Complete Guide To ESports Betting

It is possible to bet on e-sports (you can also find them as “e sports”, without the hyphen) directly from New Zealand, completely online. As in sports betting, you either lose the money you bet, or profit an amount determined by the odds. Many sports betting sites, such as Betsson , Betway and Pinnacle have a dedicated area for betting on esports games.

However, not all sites offer a safe betting environment. Our team evaluates and ranks the sites according to several essential criteria for the player. Below you will find our recommendations of the best sites to place bets on esports in New Zealand.

Best sites to place bets on esports-New Zealand:

E-sports are electronic games that can be played in regional or world competitions.

There are already many professional teams and individual players in various esports.

Some of the most popular esports are League of Legends (LoL) and Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2).

Placing bets on esports is the same as placing bets on regular sports. There are odds, favorite teams,and many betting options, including handicap.

The big betting sites offer bets on various e-sports.

It's not often that eSports betting is available. Championships or tournaments need to be taking place for there to be open betting markets.

Matches and events can be watched live via video streams.

E-sports are not yet regulated by a world-class body. However, many competitions take place in different parts of the world.

The most common types of video games that are associated with esports are real-time strategy (RTS), first-person shooter (FPS), Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and fighting. Tournaments such as the International, League of Legends World Championship, Intel Extreme, and Evolution Championship Series stream the competitions live and award the winners with cash.

Given the rapid growth of eSports betting in recent years, there is no accurate data on the size of the market yet. However, it is possible to make some speculations according to the number of people who follow the e-sports events. In 2015, there were about 145 million people watching the biggest events around the world. It can be safe to assume, therefore, that there are about a million people making bets on electronic games. In 2017 alone, half a billion dollars was bet on Pinnacle, The site that dominates eSports betting.

The regions that bet the most on virtual sports are Asia and the United States, where the video game culture itself is strongest. Below, you can check out our answers to the main questions that beginners have when entering the world of virtual games.

E-sports are considered to be electronic game competitions in which teams of professional players or individual players compete online. Some of the games that are seen as the most popular esports today are LoL, Hearthstone, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, FIFA, StarCraft 2, Defense of the Ancients 2, and Call of Duty. It is in these games, mostly, that you can bet online. Of course, this list of esports is not extensive, but finding bets on other games is more complicated.

The events, organized both regionally and globally, host teams from all over the world and are broadcast live for free to anyone who wants to watch. On betting sites, it is even possible to place live bets during competitions. In recent years, the number of viewers and professional esports players has grown enormously, making eSports betting more common.

Of course, today there are many computer and other console games that can be played online, with participants from all over the world. What differentiates esports from other games is precisely the events and professional players, which are sponsored by various companies. Teams and individual players today can only keep up by playing in tournaments, especially in South Korea and other Asian countries.

If you are familiar with sports betting, eSports betting will be no mystery. You first need to know the game in question in depth, also know the teams that will face each other, so that later you can make guesses about the outcome of a match or competition.

Initially, betting on esports may seem strange to you, but it is already quite common, since there is great coverage about the competitions and a lot of information about the players and teams. With the rapid growth of the niche, it is only natural that spectators (who are often also players, just not professionals) seek to place bets online, as they would in any other sport or large competition, such as World Cup .

The eSports betting market has increased along with the popularity of gaming and a growing number of websites now cover events and various types of betting in addition to regular sports betting. People want to bet on their favorite games and their favorite players, so it makes sense that there are betting markets for electronic games.

The great popularization of streaming – which made live casino games possible-has also led to esports events being broadcast live around the world. The main source for watching esports is the Twitch platform, which since 2011 has been broadcasting the events. League of Legends and DotA 2 are the two most watched games.

In 2013, Twitch recorded over four million people watching the DotA 2 competition, the International. Since then, that number has only grown. In addition to watching online, it is possible for spectators to also purchase a ticket to see the competition live, directly from a stadium or arena. The Staples Center in Los Angeles and the Seoul World Cup Stadium in South Korea have already been fully filled with video game fans during various competitions.

