League of Legends betting

League of Legends (LoL) has one of the largest gaming communities today. There’s literally over a hundred million players worldwide. This means that there’re millions and millions of players watching League of Legends esports. Many of these people are over 18 and enjoy betting as well. As a popular esports title, sportsbooks are drawn to League of Legends and regularly offers LoL betting markets. On this page, we will look at both the betting side of League of Legends, esports and the actual game and history.

LoL betting in Canada

League of Legends betting is a lot of fun thanks to the broad offering of matches and betting markets. For major esports competitions in LoL, it’s not unusual to see over 30 pre-match betting markets, markets such as “First Blood”, “Baron Nashor Slain” and “Pentakill to Happen”. Pre-match means markets that are available for betting before the match starts, in contrast to in-play, which is betting in real-time on live matches that are being played. Live betting is equally attractive with lots of betting markets and with League of Legends streams available through Twitch or YouTube Gaming. As a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) type of game, two teams compete against each other. Each player in respective team controls a champion character which they evolve and grow stronger during the course of the game. The objective is to destroy the other team’s base first, and everything that stands in the way. There’re loads of action, lots of skill and advanced tactics involved. League of Legends was first released in 2009. It would take some years until the esports scene took off along with LoL betting. To this day League of Legends is still growing and the esports tournaments attract large crowds, millions of viewers watching the streams while betting on the games online. Most bookmakers in Canada offer odds on League of Legends.

History of League of Legends

League of Legends was inspired by the original Dota, the originator of the MOBA genre. The founders of Riot Game made some critical decisions during the development of the game during 2007 and 2008. More than one company at the time were developing MOBA-styled games. Most tried to copy Dota. Riot instead took the concept and improved on it in their unique way. One massive factor behind the success of League of Legends is that the publishers opted for a free-to-play model. Another famous but not nearly as successful competitor during the release in 2009 was Heroes of Newerth (HoN). Initially, HoN was more popular and looked like they were winning the MOBA race; however, a lot of players was scared away from purchasing HoN. These players all ended up playing League of Legends who slowly and steadily rose to the top and has remained there ever since. Across the globe, more than 10.5 million hours are played every day. Millions and millions of people watch esports matches and follow their favorite LoL teams and players. Sportsbooks receive hundreds of millions in turnover from League of Legends betting every year.

Evolution of League of Legends Tournaments

Today, League of Legends is one of the largest esports in the world. If we go back to 2011, the game publishers, Riot Gaming, had only started experimenting with professional competitive gaming. The first League of Legends tournament was held, Worlds Season 1, during the annual DreamHack Summer event in June 2011. The prize pool was huge for the time, $100,000, $50,000 for the winner. The tournament ended up attracting more than 1,6 million viewers online. The following tournament, Worlds Season 2, was a disaster. The tournament was held in Southern California and was riddled by technical issues. This was a wake-up call for Riot, to improve on their competitive model to make LoL esports more attractive. After that League of Legends World Championship has continued to attract more and more viewers and ever-increasing prize pools. The prize pool of the next LoL Worlds is not revealed yet but is estimated at between $2,000,000-$6,000,000 which will be split among the competing teams.

Popular LoL Leagues and Tournaments Today

As we already mentioned, the most prestigious League of Legends tournament is the World Championship which is held once every year and boasts a massive prize pool. Also, there is one more large international tournament called Mid-Season Invitational, which is held once a year, usually boasting a prize pool in excess of $1,000,000. Outside international tournaments there are loads of regional leagues in LoL esports. All with their own quirky abbreviations, LCS = League of Legends Championship Series in North America, LPL = League of Legends Pro League in China, LCK = League of Legends Champions Korea, LEC = League of Legends European Championship and many more in regions across the world. Also, for all the territories above, there are development leagues. In Canada and the US, there’s even the ULoL Campus Series for universities across North America. The participants in the ULoL Campus Series are granted scholarship opportunities if they make it to the playoff stages.

Popular LoL teams and organizations

Every esports has its fix star. For League of Legends, one of the most famous stars is Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok from South Korea. He has been part of SK Telecom T1 since 2013 and leads the team to no less than three World Championship titles. Faker has a reported salary of $2,500,000 per year excluding tournament earnings. What makes Faker fascinating is that he turned down a $10,000,000 per year offer for a part-ownership of the SK Telecom T1 organization. From Canada, there are three prominent League of Legends pros, Wildturtle, Smoothie and Licorice.

The most dominant team in League of Legends esports is SK Telecom T1 led by Faker, to date in 2020 they’ve won 74% of all their 325 professional LoL matches. No other organization comes even close to such dominant numbers. Other popular League of Legends teams include G2 Esports, DragonX, Cloud9 Gaming, Invictus Gaming, JD Gaming, Fnatic. Top Esports and Gen G Esports.

Summary

League of Legends is both one of the most popular games in history. LoL esports is also one of the most popular esports when it comes to betting. In terms of turnover and bets placed in Canadian bookmakers, League of Legends is in the top together with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. With no signs of the popularity to go down, you’ll likely be able to enjoy many more years of League of Legends betting.