Esports Betting Site Reviews For 2024
While Esports didn’t really sweep the world in a frenzy like Texas Hold’em poker, the genre is still starting to catch on today and become very widespread. In fact, early in 2016 ESPN, the main channel, ran a long series on Esports events, profiling players and chronicling the various tournaments in which these players compete.
If you’re an Esports player, then you’re probably thrilled that the genre you love is finally getting the notoriety it deserves. However, if you’re one who likes to gamble on Esports, then you’re probably even more thrilled, perhaps even beside yourself, that the genre is taking off.
The more popular Esports become, the more tournaments are held gathering more and more players. And with these tournaments and an abundance of players come the handicappers and the lines and all the opportunities you need to bet on Esports tournaments and matches.
Of course, not every sportsbook offering Esports will be an instant winner. Like with anything in the gambling realm, some sites will be fantastic and worth your time and money to sign up with, while others will be shoddy, low-rent destinations that you want to avoid like the plague. How do you differentiate between the two extremes here?
This is where we come in. We sign up for these sites and play there and check out the goings-on and the innermost features of the sites, and we deliver to you a verdict on which sites are good, and a detailed breakdown of the sites, including the site’s many features and potential benefits you can reap by playing there.
Most Trusted Esports Betting Sites For 2024
| Site Review | Bonus Offer | Rating /100 | US Friendly | Play Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bovada Sportsbook | $750 | 98% | Yes | Play Now |
Why the Right Esports Betting Site Matters
You have to understand that dealing with sports betting lines creates a unique situation with a sportsbook online. For instance, imagine a sportsbook that has great software, quick load times, lucrative bonuses, and more. Now this might seem like a great destination. But now imagine that the lines on this sportsbook are not only limited in relation to the competition but even off by a few points. This can lead to disastrous results.
A sportsbook has to be on the up and up. It has to offer legitimate lines that break in a timely fashion, and it has to offer a variety of sports and lines on which you can bet. Many of today’s sportsbooks fool people by presenting a very aesthetically pleasing environment, but their sports and line options are crap. They don’t offer much in the way of options, and their lines are tampered with by a few points in order to favor heavier flows toward desired outcomes.
This is why you need a solid Esports betting site that scores well in every category. You need a book that’s going to not only give you that smooth and pleasing aesthetic atmosphere, but also a book that’s going to provide you with plenty of betting options and accurate betting lines for the Esports events you want to wager on. This isn’t exactly a rare type of site to find; it’s just that there are many shoddy sites out there stealing space away from the great sites.
We’re here to cut through the muck and to find the best Esports sites for you. It’s a task that we take very seriously, and our mission here is to give you the most accurate, honest reviews in the genre.
An Honest, Impartial take on Esports Betting And Who You Should Trust
We pride ourselves on being honest and impartial when it comes to reviewing these Esports betting sites. If you were to go check out Google or Bing for a review of a certain site, the odds are great that you’ll find the first few pages flooded with paid advertisements. While some of the reviews tend to read as if they’re impartial, all you have to do is keep reading and you’ll notice that the literature paints the site as the best thing in the world.
We don’t go that route. Reviews that we list here on our resource site are sites that have already made the grade and sites that we approve of, but we’re still honest and impartial when speaking about them. We’ll list the pros and the cons, and tell you what we feel the site could use to really put it over the edge as a fantastic Esports site.
This is something that you’re not going to find in too many places. The truth is that most people’s fortunes are tied to referrals and so they wouldn’t dare give you an honest assessment of betting sites. They wouldn’t list anything that might keep you from signing up.
Well, we’re transparent here. Sure, we’d love for you to sign up with the sites we’re recommending, but we’re not going to be shady in the process by telling you a site is a solid A+ when it’s really just a strong B. We do our best to list the most honest and updated information about a site that’s available.
What we Judge Sites On
Throughout the rest of this review page, you’re going to learn about our process of reviewing sites. We don’t just gloss over sites or rely on existing reviews to tell the tale of Esports betting sites. We really dig in, sign up, and play on these sites until we understand them intimately.
First and foremost, we’re a network of gamblers here. We enjoy activities like sports betting, and so we know what it takes to make a good site. This isn’t just some throw-away criteria that sounds good. These are the criteria that gamblers are looking for when seeking out sites on which to bet.
Overall Reputation
No matter how many paid advertisements a company purchases, you cannot drown out the free voice of the market online. In other words, if a site is doing something wrong, its customer base will speak about it openly and loudly.
The same thing with a site that’s doing something right. Its base will sing its praises on social media, on various forums, etc.
This is what we seek out. Whether the result ends up being good or bad, we’re looking for what the actual gamblers are saying about the site. If they say that the site is good and does fair business with plenty of betting options, etc, then we’ll use that to judge the site as having a good reputation. Though if people are really fussing about problems with the site and bad features, then we won’t hesitate to judge the brand negatively.
