The Ultimate Guide to Esports Betting

Would you say you are an open-minded person who is always looking for an adventure and new opportunities? 

Maybe you have tried your hand at betting on many sports like soccer,hockey and basketball and are curious about betting on esports or are thinking to yourself “what is esports?”

Well my friend, you are in the right place if you want to know everything about esports,esports betting and how to make money with esports betting with our esports tips.

If you don’t know much about esports don’t worry, we got you covered. After reading this guide you would be ready to embark on your journey of being a pro at esports betting. 

Best Online Bookmakers for Betting on eSports From Canada

Is betting on eSports legal in Canada?

Only parlay betting is legal in Canadian sportsbook. However, you can legally bet on eSports from Canada with online bookmakers outside of Canada. We recommend you to check out these bookmakers from Malta that are registered with the MGA (Malta Gaming Authority):

What is esports?

eSports stands for electronic sports. Unlike traditional sports that are very much physical in nature, esports are sports that involve playing video games competitively.

What are the most popular games in esports?

There are many popular video games that are played competitively as esports.

Here is a list of popular esports:

1. FIFA
2. League of Legends
3. DOTA 2
4. CS GO
5. Call of Duty
6. Rainbow Six Siege
7. Mobile Legends
8. Free Fire

eSports Betting Tips

eSports Betting Tip #1 Get up-to-date 

Start off with one particular esport such as league of legends and check out the popular tournaments, leagues, teams, players and statistics. Once you get comfortable with one esport diversify and repeat the process for other esports.

eSports Betting Tip #2 Have patience and self-control

Bet only on sporting events that you are sure after conducting a proper analysis, no one guarantees that in the match in which you feel like betting, they will offer you interesting odds.

eSports Betting Tip #3 Manage your bankroll properly 

Be consistent with the use of the money you have available. Start by betting small amounts to gain experience and security, and start to earn money more or less constantly.

esports Betting Tip #4 Download our esports betting spreadsheet

Keeping an esports betting spreadsheet can help you track your decisions and help you “course-correct” and analyze your decisions with graphs.

eSports Betting Tip #5 Use Multiple Bookmakers

This esports betting tip applies to other types of sports betting as well, when betting on esports open several different bookmaker accounts and seek to take advantage of the bonuses and promotions that they usually offer.

eSports Betting Tip #6 Be faithful to your betting system

Choose a system with which you feel comfortable and be rigorous in its application until you can make a truthful assessment of its results.

eSports Betting Tip #7 Make combo bets in esports betting

A combo bet or combination bet in esports betting allows you to bet on multiple matches or multiple outcomes at the same time with one bet.

We recommend you to place combo bets because they can help you win big if everything you bet on happens.

So do you research look at statistics and start off small by betting on 2 or more games.

Eventually you can step up your game and use handicap bets, total maps etc.

Popular eSports Tournaments for eSports Betting

Tournaments are also held where professional players are physically brought together. These can be national or international tournaments; think of European or world championships. These are becoming increasingly professional and usually look exactly like a sports tournament; with qualifying rounds, group stages and finally a knockout stage. This leads to a final winner, so it is a true competition. Thanks to this structure, there are so many ways to bet on esports matches. Bookmaker bonuses will help you to get more out of your money.

These esports matches often accompany the grandeur of real sporting events. Think: a large audience, well-paid players, sponsor contracts and of course the possibility to place bets. There are numerous providers and leagues you can bet on all over the world. Asia in particular appears to be a big market for eSporters. As Europeans, we find the following esports matches and tournaments interesting to place your bets on.esports betting odds.

League of Legends World Championship

 The tournament for lovers of the LoL game. Besides the LoL Pro League, LoL Master Series and and all LoL Champions Cups, this is the most important LoL tournament worldwide.

DreamHack

Is the world’s largest esports convention. It has been taking place since 1994 and is set in several international locations. Tournaments are held for games such as CS: GO and Fortnite.

Code Wars

FIFA in particular has found its place here at this Indian league.

The CapCom Cup 

Old school gamers are welcome here to prove their best skills in this Street Fighter tournament.

European Gaming League

Again interesting for Europe and the UK, where this competition focuses on.

