery market is really big and there’s a really big part of virtual sports gaming in the lottery market.”

Zhao believes virtual sports gaming is appealing to the market today because it incorporates the excitement of sports betting with the electronic gaming element. But this type of gaming also faces several challenges.

“For the game itself, we are thinking more how to make the players more focused on the gaming because now players they cannot concentrate long enough so we need to make all games more exciting and can let the customer more concentrated and part of gaming. That is the more challenging thing of the game itself,” Zhao said.

And this is why LT Games have started developing different virtual sports gaming, such as horse racing.

“We are also targeting different [sports] like bicycle, ping pong, and all of different elements of all other sports gaming,” Zhao said.