Support your favourite esports teams face the biggest challenges at the following events. These are the best international tournaments for esports betting.
Esports is trending worldwide with teams and video game titles becoming mainstream knowledge. Don’t miss out on the biggest events to play spectator sports in an era where streaming and online betting services for every event is accessible. Here are the top five esports tournaments you should follow.
League of Legends World Championship
The League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) happens annually between October to November. It was the first and most prestigious official tournament for Riot Game’s flagship title, League of Legends. The event only had 8 participants from different regions when it debuted in 2011 and now it hosts over 20 teams annually.
The number of participants can change every year depending on changes made every season. That includes the number of seeds per region and agreement with regional esport organizers. Teams have to earn points at minor esport tournaments that are organized in partnership with Riot Games.
These points determine their rank in their region’s leaderboard and opportunity to be invited to compete at the regional major leagues. Winning this will reward them a spot at the Worlds tournament. The circuit begins in January of the following year after the last season. Athletes are encouraged to use the rest of November and December to rest.
VALORANT Champions
VALORANT is Riot Games’ second-biggest video game title that debuted in 2020. They hosted First Strike as the first major tournament for the game in December of that year. It also serves as the game’s promotional event as it is immediately followed by the start of the 2021 VALORANT Championship Tour (VCT 2021). The VCT series is the game’s official year-long circuit that accumulates to VALORANT Champions as the main event.
The first VCT gave seeds to the following regions:
• North America
• Europe
• CIS
• Turkey
• South Korea
• Japan
• Southeast Asia
• Brazil
The VCT format includes three Masters major events throughout the year. These majors are international events hosted by participating cities around the world. Teams have to win their region’s Challengers events to qualify for Masters. Regions with more than one country involved have their own national local events to represent them in Challengers.
Placements in any tournament reward every team with certain amounts of points for the circuit. The team that wins Masters 3 earns a spot at the Champions. Participants with the most number of circuit points are given slots for the tournament depending on the number of slots open for their region.
The Last Chance Qualifier opens one slot for four regions each. These regions have to host a final tournament for invited teams only so the opportunity depends on the organizers and Riot Games. Some countries that cannot qualify for the Challengers and Masters can still participate in Champions through the Last Chance Qualifier.
Dota 2: The International
Valve’s Dota 2 remains one of the most influential competitive multiplayer games in the world. It is only fitting that The International have the highest prize pool among all esports tournaments. The main event takes place in August every year except for the 2021 running which takes place in October.
Most of The International’s participants are teams with the highest Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) points in their respective regions. Afterwards, the remaining six slots are opened to winners of qualifiers consisting of the remaining top 11 teams from each region’s leaderboard.
Dota 2 teams can only earn points if they are placed as one of the top 6 in a regional tournament or top 8 in majors. There are six regional league events and 11 major league tournaments in the DPC. Each regional event has two divisions in which players can qualify through minor leagues that are hosted by local organizers partnered with Valve.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is another one of the most influential video game titles from Valve that inspired the team-based shooting esport genre. The main event is simply called the CS:GO Major Championship (Major) which consists of three tournament stages.
The first is the Challengers Stage where the new season’s Minors’ champions compete against last season’s fallen participants. Winners of the Challengers Stage proceed to fight against the top teams from every Major who were granted a ‘Legend’ status.
The New Champions Stage or Playoffs is a competition between the top eight teams from the Legends Stage. Besides the Major Championship, bettors should also look forward to major events hosted by Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) and Electronic Sports League (ESL).
ESL Pro Tour StarCraft II
ESL and Dreamhack partnered with Blizzard to host the ESL Pro Tour (EPT) as the new professional circuit for StarCraft II. The schedule is similar to the WCS with a year-long series of tournaments leading up to the main event. The final stages of the tour used to be held at BlizzCon but the new EPT holds its finale at the IEM Katowice.
This new arrangement is only a delay for Blizzard’s World Championship Series (WCS). EPT is a three-year-long contract with the organizers as Blizzard focuses on company changes for a while. The main event is the Masters Championship with 36 players from around the world.
The entire EPT series, however, is divided into two regions, South Korea and the rest of the world that is split into sub-regions. South Korea has the Global StarCraft League (GSL) tournament throughout the year. The top players from this tournament become the representatives of EPT Korea.
The following list enumerates all of the participating regions. Each bullet represents a sub-region with the countries and continents that share it:
• Europe and Africa
• USA and Canada
• Latin America
• Mainland China
• Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, and Mongolia
• Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and all Asian countries are not assigned in any other sub-region.
This region is called the EPT Circuit and it has 9 seeds while EPT Korea has 7. These participants proceed to the IEM Katowice’s Round play-in stage with 4 double-elimination brackets consisting of 4 players each.
Players are then divided into 4 groups of 6 players each with a round-robin format. The results determine each players’ placement in the single-elimination bracket. Every match is held with a best of 3 but the grand finals is a best of 7. The other esports tournaments included on this list are team games. StarCraft II is a single-player game so you should focus your attention on individuals rather than group performances.