Your Way To eSports Betting: How to bet on eSports?

Your Way To eSports Betting

More and more customers are coming in with issues related to esports betting. Clinicians and other helpers require education about the dangers of this growing industry, including match-fixing and the effects of peer pressure.

Photo by ELLA DON on Unsplash

eSports Insights

“Esports” refers to the competitive realm of online video gaming. It’s similar to “old school” sports in that people still root for teams, attend games, and wager on the outcomes.

Traditional esports like League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and simulations of traditional sports like FIFA, NBA, and MLS, are the two primary categories of esports.

With the proliferation of streaming services like YouTube and Twitch, esports has attracted a global audience and grown to a $1 billion industry. There are competitions where teams and players compete for millions of dollars in prize money, and these are some of the most prominent.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, esports and esports betting have become increasingly popular. The vast majority of 2020’s scheduled sporting events were postponed or canceled. The sports betting business shifted its focus to esports to recover from the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak. Furthermore, many people who used to wager on traditional sports have shifted their attention to esports.

The Mechanics of eSports Betting

A growing trend in esports betting is placing wagers in real-time during competition rather than before. Most wagers on esports fall into one of these categories:

• Online gambling with real money and set odds
• Gambling that is planned socially between individuals
• Common in-game practices like skin gambling and loot boxes.

Bets on the first map, first kill, and first blood is unique to games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and Dota 2. Some, though, can be found more frequently than others. A few examples are as follows:

• Correct scores
• Match winner
• Tournament winner
• Odd/evens bets – you can wager on whether or not the final score of a game, the number of lives lost, or the number of rounds played will be divisible by 2 or 3.
• Over/under bets – you can wager on the outcome of an esport by betting on whether or not a team will achieve a certain goal.

The Possible Risks of Betting in eSports

There are risks associated with esports betting, which has gotten increasingly popular as esports have become more mainstream.

Young esports players are likely influenced to wager by peer pressure. Gambling businesses’ promotion methods differ from those of more established sports with more mature fan bases. Esports betting firms use social media posts with humorous gifs and memes to attract new customers instead of free bets. Since esports betting sites like Betshah don’t appear like ads, they can attract young individuals who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in gambling.

Lack of esports understanding is another potential pitfall for bettors. Games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends, which are popular in the esports community, have a high learning curve and can confuse those who don’t have much experience with them.
Because of the lack of effective anti-fraud and anti-cheating technologies, betting on esports also presents ethical questions. Some of the less-than-honorable things people do in esports include utilizing technology to disrupt their opponents’ internet connection, using pharmaceuticals to boost their performance, and knowingly losing games.

The final risk factor is that gamers are more prone to become compulsive gamblers. A significant factor in this is the prevalence of “loot boxes,” which players can either earn in-game or purchase with real money. You won’t know what’s inside until after you buy it, but there’s a slim possibility you might get a rare item, much like when you hit the jackpot at the casino. Players have a strong financial incentive to stock up on as many of these as possible.

Famous eSports Games

A few standard wagering options predominate in the esports gambling industry.

Sports betting

Among esports consumers, sports betting is king. Esports betting is very similar to regular sports betting, with the caveat that the esports betting product is still in its infancy.

Players can use cash or skins when placing bets on esports matches.

Fantasy esports

Despite being much less popular than actual sports betting, there is a market for fantasy esports.

The vast majority of the sites catering to this niche provide cash betting. Daily fantasy sports’ big names are who you’d expect them to be, and DraftKings is where you can play fantasy esports.

The basics of daily fantasy eSports

Many fantasy eSports sites adopt a “salary cap” approach in which users draft a squad of players under a specified budget. Users pick a team and receive fantasy points based on the performance of their chosen eSports athletes. Users who finish a contest with the most fantasy points are awarded financial incentives.

Jackpot games

Jackpot games are lotto-style wagers in which a player can potentially put up a small sum to win a massive payout.

Currently, jackpot games are only offered at skin-betting sites. Still, if Valve’s crackdown is successfully stifling the skin betting industry, it is reasonable to assume that cash betting sites will begin offering some analogous product to entice skin gamblers.

Casino-style games

Most esports fans who gamble do so on a handful of casino-style games.

Once more, you can only play these games via skin-betting sites (at least within the context of esports). The market for these items is in chaos due to Valve’s decision to tighten down on skin betting.