The Best Betting Sites for Overwatch
Overwatch has firmly established itself as one of the most popular and profitable esports in the world, making it ideal for betting.
Many sports bookmakers and other esports betting sites have embraced Overwatch and it isn’t generally too difficult to find markets for this particular game.
In this guide, we’ll go through the game’s basic features, tell you a little bit about its history, and point you in the direction of the sites we think are the best for betting on Overwatch.
How is Overwatch Played?
Overwatch is played in two teams of six, with each player choosing from a roster of around 24 characters. These characters are divided into four fairly broad categories:
- Offence – good firepower and mobility but relatively frail
- Defence – slower but more resilient, good for locking down areas
- Tank – possess the largest health pools so can shield teammates from enemy fire
- Support – can heal or help their teammates in other ways and hurt their enemies
Best Esports Bonuses
Here’s a list of our favourite esports games bonuses that should be on your bucket list
18+ only. New UK players. Welcome Bonus: New Players only, 1st Deposit, Min Deposit: £10, max £10 bonus, valid for 14 days, bets must be placed at odds of 1/1 or greater and be settled within 14 days of placement. System bets no eligible View full T&C
Each character has its own unique abilities and attributes so an effective balance within the team is crucial to success.
However, unlike in other MOBAs such as League of Legends or Dota 2, players can tactically switch their heroes during the game.
There are more than a dozen maps to play on and four modes:
- Control – best of five where both teams try to defend an area of the map from their opponents
- Assault – One team is designated as attackers and the other defenders. The attackers try to take two control points of the map and the defenders try to stop them. They switch once the points are acquired or the time runs out
- Escort – The attackers must push a payload along a pre-defined route before the time runs out. The teams then switch. The winner is the team which completes the task fastest or gets closed if neither team reaches their destination
- Hybrid – Starts as Assault then turns into Escort
As in other esports, the meta (what kind of gameplay is fashionable/effective in the current season) will affect how the game is played, and which heroes are being played most.
Ultimately, the meta could determine which teams and players prosper in the esport over a particular season, since certain players are less comfortable with different metas and it may give an advance to an otherwise weaker opponent.
Available Bets on Overwatch
As per below there are a variety of betting options available on Overwatch and what they mean:
Outright
Outright bets involve predicting the overall winner of a big tournament such as the Overwatch World Cup, or the Overwatch leagues ahead of time.
As with traditional sports, you can bet on the team you think will win the Overwatch World Cup months in advance of the competition taking place.
Money-Line
Essentially the same as outright, as you are still betting on the outcome, but this time it is for individual matches and isn’t usually available until close to the date of the match.
Handicap
Handicap bets are bets where one team is given a starting advantage. Handicaps are typically +1.5 or -1.5 so a team with a +1.5 handicap only needs to lose by one game, or win outright, in a best-of-five match.
Live Bets
Some bookmakers offer in-play betting where you can bet on the winner of the next round, the success of a player, total kills etc just as you might bet on the next scorer or the next player to get a sent off in football, for example.
Bonuses & Specials
Sometimes bookmakers may offer bonuses on popular markets, as part of a site welcome bonus for new customers.
Sites may also run specials for big tournaments such as the Overwatch World Cup, or in-game specials on certain players, for example.
18+ only. New UK players. Welcome Bonus: New Players only, 1st Deposit, Min Deposit: £10, max £10 bonus, valid for 14 days, bets must be placed at odds of 1/1 or greater and be settled within 14 days of placement. System bets no eligible View full T&C
Best Sites to Bet on Overwatch
Overwatch has carved a place for itself among the esports elites and chances are, if a sports bookmaker is offering esports betting, you will find Overwatch betting markets.
This is one esports game where you may actually be spoilt for choice when it comes to betting sites, so we’ve compiled the table below to give you a helping hand in choosing the best sites to bet on Overwatch.
How to Place a Winning Bet
When you are looking to place any kind of sporting bet, there are a couple of factors that you should take into consideration. Esports are no exception.
