Esports betting is one of the more frequent hobbies of esports enthusiasts. Most do it casually, in order to spice up their event viewing experience. Whenever a match takes place, you tend to watch it with double the intensity if you’ve bet money on it, even if it’s a small amount. But some do it in a more professional way and have their own betting system. Everything is well-planned and their goal is to make a profit, no matter how small. In both cases, the first step is to understand esports betting and how to find the best esports betting sites.
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What Is The Best Esports Betting Site
The best esports betting sites for 2021 will likely be the following: Loot.bet, Arcanebet, Betspawn, GG.BET, and Unikrn. All of them offer you huge bonuses, a wide variety of esports betting markets, and excellent odds. Plus all the other features I’ll mention below. Depending on your location, just check which one of them is available to you and you can start placing bets in minutes.
Our Esports betting sites reviews
Security
If you pick one of the top esports betting sites, security won’t be an issue. And that’s because the safety standards are very high and nobody’s taking the risk of losing sensitive client information. Such an event would pretty much end a bookmaker’s career.
License
When it comes to an esports betting site’s license, all you need to know is that we’re not living during the early days of esports betting, when there was no way of knowing who to trust.
Gambling is now a well-established part of the industry and the big bookmakers are all legit. They’re forced by top-level authorities to comply with numerous regulations and guarantee that their services are 100% legal and 100% secure.
Common licenses & certificates esports bookmakers hold include:
The only thing you need to worry about in regard to this topic is whether or not the bookmaker has a license to operate in your country. Because if they don’t, you won’t be able to sign up on their website. And even if you manage to do it somehow, they’ll probably ask you to verify your identity. And if you pass all the tests using a VPN service and other tricks, there’s always a risk that you’ll run into trouble later on, when your country’s IRS starts asking where the money comes from.
Don’t worry though, our database is extensive, and our list will show whether your country is allowed or not on specific bookmakers.
Reputation
A bookmaker’s reputation is a key indicator of their trustworthiness. But that only applies if they’re a small esports betting site. For bookmakers with hundreds of thousands or even millions of users, that no longer counts. Because the sheer number of people they serve is a testament to their professionalism, of course, you can always find that one person in a million who isn’t satisfied. Just like you can find terrible reviews on iMDB for movies that are excellent. But objectively, the best esports betting sites implicitly have a good reputation. Otherwise, given the level of competition that exists today, their users would simply switch to another provider.
Esports coverage
The top esports betting sites will provide you with great esports coverage. Every significant event at the first 2 or even 3 competitive tiers will be featured on their sites, and you’ll be able to place bets on every game.
Some bookmakers also have a blog, where they cover the upcoming tournaments and let you know more about their bonuses, betting offers, and news that could be beneficial for the success of your betting.
Betting Markets Variety
A wide variety of betting markets allows you to place bets on a lot of different games and in-game events. In turn, this gives you the possibility to specialize more easily and learn everything about a niche of your choice.
In esports betting, the whole idea is to find one or several games you’re interested in and then study them carefully in order to gain access to superior knowledge. Bookmakers and most bettors often miss the tiny details that change everything and being aware of them gives you a big advantage over them.
Biggest Esports Titles To Bet On
Esports betting includes a wide variety of esports titles and some of the most important ones are the following:
Dota 2 Betting
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This is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game that’s played in a 5v5 format. It has RPG elements and RTS elements, which make up a nice mix. Players pick heroes and they fight each other on a two-sided map. The goal is to destroy your opponent’s Ancient, which is the most important structure in their base.
When you bet on Dota 2, you can bet on individual matches, games, and game events. Big tournaments take place all year long, so this is a huge game to study if esports betting is your thing.
Dota 2’s audience has declined over the last 4 years but the game still has around 7.5 million players and a passionate community, which guarantees that it will continue to thrive for many years to come, even if doesn’t surpass the 10 million mark in terms of the player base.
CS:GO Betting
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CS:GO is the latest installment in the Counter-Strike franchise, one of the world’s oldest esports. Together with StarCraft, it was among the first competitive games that become esports. CS:GO was launched in 2012, and since then, it has grown a lot in popularity. Its player base is in the tens of millions, and as for now, Valorant is its only competitor.
