In Nevada, gamblers can wager on a wide range of sporting events: football, boxing, horse racing and, as of earlier this year, the Olympics, to name a few.

What if video games were added to that list someday?

It's already happening elsewhere, thanks to an explosion in the popularity of the competitive video gaming industry, known as e-sports.

In various places throughout the country and abroad, fans gather en masse to watch video game players compete in high-stakes tournaments. Increasingly, fans also bet on the outcomes.

Multiple estimates put the value of the global e-sports industry well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the prize money alone will likely be more than $50 million this year, according to a recent report from Eilers Research. The related wagering activity seems to be keeping pace: Eilers estimated that e-sports will produce more than a quarter of a billion dollars in wagers this year alone, with that number expected to surpass $23 billion by 2020.

Unikrn CEO Rahul Sood at G2E

Rahul Sood, CEO and Co-Founder of Unikrn, a Seattle, WA based gaming and entertainment Company focused on eSports, gives a keynote address during the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in the Sands Expo Center Thursday Oct. 1, 2015. Launch slideshow »
The industry has become incredibly popular in the United States. As many as 12,000 fans recently filled Seattle's KeyArena for the International, a "Dota 2" tournament, according to the Seattle Times. And the Wall Street Journal said a recent "League of Legends" championship made Madison Square Garden "packed just like for a New York Knicks game."

Unlike an actual Knicks game, however, bettors can't legally wager on "League of Legends" in Nevada — or anywhere else in the United States. That's why the e-sports betting service Unikrn offers a virtual currency that U.S. fans can earn to boost their chances of winning prizes.

But if the legal status changes, e-sports could present an attractive opportunity for gambling companies to capture new customers, according to Unikrn CEO Rahul Sood, who addressed the casino industry in a speech at the Global Gaming Expo last week.

"There's a lot of people who watch e-sports and play e-sports that don't know what a football is, for example, because they just love e-sports," Sood said in an interview. "The market opportunity is really big."

Efforts to approach Nevada regulators about finding a legal way of going after that market would likely first require a critical mass of interest. Chris Grove, an Internet gambling expert who co-wrote the Eilers report, said e-sports could get there if more events are held in the state.

"If we're having a significant stream of e-sports events on or in proximity to casino properties, it seems to me that the question of betting would not be that far behind," Grove said.

E-sports has already established a presence in Southern Nevada, including through the Evolution Championship Series — a fighting game tournament — that was held at Bally's and Paris Las Vegas, which both are owned by Caesars Entertainment Corp.

Another dominant Las Vegas casino company, MGM Resorts International, may help bring even more e-sports events to town. Rick Arpin, the company's senior vice president of entertainment and development, said MGM Resorts is interested in exploring the field as a way of appealing to younger customers.

"This is not a secret: We're all sort of struggling with how to attract millennials to our facilities," Arpin said. "Everyone may have their own strategy, but we're all searching for ways to engage them, and this certainly seems to be one."

Similarly, Quinton Singleton, the deputy general counsel of sports betting provider CG Technology, said his company is examining the opportunities afforded by e-sports, which he described as a fast-growing industry that has generated a lot of excitement.

But for all the interest in and possible advantages to e-sports betting, the marriage of gambling and competitive video games may run into headwinds.

Among the risks, according to the Eilers report, are a lack of cohesion in the industry and game integrity. On the latter point, the report expressed confidence that match-fixing will be combated by "several emerging counterweights," including more attention from regulators and the media.

"Our primary fear is that eSports may see its reputation permanently tarnished by a critical amount of high-profile fraud before those counterweights can be brought to bear," the report said.

Another problem is what the Eilers report described as "the prevailing cultural perception" that video games are mostly geared toward children. That perception is not entirely off-base, the report said, although it stressed that research indicates more than 80 percent of the global e-sports audience is 18 or older.

Sood is aware of that concern, too, and he does not think it should get in the way of bringing e-sports — and, presumably, the gambling that often comes with it — into the mainstream.

"That's like saying if you give your kid a baseball when they're 12, they're going to gamble on baseball or football or that sort of thing," Sood said. "The other thing I'll say is: This is a space that's highly unregulated right now. And because it's unregulated, you have sites out there that are preying on people."

This is a reprint from vegasinc.com. to view the original, click here.