Here are a few things to research to improve your chances of placing a winning bet on Overwatch:
- Study the current form of both teams – are they on a streak?
- Also, where are they ranked in the world? – form could be temporary
- Head-to-head stats – some teams beat better opponents due to psychological factors
- Changes to the team roster or schedule? – this could affect performance
- Any issues with the players? – news sites and social media are a great source of personal problems which could affect a player’s performance
Tournaments
Overwatch’s game developer, Blizzard Entertainment created the Overwatch League in 2016, with a set-up similar to that of the NFL and, naturally, a huge global tournament followed.
The Overwatch World Cup sees national teams from around the world compete in a preliminary stage with the top five teams progressing to the next round.
These five teams are joined by the five top teams in the world, who qualified automatically and did not have to take part in the preliminary stage.
There are then group stages, with the teams divided and competing in a round-robin format. The top team from each group reach the semi-finals, whilst the second and third teams in each group will play quarter-finals.
Bottom of each group is, of course, eliminated. The six teams who have progressed then take part in a sudden-death playoff.
The winner is awarded a gold middle and the runner up a silver, with the teams who lost their semi-finals, going head to head for the bronze.
Best Overwatch Teams
The current highest-ranked Overwatch teams in the world, according to Go Su Gamers, are as follows:
- San Francisco Shock
- Shanghai Dragons
- British Hurricane
- Talon Esports
- Team CC
- RunAway
- Ground Zero Gaming
- And They Say
- Dignity
- Element Mystic
18+ only. New UK players. Welcome Bonus: New Players only, 1st Deposit, Min Deposit: £10, max £10 bonus, valid for 14 days, bets must be placed at odds of 1/1 or greater and be settled within 14 days of placement. System bets no eligible View full T&C
History of Overwatch
Blizzard Entertainment released Overwatch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows in May 2016, and Nintendo Switch in October 2019.
However, the development of the popular first-person shooter game began much earlier.
Blizzard already had three successful franchises; WarCraft, Diablo, and StarCraft under its belt, and had been working on a hugely ambitious multiplayer online role-playing game called Titan for several years.
Nevertheless, Blizzard cancelled Titan, and tasked a portion of the Titan team to come up with a concept for a new game, within just a few months. Blizzard director Jeff Kaplan led the team himself, and the result was Overwatch.
After some initial brainstorming, the team started to focus on multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs) and hero-based shooter games, looking to emulate the success of games such as Team Fortress 2.
Based on assets developed for Titans, the team proved the concept. The project was greenlit, and Overwatch was officially announced at the BlizzCon event on November 7, 2014.
During the event, the game was made playable to the attendees, who could choose between 14 characters. The event also unveiled a cinematic trailer for the game, and an extended gameplay video.
The next phase of marketing saw weekly videos of game footage and highlights posted on Blizzard’s YouTube channel until a closed beta period for Overwatch began in October 2015.
Further beta periods followed, garnering Blizzard more than 9.7 million players.
Just before the 2016 release, Blizzard’s marketing machine went global – putting giant boxes for Overwatch characters on display in Hollywood, Paris and South Korea to make it look like huge action figures were being unleashed on the world, which in a way, of course, they were.
Clever marketing, no doubt, but Blizzard had the goods to back up such ostentatious marketing.
Overwatch’s bright cartoonish style, diverse cast of characters and accessibility made it a huge hit with fans and critics alike.
In Overwatch’s first year of release, Blizzard reported revenue generated by the game to be in the region of $1 billion, and the game had attracted more than 50 million players in its first three years.
Overwatch 2 was announced in 2019 and will reportedly feature new player versus environment multiplayer modes.
Blizzard did not create Overwatch to become an esport, but with the success of StarCraft in the esports arena, they were certainly not averse to it, and created the Overwatch League using a business model similar to traditional North American professional sports leagues, such as NFL.
In fact, they sought out potential team owners including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke, going on to establish 12 franchises across the globe.
The league is still growing, with twenty franchises on board, and Overwatch continues to be one of the most popular esports in the world.