When it comes to CS:GO betting, the options are extremely numerous and range from who will win the pistol round to how many bomb plants a team will achieve.
One great thing if you intend to bet on CS:GO is that its community has been around for many years and has developed many different tools that you can use as an esports bettor. Sites such as HLTV.org will provide a wide array of statistics that will make your life much easier and allow you to make informed decisions.
If you want to bet on a team on a given map, you can find out what their win rate is on that particular map, as well as many other things of this nature. So you don’t just do it blindly. You do it in a calculated manner.
League of Legends Betting
League of Legends is the most famous MOBA game in the world and one of the most successful esports of all time, with a player base that used to be over 100 million. Because of this reason, esports betting sites will always cover everything that’s LoL related and offer you numerous esports betting opportunities.
This game is extremely similar to Dota 2, so if you learn one of them you should definitely put in the effort to learn about the other, in order to give yourself a wider range of options to choose from. You don’t need to be an expert. It’s enough to understand how these games work and then study their professional scenes. With just a few hours of research, you can already start to bet on League of Legends.
Valorant Betting
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Valorant is one of the most recent esports that have been released. However, because the company behind it is Riot Games (the developer of League of Legends), it’s quite clear that this esport will go on to become extremely successful. Riot’s 10-year experience in making LoL one of the most successful esports in the world will serve them well in building an ecosystem for Valorant.
Betting on Valorant is like betting on CS:GO, because this game is practically a mixture of CS:GO and Overwatch. Of course, the details will differ, but if you want to bet on Valorant, just realize that this is practically a fancier version of CS:GO and you’ll be just fine.
What’s important here is to study the game until you understand how it works and then dedicate some time to study its professional scene, which is under development. Many CS:GO pros have given up on CS:GO to start their Valorant career.
Different Esports Gambling Options
Apart from the standard gambling option (i.e., betting on a match before it begins), you will also be offered a live betting option on serious esports gambling sites.
Skin betting is quite rare these days. If you want to bet skins, you’ll need to find a bookmaker that offers such a service. And unfortunately, these sites tend to be far less secure than the big ones.
Live Betting
Live betting is one of the most important features of the best esports betting sites. And that’s because you’ll often want to watch a game and bet on it while you’re watching. It’s a thrilling experience and if you’re well-versed in esports betting, it can also be quite profitable.
Anticipating the exact moment when a game will swing or when a team’s advantage becomes too big to overcome can yield huge returns. And very often, that’s not just a matter of luck. It’s obvious if you understand what you’re looking at and know the history of the teams. Here are some live bets you may find:
- First blood
- First round
- Most kills (team or player)
- First tower destruction
- And much more..
Live Streaming
This is a nice feature to have because it allows you to use just one monitor during live betting sessions. If you have a large monitor that you can split in two, an esports betting site’s live streaming feature is not that important. But you’re using a laptop or even a tablet, then you should definitely make sure you pick a bookmaker that offers you the ability to watch the game and bet on it on the same page. Otherwise it’s hard to react fast enough and the esports betting opportunities are vanishing before your eyes.
You usually get a time window of 10 – 30 seconds to place a bet when you feel like there’s a high chance the game will go in a certain direction. And if you miss it, you’ll need to wait for the next one.
Esports Betting Odds
When looking for an esports betting site, check the odds of a perfectly even game and see how big is the difference between the perfect 2 – 2 and what the bookmaker offers. Usually, you’ll find odds ranging from 1.85 – 1.85 to 1.90 – 1.90. Anything below that is suspicious.
Esports betting odds come in 3 forms: Decimal, Fractional, and American. Depending on the form that you’re used to, you should either pick a bookmaker that uses that form or at least allows you to pick between multiple options, or simply learn how to read the odds when they’re in a different form.
Esports betting sites vs Traditional Sportsbooks
Compared to traditional sportsbooks, esports betting sites focus mostly on esports betting. Apart from that, everything’s just the same when it comes to the practice. You get coverage for individual esports titles, tournaments within those titles, matches within those tournaments, in-game events within those matches, and so on. Nothing is different from the usual system.
One thing that differs a lot is the looks and design of the website. Esports-focused sites tend to be more focused on making their platform easy to use and navigate, while traditional ones might seem outdated to a younger audience.