Fortnite World Cup 

The Fortnite game has gained immense popularity in recent years. It has since become one of the largest FPS games ever. This World Cup tournament has a prize pool of no less than thirty million dollars! Let alone the Fortnite odds that bookmakers offer: that is worth betting on Fortnite.

Those are just about the main esports tournament that we can recommend you to gamble on. If you would also like to take advantage of a substantial betting bonus, you can do so through one of our bookmakers with eSports offers, such as b-Bets.

eSports betting: types of bets

From Pokemon to World of Warcraft, PUBG and CSGO bets, there are a number of things important to win on esports bets, such as tracking statistics.

You also need to know exactly how esports bets work and which ones you can expect. 

We offer you an overview of the types of bets that you often encounter on esports matches and tournaments:

Single bets in esports betting

A bet with only 1 possible outcome, for example ‘Match Winner’ (= winner of the match). If you know what you’re talking about in your favorite game, bet on the winning squad or ‘First Blood’ markets for great results.

Multiple bets esports betting

Multiple Bets in esports betting are bets combining different possible outcomes. Combination of for instance ‘Match Winner’ and ‘Winner Map 1’. You only win if you have correctly estimated the results on both of your selections. Then your odds are multiplied and you can win significantly more.

Live bets or in play bets in esports betting

Live bets in esports betting are made during an esports match. The odds can fluctuate strongly here due to which action is happening in the game at that moment.

Special bets in esports betting

Depending on which bookmaker and which game, there are several types of special bets in esports betting. For example you have Ex. Total Kills: the number of murders a player commits; Total Bombs Planted / Defused: The number of bombs planted or defused.

most (first) kills

most deaths

kills with a specific weapon (knife, grenade, M4)

team wins 1 map

number of maps won

team wins both pistol rounds

total number of rounds per map

rounds won by harmless bomb

rounds won by detonation bomb

number of rounds won by time limit

Handicap bets in esports betting

Where you virtually favor or disadvantage a team in terms of points in your bet

The top 5 eSports for esports betting

You don’t know much about esports yet? There are a lot of popular games where you have professional competitions with a lot of sponsorship money and heavy training regimes. Don’t think that these ‘gamers’ are quietly pushing buttons in front of the PC in their pajamas. Online bookmakers are not going to waste time on amateur leagues, games like League of Legends & Counter-Strike are super competitive.

1. Fifa or Esoccer

Because we are mainly interested in betting on football , Esoccer is immediately a great star for us. FIFA is so realistic nowadays that it almost resembles real football. Because of this, of course, the same strategies are also of the party, and nothing has actually changed except that it is a game.

It is great that there is also a FIFA e-World Cup. Here the best players play against each other for the title of best FIFA player in the world. Please note that there are different categories because there are separate game consoles (PlayStation, Xbox, PC). So there are several champions in this championship. We are already looking forward to the FIFA 21 esports championships.

2. League of Legends

League of Legends or simply ‘LoL’, provides a roleplaying action game in which you have to play against each other with 2 teams of 5 with the aim of destroying the opponent’s ‘Nexus’. Because it is such a strategic game, pro teams are in direct communication with each other via headphones and microphones.

You don’t know anything about this game? The most important thing is the composition of the teams. Usually the main central player is the ‘Mid Laner’ who controls the game from your guess, in the middle of the map. The task of this player depends on the specific composition of the teams.

What do you mean? Well… there are currently 148 unique ‘Heroes’ that players can choose to build their squads with. These characters each have their strengths and weaknesses, each with 4 unique ‘abilities’ and 1 passive ability. As a result, teams always try to make a choice in view of how well these ‘heroes’ work together as a collective.

As competitions you have a separate division for each region, such as Europe with the EU LCS, and the NA LCS in America (incl. Canada, although most teams are based in California). The best league in the world is most likely the Korean LCK, which excels in any esport. The winners (and multiple teams depending on League ranking) of these competitions face each other in Worlds League of Legends for the world title.

If you want to learn how to bet on League of Legends read our article on League of Legends Betting Tips

3. Counter-Strike: CS GO

Maybe you have ever played the legendary classic Counter-Strike 1.6 yourself? Even nowadays, quite a few stubborn gamers still play this very outdated shooter, and that says a lot about the quality of the concept. The new CS GO was released a few years ago and is a gigantic improvement graphically. There are therefore numerous teams that play this shooter professionally with a lot of big money!