There are no two ways about it here; we judge a site’s reputation based entirely on what the users of that site are saying. They’re the ones who know for sure what the site is up to, and this is the voice we rely on to judge the reputation.
Fair Play and Security
Every sportsbook in operation today is going to claim to be fair. Even if the site is completely unfair, it’s not going to advertise such a thing. That’s business suicide. So we have to look well beyond the site’s rhetoric in their “about us” sections and their mission statements to truly learn if the site is offering fair play.
Often is the case that fair play sites are awarded this certification, and this is something that cannot be purchased or faked. If a site has earned this, then the site in question has taken great strides to offer an environment of fair play. The same goes with most security certifications that a site will display. Sites cannot simply post these images and pretend to have a secure atmosphere. They would be discovered as hucksters in a second and suffer a huge blow to their reputation.
We look for sites that have been awarded special security certificates, and sites that employ ironclad encryptions in order to keep players safe. Hackers are advancing in lockstep with the rest of the market, so every new generation of software has to be safer and more advanced in how it deflects hackers. We’re looking for the best and brightest when it comes to keeping players secure.
Transparency
Theoretically speaking, a site that’s set up illegally inside of the United States could still accept US players. As long as the site stays in operation, everything operates smoothly. But as soon as that site is busted, which is an inevitability, players’ accounts are frozen and everyone loses money.
This is why we focus on sites that have open and transparent licensing information available. If a site claims to be licensed in Costa Rica, we want to see this license. We want to know which government authority regulates the site, and we want to know how they do it, how often they’re audited, etc. For shadier sites, this information is hard if not impossible to find.
For the better sites out there, of course, this information is more readily available because the site operates transparently and has nothing to hide. So on our long list of criteria when reviewing a site, we’re definitely looking for sportsbooks that are transparent so that we can trace everything that’s going on behind the scenes.
Types of Esports and Lines Offered
There are many popular Esports tournaments, and more and more popping up every year. The International, the League of Legends World Championship, the Battle.net World Championships, the Evolution Series, the Intel Extreme Series, and on and on.
With this array of tournaments, one should be able to find a wide array of betting lines on a sportsbook offering Esports options. One should be able to find straight wagers, spreads, over-under bets, and even proposition bets and live bets. If a site has a great reputation and ironclad security yet doesn’t offer many Esports options, then it’s basically worthless for Esports. Maybe it would be a good site for basketball and other typical sports, which is something we would keep in mind for that niche, but it’s a useless site for Esports.
One of the things we judge more closely than anything else are the actual Esports options available. We’re looking to display sportsbooks that offer a wide variety of Esports betting options. If the site is scant in this area, then it’s not worth our time or yours.
Banking Options (Particularly for Americans)
Although we’re technically catering to everyone who enjoys betting on Esports here, we have a special emphasis on US-based gambling, which is why you can find sites within our network that deal with everything from the legality of betting to tips US-based players can use to find the right offshore sites.
So one criterion on which we focus hard would be the banking options of any particular site. It’s a big plus if a site accepts American players, but US players often need more than credit cards and live banking options.
These options often fail or they easily draw the attention of the IRS. What we’re looking for are sportsbooks that have banking options like PayPal and Bitcoin. PayPal in particular used to be the king in this regard, yet now they’re only found very rarely.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is starting to pick up a huge head of steam, and you can find this option on a lot of sportsbooks. Bitcoin payments and withdrawals are instant, free, and 100% reliable. A site doesn’t technically need a Bitcoin option to be rated by us as legitimate, but it will certainly help. We’re looking for a range of banking options that cater to Americans.
Lucrative Offers for Players
Another important criterion on which we focus is the type of offers that a sportsbook has available to players. Bonuses and promotions are a huge part of the online gambling industry, as any site worth its salt is going to attempt to entice players by sweetening the pot with some free funds and some loyalty bonuses.
Though make no mistake about it; we’re looking for much more than a site that’s claiming to offer a 100% matching bonus of up to $500. While this does sound sweet, it’s not ever as easy as putting in $500 and having $1000 to play with.
These sites are always going to hold onto that money and release it in small increments based on how active you are on the site per betting. So what we’re looking for here are sites that give you far fewer hoops to jump through so that you get your money quicker.
We feel it’s important to stress that online sportsbooks are in no way equal. Just because most typically offer sports in the same range, that doesn’t mean they’re even close to similar. For instance, you can find a site that offers hundred of sports, but they may not offer Esports options at all. Or you can find a site that showcases Esports as a category yet doesn’t carry anything but the big tournaments and leaves you without anything to bet on for 360 days a year.
We’re on the hunt for sportsbooks that do Esports justice, and so we hold these sites to incredibly stringent standards and will not be fooled by aesthetically pleasing sites that offer nothing in the way of substance. So if you want to know about good sites on which you can bet on a variety of Esports, just check out our impartial reviews.