A beginner’s guide to Valorant betting
The boom in esports gaming over the past decade or so has been driven by a number of key games, with Valorant – and CS:GO, the title it was inspired by – at the heart of it.
Valorant, the tactical first-person shooter, lends itself perfectly to competitive gaming, with strategic teamwork crucial to success regardless of the game format being played.
The Valorant Champions trophy is one of the most sought after in gaming, with plenty of prestige and no lack of prize money. By 2023, the prize pool for the tournament had been increased to a handsome $2.25m (£1.8m).
While the popularity of Valorant and other esports games is still in its boom phase, so also is the interest in betting on the biggest leagues and tournaments around the world.
You can sample Valorant betting for yourself right here at LeoVegas. We cover all of the leading events from around the globe, with bet types ranging from match winner to total maps, individual map winner and more besides.
The popularity of esports and Valorant betting
The growth of competitive esports over the past few years is extraordinary, and the trendlines suggest that this pattern will continue into the future.
The success of the video game industry needs little introduction, but its competitive gaming offshoot – powered by commercial interest and steadily increasing prize money – has captured the imagination of talented players keen to take their ‘casual’ gaming to the next level.
According to the data, there were 435 million people worldwide who were streaming esports content in 2020. Within two years, that audience had grown to 532 million, while projections for 2024 and beyond expect the global esports crowd to have smashed through the 600 million mark.
It was around 2015 that esports betting odds began to be offered by bookmakers such as LeoVegas, with the popularity of the niche such that you’ll now find esports taking pride of place within our A-Z of available sports to wager upon.
A history of Valorant
Riot Games, which developed the incredibly popular League of Legends franchise that is also used in competitive gaming, began work on Valorant back in 2014.
Six years of building a brand-new gameworld finally saw the release of the first edition of Valorant in 2020, with reviews overwhelmingly positive – many drawing comparisons with CS:GO and Overwatch in the realm of strategic first-person shooters.
Riot Games created its inaugural Valorant tournament, First Strike, in 2020, with the success of that event leading to the development of the Champions Tour, which remains the flagship Valorant esports tournament to this day.
The Champions Tour has three tiers of competition in its current ‘Partnerships’ era, with International Leagues acting as regional qualifiers for the Masters, a series of events midway through the seasons, and Champions, which is effectively the world championship of Valorant.
At the time of writing, 30 franchised teams have been accepted as Valorant partners, with Evil Geniuses defeating Paper Rex to claim victory in the 2023 Champions Tour grand finale.
How to bet on Valorant
With a huge number of Valorant tournaments and leagues being held throughout the year, it’s no wonder that this game has become one of the most popular esports betting options.
And it couldn’t be any easier to bet on Valorant – all you need is a live LeoVegas account before making your first deposit into it.
Once your account has been funded, you can explore the various games in our esports category, with Valorant one of the most bet on by our players.
Valorant supports dozens of bet types and markets – more on those shortly – across a packed schedule of events throughout the year. You can wager on all of them right here at LeoVegas.
To place a bet on Valorant, simply locate the tournament/league you want to wager on via our esports menu. After finding your chosen bet, click on the odds attached to that selection – this will add them to your bet slip. You can add further picks to create doubles, trebles, and accumulators, or simply wager on that single selection by adding your stake to the box provided in the bet slip.
You can bet pre-event or live thanks to our in-play betting options, so there’s no better place to wager on Valorant than LeoVegas.
Valorant betting markets
When it comes to placing your Valorant bet, you have access to numerous different wagering options.
You can bet on who you think will win a match, what the map score will be, how many maps will be played, and even map handicaps if you think the betting favourite will dominate or that the underdog will put in a strong performance.
You can also bet on individual maps, as well as trying to predict the correct score, while many of our Valorant betting markets are available in play – you can stream the action and place your bets accordingly.
Valorant betting: match winner
The most straightforward of the Valorant betting markets, the match-winner category, is exactly as the name suggests.
You simply take the odds of the team you think will win the match. It makes no difference how the action plays out or what the final map score is – all you care about is getting the win.
Valorant betting: map winner
A map is the virtual landscape in which each round of Valorant takes place. Generally, there are three maps played per match – the team that wins two or more of the three maps is declared the winner.
Each of these maps has different characteristics, with different types of players thriving in each – this knowledge can really help to add contexts to your map winner bets.
Valorant betting: total rounds
In Valorant, a team has to win 13 rounds in order to be declared map winner.
With three maps to be played, there’s the potential for dozens of rounds to be played per match – you can bet on the ‘overs’ or ‘unders’ line provided by LeoVegas, which corresponds to whether you think there will be lots of rounds played or few.
Valorant betting: live bets
As mentioned, there are two ways to place a Valorant bet: pre-match or live.
Many of our most popular bet types, from match winner to total rounds, are available in play, which is perfect if you want to watch some of the early gameplay before placing your wagers.
How to bet on Valorant leagues
The blue riband event of Valorant is the Champions Tour, which is fed by many different leagues and tournaments around the globe.
Some of the most popular of these are found in Asia, where Valorant is one of the most-played esports games available.
The Valorant Challengers League (VCL) has editions in Korea and South Asia, while another popular Valorant league – VLA EMEA – covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Many different websites and providers publish monthly and yearly schedules of Valorant events, so you can easily find out when these most competitive leagues are being played.
How to bet on Valorant tournaments
The tournament schedule of Valorant is broken down into events that are held in specific jurisdictions and those with wider ‘international’ eligibility.
The top-three tiers of Valorant tournaments are the Challengers, Masters and Champions circuits. The Challengers events provide players with a chance to showcase their skills and make the most of the pathway into higher-profile international and global tournaments.
The Masters circuit is made up of teams that qualify from their regional heats, with the final tournament itself considered to be the second most prestigious prize in Valorant gaming after Champions.
At the top of the tree we have Champions, for which only the best players and teams will qualify. Held annually at the end of the Valorant season (typically in August), Champions features a group stage format from which the best teams qualify for the knockout stage – and the chance to play for the top prize.
Valorant betting FAQs
What is a handicap in Valorant betting?
A handicap is a hypothetical number of maps taken off, or added to, each team’s score – if the final score was 3-1 to Evil Geniuses, a -1.5 map handicap bet on them would win – take -1.5 from 3 and you still have 1.5, which is more than their opponents’ tally of 1.
Can you bet on tournament winner in Valorant?
Yes – at LeoVegas, we offer outright betting for Valorant tournaments alongside individual match betting odds.
Can you bet on Valorant matches live?
We offer dozens of pre-match betting odds for Valorant, of which many are made available ‘live’ once the action is underway.