During a typical CS GO match you have two teams competing against each other. The terrorists plant a bomb on 1 of 2 targets, and the Counter-terrorists try to avoid it. The team that eliminates all opponents also wins the round immediately. So there are numerous maps that are used in the competitive scene, for which a lot of strategies have to be prepared. So when we look at this game and the framework of gambling, you need to do a little research on the maps and teams. Some teams do better on some maps than others.

The ESL Pro League remains the only real league that is played professionally. If you want to play your sports betting bonus on Esports, you will have to bet on ESL.

For more information on betting on CSGO read out CSGO Betting Tips

4. Dota 2

You can compare this game very hard with League of Legends. Dota originated as a game created as a custom map expansion for the very old WarCraft 3. Due to its enormous popularity, the independent Dota was eventually created, the predecessor of Dota 2.

Again, just like with LoL, you have 5 players in two teams who try to destroy the nexus of the opposing team. The game works just the same, but has different heroes and strategies due to the many differences. You can bet on 6 regional leagues where the winners will of course play against each other for the world championship.

If you want to learn more about DOTA 2 betting check out our guide on DOTA 2 Betting.

5. Starcraft II

Finally, we take the strategic Starcraft II. The predecessor of this game was a true revolution in the world of RTS (real time strategy) games. Each player can choose between 3 different ‘races’, each with their unique advantages & disadvantages. The Terrans (humanity) have many mechanical troops and a great focus on economics. Mining resources is much faster with ‘Terrans’ due to the popular ‘Mule drops’ that increase your income.

The Protoss is the second race, and these are a technologically superior society that as 1 collective are constantly connected with each other. They still have the option of ‘free will’. What is unique about Protoss is that their units and buildings all have recharging shields. Although their troops can never be healed, they had to be hit on top of their (electromagnetic) shields.

Finally, there is the classic Zerg. A collective collection of mutated samples that only act as 1. As a Zerg you do not have free will, and you have to listen to the “Queen”. As a result, they have the most number of units in the game, and they have many other advantages such as spreading ‘creep’, which gives you constant vision over the map, and makes your units move faster.

The goal of the makers is therefore to always find a balance between the 3 races, so that the Pro scene is reasonably competitive without 1 race winning every cup. For betting on Starcraft II you have many leagues such as the ESL, GSL and many other smaller tournaments.

Do you want more money to place bets while betting on esports? View all our Bookmaker bonus options here!

History of eSports

Esports is all about computer games, indeed. At least that’s what we called it in the 1990s. However, a lot has happened in the gaming world since then, and nowadays it is all a bit more professional. Currently there are games with throbbing titles such as Call of Duty, Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO), League of Legends, World of Warcraft, FIFA, Starcraft, Dota 2, and so on. These remain games in essence, but playing them is becoming more and more competitive. Thanks to streaming platforms such as Twitch, where players are followed by hordes of spectators, they are also gaining popularity.

Nowadays there are even real game tournaments organized. Usually we speak of eSports when it comes to professional players. Anyone who plays a game well enough to be among the best and participates in tournaments can call themselves a professional gamer. And of course you can also bet on that. It is referred to as eSports when game competitions are organized.

The history of eSports Betting

Besides betting on regular sports, such as football, you can also bet on esports. Things looked slightly different in the past. The first computer games also had tournaments. 

Think of the classic Pong game of yesteryear, where you could play table tennis against the computer and even against each other. Games like Pacman also brought tournaments, albeit in a different way. Back then, players were simply pitted against each other by playing each individually on their console.

 The goal of these competitive tournaments was of course to get the highest score, and so could be bet on.

In the meantime, a lot has changed, and computer games and tournaments have become a lot more complicated. Since the internet connection got a huge boost in the late 90’s, games like Quake and Warcraft have gained popularity. They are considered the forerunners of esports as we know it today; this is because of the multiplayer function. In these times it is natural that you can play games online with friends. You are connected to the rest of the world at the click of a mouse. Thanks to the worldwide web, for example, you can play with a team located all over Europe, while your opponent’s team lives in India, Russia or South America.

Do you want an extra bonus to bet with, or do you want to find good odds to place accumulator bets? That also determines your choice for the best esports bookmaker. Take a look at our list of bookmakers and discover the best esports bookmaker for you.