Did you know there is a massive tournament taking place over the next six weeks and if you are in the UK, you may not even know a thing about it? That’s because the big event is the League of 
Legends World Championship 2017 and unless you are an esports fan, then this massive tournament may well have escaped your attention.
However, if you are a Bet365 Sport customer, then the great news is you can enjoy all kinds of fantastic betting opportunities on this massive esports event, as well as a number of other esports events taking place all around the world, every day of the week, every week of the year.
If you aren’t a customer yet then why not sign up with the Bet365 Bonus Code outlined in the link? Full details available on that page.
If you are already a customer and wondering just what esports are, don’t worry as in this article, we’ll give you a brief description of both esports and League of Legends, before we explore the World Championships in a bit more detail and the great esports betting markets you can bet on at Bet365 Sport over the next six weeks.
What are Esports?
Esports, at their most basic level, are computer games that can be played by a number of people against each other, either individually or in teams. In each esport, players can complete a number of tasks or missions against their opponent(s) and the team that completes their task and/or defeats the other team or opponent will win the game.
Of course, what the tasks are that players need to complete in order to win, depends on the esports game played. In FIFA Soccer for example, this may be to win a match against another team. In Counter Strike: Global Offensive, this may be to complete the mission, or kill all members of the opposition team in battle.
At the highest level of esports gaming, there are relatively few games played and there are professional esports players and teams competing regularly across these games. The most popular esports game in the world at present and their commonly-used abbreviations are:
- League of Legends (LoL)
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO)
- Defense of the Ancients 2 – (DOTA2)
- StarCraft II (SCII)
Although there are a number of other games played by esports fanatics, these four games offer the greatest number of tournaments and the greatest number of betting markets for punters to back throughout the year.
For this article, we are going to focus on the League of Legends game as the biggest tournament for that game, the World Championships is taking place in China across four different venues over the next four weeks.
What is League of Legends?
League of Legends is what is termed a “multi-player online battle arena” game. This is often shortened to “MOBA”. The game is played by teams of five players who each take on the role of a “summoner” who can select from the myriad of characters available in the game to represent them on screen.
Each individual character in the game has a number of special qualities and abilities individual to that character. Furthermore, each of the five players in the team takes on a specific role in that team. These roles refer to the ‘positions’ each player has in the team. They are Top Laner, Jungler, Mid-Laner, AD Carry and Support. These roles also require players to have specific types of skills in order for the team to succeed.
Each team of five players takes on another team on the same map with the aim of destroying the other teams base (called a “Nexus”) to win the game. As each player character plays through the game, for every successful task or kill they achieve they will improve in strength and increase their level, unlocking more powerful skills and characteristics to use against their opponents.
Although essentially a simple game, the fact players have differing roles in the team that require different skills plus the massive number of characters available in the game mean that LoL games at the highest level are always highly competitive.
What are the LoL World Championships?
There are many League of Legends tournaments played throughout the year, but the most prestigious is the League of Legends World Championship. This is the seventh year that the competition has been held dating back to 2011 and it is the first of these tournaments to have the current format.
Since 2013, Korean teams have been dominant in the event, with SK Telecom T1 winning it on three occasions (2013, 2015, 2016) and Samsung Galaxy White winning it in 2014. The other two winners came back in the first two seasons when Fnatic and Taipei Assassins won the tournament.
The winners of this tournament are regarded as the best League of Legends team in the world and they take home a massive cash prize, usually well in excess of £1,000,000.
How are the LoL World Championships 2017 organised?
Typically the World Championship saw a league-based opening section of the tournament, followed by a knockout stage, but for the 2017 World Championships, a special Play-In event has been organised to allow more teams to compete for a place in the lucrative league stage.
This Play In event opens the tournament across the first two weekends and indeed, the first groups in this part of the tournament have been decided over the weekend, with the final two groups set to be decided in the coming days.
The Play In offers teams from countries not likely to qualify directly to the League Stage a chance to play in the World Championship and even qualify for the league stage if they can progress through the initial League Stage and then a one match playoff. The four teams that win these playoff games will earn a spot in the league stages.
The first two days of action have already seen Groups A and B decided with Group A seeing Team WE and Lyon Gaming qualify, with Gambit CIS eliminated and in Group B, Cloud9 and Team oNe eSports qualified ahead of LG Dire Wolves, albeit Team oNe esports only qualifying through a tiebreaker.
Group C (Fnatic, Kaos Latin Gamers and Young Generation) and Group D (Fenerbahce, HK Attitude and Rampage) will be played across Sep 25 and Sep 26 to decide which two teams will qualify for Round 2 of the Play In.
Round 2 takes place at the weekend and features the eight qualified teams battling it out in a winner-takes-all single match for a place in the League stage. The top seed in each group will take on a second seed from another group in a Best-of-Five match up to decide who progresses.
The four qualifiers will then join the 12 teams already qualified for the Group Stage, where each team will play the other teams in its group twice to decide which two teams from each group progress into the playoffs.
In the playoffs, the eight teams play a straight knockout across successive weekends to decide who reaches the final, with the eventual winner being declared League of Legends World Champions 2017.
What betting does Bet365 offer on the Lol Worlds 2017?
Due to the massive popularity of these events on Live Streaming services such as Twitch, there is massive interest on the betting markets on the LoL Worlds 2017 and the great news is that Bet365 has you covered by offering a massive choice of markets.
Not only can you bet on the outcome of each stage of the tournament, but there is a very competitive outright market if you fancy picking the winner, but there is also plenty of betting available for each game of the tournament, especially when you get to the Group and Playoff stages.
Who are the likely winners of the LoL Worlds 2017?
Although there were 24 teams in with a chance of winning the event when the tournament started, in reality it seems likely that the winner will come from Korea. Such is the dominance of Korean teams at this event in the past few years and their generally higher level of play, that the three Korean teams confirmed as in the League stages are much shorter odds than other teams.
SK Telecom T1 and Longzhu Gaming are 7/4 joint favourites with Samsung Galaxy a 13/2 shot with the best odds team being the Chinese side World Elite who are 14/1. My pick for the event would be Longzhu Gaming who seem to have broken SK Telecom T1’s grip on the Korean qualifying division and who should have enough quality to win this on Nov 4th.
