Betting on League of Legends
League of Legends is a eSports discipline that not only has a multi-million dollar fan base, but is also very popular with bookmakers and sports betting enthusiasts.
League of Legends, developed in 2009 by Riot Games, is a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) cooperative strategy game. Each game is played between two teams, with five players in each team. The team that destroys the enemy’s base wins. The game is set in the fantasy world of Runterra, invented by the developers. Before the match, players get to choose their own characters, called “the champions” in the game.
The game is one of the top 5 most popular cyber sports disciplines. The game’s developers claim to have at least 100 million fans in all countries around the world. LoL is played in local tournaments around the world as well as in world championships that are played in special tournaments run by professional leagues.
The game is popular with bookmakers, both because of the huge army of fans and because of the gameplay, which allows betting on a number of very attractive features for users.
Professional tournaments are played on the Calling Gorge map. Betting shops accept standard bets on the winner of the match, but also offer wagers on a number of other parameters:
- Betting on the winner of a particular game.
- First Blood Wager: guess the team or player who made the first kill in the game.
- Total score bet: the ratio of characters killed is guessed.
- Total Frags bet: the number of characters killed by a particular team or player is guessed.
- Bet on total destroyed structures: the number of defensive towers destroyed is guessed.
- Betting on individual totals: it is necessary to predict as accurately as possible the achievements of the team or the selected player.
- Betting on the highest-scoring player.
- Betting on the highest-scoring team.
- Betting on a handicap.
- Bet on the number of victories in battles against a neutral monster in the Caller Ravine.
- Bet on a blocked hero: guess the hero the team is blocking, making him unavailable to the opponent.
- Betting on the total of the destroyed Inhibitors (a special construction in the game).
Also during big tournaments bookmakers accept bets such as: bets on reaching the semi-finals of certain teams, bets on reaching the finals and super-finals, bets on the winner.
In LoL, as in any other type of cyber sport, experienced bettors make bets based on specific factors inherent to the game. In particular, they pay attention to the composition of the teams, the substitutions made before the game (which are very important), the characters chosen by the players, the format of the tournament (LAN or online) and the “first-tower-destruction factor”.
Betting odds depend on the importance of the tournament, team and player ratings and the odds for the same tournament at rival institutions.
