Booming business during the Covid-19 lockdown has accelerated an island e-sport company’s plans to go public.

Quentin Martin, chief executive of Luckbox, said the e-sports industry has been thriving during the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking from his home in Douglas, Mr Martin, 36, said thecompany has been accepting bets from customers in more than 100 territories for just over a year and has seen total bets up 500% since the lockdown started.

Now the company is preparing to go public with a listing on the TSX Venture Exchange - Toronto’s marketplace for small-to-mid sized fast-growth enterprises.

Mr Martin said: ’All of our key performance indicators (KPI) have been through the roof in the past three months. We’ve seen a huge uptick in KPIs across the board.

’Clearly, these are challenging times for many people across the world but, for many, e-sports and gaming is a welcome distraction.

’As well as an increase in customers and betting activity, we’ve seen a huge level of interest from potential investors, who are realising that esports is resilient to many of the forces that affect traditional sports, not least Covid-19 and a potential recession.’

Mr Martin is a former professional poker player who went on to be head of social poker at PokerStars and has previously told Business News he gives full marks to the island where the e-gaming sector has enjoyed tremendous success.

He said e-sports is regarded as the sport with highest growth potential and the industry as a whole has been one of the few sectors to succeed during lockdown. Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch reported an 80% increase of concurrent viewership since January, while gaming platform Steam reported record concurrent users.

Ahead of the potential public listing, Luckbox is engaging investors during a short funding round led by Gravitas Securities and Beacon Securities.

The company holds a full gambling licence with the Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission and offers real-money wagering on popular games such as League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota 2, Overwatch, FIFA and NBA2K.

Mr Martin said: ’The potential of e-sports betting is well documented and these past few months have brought that into sharper focus, accelerating the numbers.

’Many fans of traditional sports have been exposed to the excitement of e-sports for the first time and, hopefully, they like what they see and will be sticking around.’

Founded in 2017 by an enterprise team of former PokerStars executives, Luckbox launched its full-scale esports wagering platform in the summer of 2019.

Mr Martin, appointed chief executive in February after previously being chief operating officer, said the business had been ’firing on all cylinders’.

On a personal level, Mr Martin and his wife have just been celebrating the birth of their second child, who was born during the lockdown.

Ezra is a brother for their daughter Juno who is two-and-a-half.

From a personal and business perspective, Mr Martin says the island is a great place to be at the moment.