An esports match is played out on maps, one game at a time on a single arena. Before it starts, the two teams take turns rejecting maps until only the ones both sides will play are left. Choosing the ground before you fight over it is a negotiation football has never had to worry about.
Esports is video gaming played as a professional sport, the same team of five or three fielded and a result at the end of it as any other game on the sportsbook. You do not have to have played the games to bet on them, but you do have to know how a match is won.
You do not have to play the games to bet on them, but you do have to know how a match is won.
Esports has a section of its own on the sportsbook rather than a row in the sport list, and you can bet on Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends, Valorant, Overwatch, Rainbow Six and Rocket League.
Match winner, map handicap and total maps are priced before a match and, more often, while it is running.
A match is a race to win a set number of maps: two of them in a best of three, three in a best of five.
The games
Three of the six are shooters: five against five, one side attacking an objective and the other defending it, in rounds of a minute or two, with the two sides swapping over halfway through a map. One is a half-hour strategy game, one is football played by cars, and Overwatch sits between the shooters and the strategy game.
All six run the same kind of year. Regional leagues, where the same teams meet across a season, feed the international tournaments, where a field of teams arrives and one of them leaves with the trophy.
- Counter-Strike 2. The bomb game: five attackers try to plant it on the map, five defenders try to stop them, and a round ends when one side is wiped out or the bomb settles it. The calendar is a year-round run of tournaments from several organisers, with the Majors above the rest.
- League of Legends. Five a side on one long map with no rounds at all, both teams spending half an hour or so growing stronger and trying to knock down the other side's base. Regional leagues across the Americas, Europe, Korea, China and the Asia-Pacific run their own seasons, and the strongest cross over at a mid-season event and again at the World Championship.
- Valorant. The same round-by-round shape as Counter-Strike, attack against defence, one map at a time. Its season is a ladder: regional Challengers leagues at the bottom, a franchised international league split into stages above them, Masters events through the year, and Champions to close it.
- Overwatch. Teams contest a set objective rather than a bomb, escorting a payload across a map or holding a point on it, and each type of objective carries its own rule for a tied map. Regional stages in China, North America, EMEA and Asia run in parallel, and the best of each travel to a handful of live events.
- Rainbow Six. The third shooter on the card, attack and defence again, decided in short rounds on one map. Regional leagues play through the year in stages that feed the international Majors, and ranking points collected across the season decide who reaches the invitational at the end of it.
- Rocket League. Football played by cars: three a side, one ball, one net, and the higher score when the clock runs out wins the game. Online regional qualifiers are grouped into splits, each split finishing at an international event, and a World Championship closes the season.
The regional leagues carry the months between the international events.
The markets
Match winner
The bet is on which team wins the match, and the match goes to whichever side takes the maps it needs first. A team that leaves one organisation for another, or rebrands entirely, carries the bets already struck on it. A match that begins and is never finished voids them, unless somebody is disqualified and the win is awarded.
Map handicap
One team's map count is moved by a line before the score is read. Over a best of five there is more room than there sounds: minus 2.5 needs a clean 3-0, and plus 2.5 is fine losing 3-2. A change to the number of maps the match was scheduled to play voids the bet.
Total maps
Over or under on how many maps the match produces in total. A best of three runs to two maps or three, so the bet is really asking whether the beaten team takes one off the winner. A fixture abandoned part-way voids it, unless enough maps had been played to settle the line.
The esports part of the Sports Betting Rules is not written once for the sport. It runs game by game, because a round in one game has nothing in common with a round in another. A postponement, a walkover, a map played again after a technical fault: each has its line under the game it belongs to.
In-play
Most of the esports on the sportsbook is live, which suits matches built out of small pieces. The match price is re-cut as each map is decided, and again as the rounds inside a map go one way or the other.
A map is a fresh start. A team hammered on the first one begins the second with a clean scoreboard, and a run of rounds can turn a map that looked finished. A price taken halfway through one rarely survives the end of it.
Any price shown away from the sportsbook is the price as it stood when it was taken. A map that starts and is never completed voids the live bets on it, unless the outcome was already beyond changing. A map replayed after a disconnection counts as a separate event.
What to look at before you bet
- The roster behind the badge. A team is its roster, the five or three named players who actually turn up, and rosters change between events far more often than football squads do. A line-up altered last week has not played much together, whatever the team name says.
- The map pool and the veto. Before a series, the two sides take turns ruling maps out of the pool until the ones they will play are left. A team strong on what survives that negotiation has an edge before a single map is played.
- What is riding on the match. A group game with a place already secured is not the test a semi-final is. Teams that look ordinary early on sometimes only start playing once a bracket removes the second chance.
- Regional strength. Each game runs its leagues region by region, and the regions only meet at the international events. A team that has never played outside its own region is a guess wearing good results.
- Online or on a stage. Most of a season is played online, each team from its own base. The big events bring everyone to one stage on the same machines, in front of a crowd, and a side that is dominant online does not always carry that form onto it.
The esports quick guide
- Count the maps. A best of three and a best of five put a different question to the same line.
- Start with the last month. Rosters change, so recent results say more about a team than its name does.
- Check what the veto leaves. Who is strong on the maps still standing matters more than the head-to-head.
- Work out what the match is for. A group game and a knockout ask different things of the same team.
- Find out where it is being played. Online from home and on a stage in front of a crowd are two different tests.
The esports card opens the whole section rather than one game, and the Sports Betting Rules settle it game by game, including the rare evening a map has to be played twice.
