Esports betting has grown and grown during lockdown, and with more money flowing into the industry during the global COVID-19 pandemic, games such as League of Legends, Fortnite and Call of Duty have been popular destinations for sports bettors looking to broaden their betting scope.
Which game has been the most popular across the board? Well, it’s a close run thing further down the list, but LOOT.BET have looked at all the analytics and come up with some great information about exactly where esports bettors money has been going in the last 12 months.
Over the past year, as you can see below, it’s been a year dominated by bettors investing in CS:GO, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to you and me.
As you can see, CS:GO saw by far the most money changing hands, with 53% of the total money placed on Esports during this period. Coming in second was the phenomenally popular Dota 2 with 35%, and those two games were predictably trailed by some distance as League of Legends (LoL) scooped up a further 7% of the bet slips.
The LOOT.BET study not only picked on some amusing traits of backers from certain countries (the luckiest bettors apparently came from Ukraine, Sweden, and Hungary but the unluckiest users came from Spain, Canada, and South Korea) but also dug into the numbers on which events and which teams were most popular and how often those teams paid off their investors.
Let’s take a look at some of those numbers.
As you can see, the Road to Rio and Pro League events were extremely popular, with teams such as Na’Vi inspiring bettors to part with their cash more often than any other team. It was Team Heroic who banked the biggest bets, however, with Team Liquid averaging the maximum bet size when you break down the numbers to an average.
That’s not a guarantee of profit, of course, and it’s interesting to note that the most profitable team was Gambit, while the least profitable for punters in 2020 was Team Singularity. By total losses, fnatic let down their fans who invested on more than a few occasions, while Sprout and Team Spirit both saw their total winnings maxed out and will inspire their fans to double down next time they back their esports favourites.
Football has proved to be just as popular as an esport as it is a physical sport in the past 12 months. Events such as the ePL Tournaments that were won by Diogo Jota and James Maddison respectively made FIFA 21 the fourth most popular game and in a year dominated by tough headlines to read for many, it’s clear that esports continues to be a betting format which is picking up new players and betting fans all the time, spreading some positivity too.
In 2021, those numbers are bound to go up and up, and following the action on LOOT.BET and other esports betting apps and websites is a great way to get involved if you’re not already. With betting volume up by 67% and active users up by 58% on LOOT.BET alone, everything points to more exciting esports investment opportunities throughout 2021.