E-sports are not yet recognized as de facto sports. However, one way to legitimize the activity would be to insert them in multisport competitions, such as the Olympic Games. In 2017, the International Olympic Committee recognized that e-sports are growing in popularity and that their competitive practice could indeed be considered a sporting practice.

Equally, professional esports players engage, prepare and train with an intensity that can be compared to professional athletes in regular sports.

But there are still two restrictions by which esports games are not considered an Olympic sport. The first is that some of them feature graphic violence, and would have to be set aside. The second is that there is still no global body to sanction the sport. Thus, it has been suggested that the attempt to encompass them in multisport competitions should focus on games that stimulate dollar sports (NZD), such as the FIFA series and NBA 2K.

The first esports tournaments, which appeared in the 90s, coincide with the popularity of fighting and FPS games, genres that still retain a fan base. Already in the 2000s, RTS games became more popular with the spread of the internet. After 2010, multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games became popular esports.

Today, competitions exist for many particular games as well as for game genres. Check out the most popular e-sports below.

League of Legends is abbreviated to LoL and is a free-to-play game in the multiplayer online battle arena genre, inspired by the Defense of the Ancients (Dota) mod from Warcraft III.extremely popular, in 2012 it was the most played computer game in Europe and North America. By the beginning of 2014, more than 67 million people played League of Legends per month, and 27 million per day.

In this game, you take on the role of Summoner, being able to control characters who fight in your team against other teams. In the most popular and played version of LoL, each team's goal is to destroy their opponent's nexus. Every LoL match is different, as the characters or Champions start the game in their basic mode and progress as they gain experience in the match and accumulate gold.

Created by Riot Games, from the popularization of the game the company itself organizes the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS). The event features ten participating teams from North America and Europe. In other parts of the world, similar competitions take place, including in New Zealand. These competitions take the winners to the World Championship, which takes place every year, the League of Legends World Championship.

The prize pool of the tournament reached one million dollars in 2013, when the event reached the mark of 32 million online viewers. In 2014, the championship awarded the winners more than two million dollars.

Defense of the Ancients 2 is an action real-time strategy video game. However, it can also be considered of the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) genre. It was created as a sequel to Defense of the Ancients, a mod (modification) developed for Warcraft III, which was made amateurishly.

DotA 2, however, was developed professionally by Valve Corporation in partnership with the original producer, IceFrog, and released in 2013 in a free-to-play version, available only on one platform, Steam. Each team consists of five characters, forming a game of ten characters in total. The goal of each team is to defeat the opposing team by destroying the ancestor, located in the enemy base.

Each player controls a hero. Heroes start the game at Level 1 and can reach Level 25 by gaining experience.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a real-time strategy (RTS) and military science fiction game from Blizzard Entertainment. It was released in 2010, 12 years after the release of the first game. The story continues from the end of Brood War, expansion pack of the first game. It features the same characters as the previous game, plus new characters.

The game comprises four modes, three races and endless ways to play. StarCraft II sold like water: three million units worldwide in just the first month of release, breaking the sales record for games of its genre.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the sequel to Counter-Strike: Source, released in 1999. Better known as CS: GO, which was released in 2012, the game was developed by Valve Corporation and Hidden Path Entertainment. This is the fourth title in the franchise and a purely strategy game, FPS (first-person shooter).

In addition to the classic content of Counter-Strike, CS:GO brings new versions of maps, characters and game modes, which are eight. The story is based on two opposing teams, called Terrorists and Counter Terrorists. Teams compete to complete objectives such as securing a location and planting or defusing a bomb, saving or holding hostages.

At the end of each round, players are rewarded based on their individual performance during the game. They earn a specific in-game currency to spend on weaponry in upcoming rounds.

