eSports have seen computer gaming evolve from a solitary home leisure pursuit into a serious new type of sport with huge global followings and enormous revenue. As the world adapts to recurring health scares whenever viruses or bacteria develop into novel threats, eSports are commanding attention as a safer way to deliver world-class competition to mass audiences safely.

Whether you prefer real-time strategy games like StarCraft, first-person shooters like Call of Duty, or games that mimic actual sports like FIFA, you can play them as eSports yourself. Or join hundreds of thousands around the world who watch the top eSports teams competing at major tournaments, claiming your share of the action through eSports betting options.

Different Ways To Bet On eSports

Many people bet on eSports the way they bet on other sports: at legal, regulated betting sites for cash wagers, with the potential to win cash in return. Provided online wagers are legal where you live and you bet responsibly, this is the simplest way to bet on eSports.

Another popular method, however, is skins betting: either privately between players, or on sites set up for skins betting. Instead of cash, players and punters can bet virtual currencies, or specific items that are useful in eSports titles. One-to-one challenge betting and social betting also occur, either for cash or skins, but these are generally organised informally rather than offered on betting sites.

Fantasy betting is also an option; just like fantasy football or fantasy baseball, punters can bet on fantasy teams comprising the top eSports players on the circuit, with imaginary tournaments and results created by algorithms from these players’ real-world statistics.

Most Common Money Bets

If you’re betting with cash, the simplest eSports bet to place is on a match winner, or a tournament winner. As with any other sport, teams will be ranked according to the record of individual players and the team as a whole, with favourites offered at shorter odds in the betting than underdogs.

You can also place speciality bets like odds/evens, betting whether a point score or a number of kills, for instance, will end on an odd or even number. Over/under bets set a point, and punters must decide whether the final tally will be over or under that point.

Once they’ve mastered the basics, punters can try more complex bets like handicaps, accumulators, and first blood / first kill / first map bets.

Some Speciality FIFA Bets

When real-world football leagues around the world are shut down, an eSports version of soccer like FIFA is worth its weight in gold. The popularity of FIFA in 2020 is prompting research into more eSports based on traditional sports, rather than the first-person shooters and strategy games that have dominated the genre until now.

Even without further modification, the current eSports version of FIFA allows punters to bet on the match outcome or predict exact scores. They can also predict whether both teams will score or not, play with the stronger team handicapped, or bet on the total number of goals that will be scored.