There are several popular ways to wager on the outcome of an esports event. We’ve managed to break them down into four basic categories, and they are:
- Traditional sportsbook betting
- Fantasy sports betting
- Item betting
- Social betting
Let’s check them out.
Esports: Traditional Sportsbook Esports Betting
Some traditional sportsbooks offer betting on esports, and the type of bets you can make are pretty much similar to the bets you would make on sports. If you don’t have any experience playing games such as CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and other popular titles, traditional betting is where you want to start from.
Fantasy Esports
The concept of fantasy sport is now popular worldwide, so it was only a matter of time when someone would come up with a similar idea for esports. How does this type of betting work?
Before every competition, every bettor gets a certain amount of gold that they can use to select ten (although this number may vary) real-life players of a specific game. Every player is assigned a value of gold, and bettors need to spend their money to create their custom team.
Depending on the game you’re following, there will be additional rules to follow. For example, in games such as League of Legends, players will have to choose two players to fill every position (Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, and Support).
Based on the performance of real-life players throughout the competition, your fantasy players will receive points, pretty much like in DFS. After the tournament ends, the bettor with the highest score will win and collect the biggest prize.
Many fantasy sportsbooks have additional rules about this, so make sure to read them if you don’t have any experience with this type of betting.
Item & Skin Esports Bets
If you don’t have any gaming experience, this may sound a bit complex and odd to you, but you can place bets with in-game items and skins instead of money.
Let’s take CS:GO, for example. It’s a game where guns play the most crucial part, and players often want their arms to look cool and unique, which is why skins are invented in the first place. The skin you use won’t enhance the functionality of the gun you’re using, it will just change the way it looks. Nonetheless, there are so many players out there who are willing to pay a lot of money to have a cool-looking in-game weapon.
Skins can be bought or dropped randomly during the game, and the rare ones aren’t dropped often. This means their price can go up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
An exciting plot twist happened when esportsbooks enabled betting with in-game skins and items. Players can now add their skins as a deposit, and the betting platform will determine everything else using a sophisticated algorithm. Therefore, if you’re a gamer who likes playing popular multiplayer games, this can become an exciting way to earn money from betting.
Social Esports Betting
Before this day and age of social media, betting was a solitary activity. You would place bets on a sport and wait for its outcome. However, humans have this innate need to socialize, and thanks to the Internet era, we can connect with many fellow bettors from around the globe, giving birth to a new type of betting simply called social betting.
Sportsbooks online pay a lot of attention to its community, paving the way for social betting apps where you can share your predictions and bet against your friends or even strangers. With the growing popularity of the esports industry, it was only a matter of time when the two concepts would become one.
So, how does social esports betting work? There are many ways this activity can manifest, and we’ll just give you one of the examples. Imagine being sure that a CS:GO team would make more than a certain number of kills in the upcoming competition. You can then make this proposition on a social esports betting platform and challenge your friends who disagree with you to place a bet against you. That way, you’ll bet against each other all while have fun.
In a way, social betting has existed since the dawn of humankind, but now we have the technology to make it global and more exciting than ever.