Real Money Betting vs Skin Betting
The difference between real money betting and skin betting is quite intuitive. In the first case, you’re betting with real money while in the second one you’re betting skins (in-game items or cosmetics) that are evaluated at a certain amount. The skins trading industry is huge, but it’s fewer sites to trust so I’d recommend reading reviews and asking communities about the site before entering to make sure it’s legit.
If you want to engage in esports betting, you should consider doing it with real money and find a way to turn your skins into money by simply selling them.
Esports Gambling Bonuses
Bonuses are an important part of the top esports betting sites. Basically, they’re how the bookmaker welcomes you. If they give you a nice bonus on your first deposit, that gives you more room for error and allows you to gamble for free. But if you place good bets and win, not only do you get the bonus money you’re being offered. You get it together with the money you’ve made on your successful bets.
Best Esports Betting Bonuses
| Rank | Gambling website | Bonus | Get the bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | GG.BET | €20 Risk-free bet | Visit site |
| #2 | Unikrn | Deposit €150 & get €450 | Visit site |
| #3 | LOOT.BET | Deposit €100 & get €200 | Visit site |
| #4 | BUFF.BET | €100 Bonus on €100 deposit | Visit site |
| #5 | Arcanebet | Deposit €100, get €100 extra | Visit site |
On esports betting sites like Betway and GG.BET you can get a generous sign-up bonus of up to $200. Basically, they will double your first deposit and then ask you to bet the bonus amount on matches. If you place smart bets, you make even more money and get to keep everything. This way, you could quickly turn $200 into $500 just by winning a few low-risk bets. Just make sure to check the turnover requirements of the bonus.
On Unikrn, the bonus is even larger and can go up to $300. But the conditions are a bit tighter. Nevertheless, if you’re confident in your abilities and knowledge of the esports industry, this is a real chance to put those assets to use and make money.
Esports Betting Tips & Strategies
When it comes to esports betting tips and esports betting strategies, some of the most obvious things are extremely effective, and few bettors implement them.
The first is to become a student of betting and develop your own system. If you place esports bets for 6 – 12 months, you will inevitably learn what to do and what to avoid. You’ll discover what it means to make good decisions during a live match and how to take calculated risks. The amounts you wager depending on the situation, how you practice damage control when the match is headed in the wrong direction, and many other skills are naturally developed through practice. The only condition is that you take notes and reflect on how you make your betting decisions.
In games like poker, you need to do something every round, or you lose money. In esports betting, you have not one hand per turn, but dozens and even hundreds. And you can play the one that gives you the best chance of winning. This lack of pressure allows you to take your time, research, and act intelligently. And if you go through this process enough times, you inevitably become good at it.
The best betting tip that I can give you is this: actively search for the right betting opportunities and act when your research and intuition tell you that conditions are favorable. Surprisingly often, bookmakers make mistakes and evaluate a situation the wrong way. They underestimate strong teams and overestimate famous and hyped ones. It’s easy to take advantage of this situation if you’re well-informed.
Keep up with the changes
In esports betting, research and knowledge of the games and their professional scenes are essential if you want to do this as more than just for fun. Another thing to keep in mind is that in esports, not only the teams but the games themselves change rather frequently.
Every 3 – 6 months, roster changes and patches can completely reshape the landscape. And if you don’t keep up with what’s going on, it’s very easy to continue to bet on a name without realizing that what’s underneath it has lost its substance. Or, on the contrary, it has become much stronger than before.
It’s best to start with one game and learn everything about it. If you like multiple games, it’s not a problem, as long as you stay informed and understand what you’re looking at when you watch a competition.
Esports Betting Regulation Per Country
Depending on your location, you may discover that you have plenty of options at your disposal, or very few.
Regulated Markets
As the name suggests, regulated markets are gambling markets that are under strict legislation. If your country’s laws allow bookmakers to operate and if an operator has a license to provide a particular type of gambling services (in our case, esports betting), then you can safely place bets on esports using those services.
Grey Markets
Grey markets are basically iGaming markets that are nor illegal, nor regulated. This practically means that you can bet but should be careful not to step on some red line.