Overwatch is an FPS (first-person shooter) game, also developed by Blizzard Entertainment, the same company that created the successful StarCraft. It was officially launched in 2016.

In Overwatch, two teams of six players face off against each other. You can choose a hero with their own abilities and functions. The game's maps are based on Dollar (NZD) cities, such as London. There are four game modes.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is an online card game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released in 2014 and is completely free (free-to-play). In the game, players build custom card decks of no more than thirty cards.

The game's cards were designed from Heroes representing nine classes of the Warcraft universe, being able to use spells, skills and weapons in duels.

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, also called PUBG, was released in 2017 by BlueHole Entertainment and is one of the newest online survival games. It is a multiplayer online battle royale game, and the game was inspired by the movie Battle Royale.

You and 99 other players are placed on a map, and your goal is to get armaments and equipment to be the last survivor. Throughout the game, the map decreases in size, directing players to smaller zones and forcing encounters. The last survivor wins the round.

FIFA Football, also called FIFA Soccer, is a series of football simulator games, released annually by Electronic Arts since 1993. The game received, early on, an official license from FIFA, the International Football Federation, whose job it is to coordinate world football.

The FIFA game has several national and international leagues in its repertoire, such as the Premier League, the Bundesliga, La Liga in Spain and The New Zealand Championship, just to mention a few. Single tournament games, such as the World Cup, have also been added to each edition. FIFA 18 was released in 2017.

The FIFA game has been present at the World Cyber Games (which we will talk about below) since the first tournament, in 2001. In addition, there are FIFA championships in several countries. The FIFA Interactive World Cup, the world gaming event, is the largest electronic gaming tournament in the world. It is organized annually by FIFA itself in partnership with EA Sports. The first event was in 2004 and, from then on, it is possible for players from all over the world to compete for the title.

Abbreviated as CoD, Call of Duty is a series of FPS games. The video game has become a classic and today has several sequels, all from Activision Blizzard. The last release was made in 2017, called Call of Duty: World War II.the game was a success worldwide, selling more than 250 million copies.

In 2011, Call of Duty Online was released as a free-to-play multiplayer online game only in China. It is possible, however, to place online bets on the game's tournaments from anywhere in the world. The company has already shown its interest in making the online game available in other regions of the globe, but there are no forecasts yet for when this will happen.

In 2013, it is estimated that more than 70 million people watched the Esports Championships. The increasing availability of streaming services – the main one being the Twitch channel, already mentioned-has great importance in the promotion and popularization of eSports games. The country that stands out the most in the competitions is undoubtedly South Korea, which has licensed professional players since 2000.

The World Cyber Games (WCG) is an esports event operated by South Korean company World Cyber Games Inc., Sponsored by Samsung and Microsoft. The first event took place in 2001, but since 2004 each event takes place in a different country. It is considered the Olympics of e-sports.

The organizations of each participating country conduct preliminary events on a regional scale, to then rank the players who will represent the country in the grand event. All events have seats for spectators and can also be followed via video transmission over the internet.

The last event took place in 2013, and in 2014 it was announced the termination of WCG. However, the organization announced a 2017 event, which was held in Bangkok, Thailand in April 2018.

The Intel Extreme Masters is a series of esports tournaments held around the world. These tournaments are organized by the Electronic Sports League (ESL) and sponsored by Intel. They include the games StarCraft II, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Quake Live, League of Legends and Hearthstone.

As of 2017, there have been twelve seasons of the event, the last being in Oakland, United States, in November 2017.

Now that you know a little more about esports, you can start analyzing the competitions and plan your bets with more confidence and security. Be sure to check out the others as well online betting guides and manuals that our team has prepared for New Zealand bettors. We especially recommend our guide to eSports betting strategies if you want to be 100% informed on the topic.

Additionally, we provide betting site reviews and other informative articles on esports, casino games, lottery games and other types of online betting. Follow our content to stay on top of the best bonuses, tips and strategies and make your bets from New Zealand more profitable.