The Best Betting Sites for Rocket League
Rocket League is an unusual esports game, being neither a fighter game, nor a MOBA, and has a slightly whacky concept of football with rocket cars.
Nevertheless, don’t underestimate’s its popularity or potential to generate betting revenue. In this guide, we’ll explain a little bit more about this weird and wonderful video game, its origins, and the sites which offer the best betting opportunities for Rocket League.
How is Rocket League Played?
Rocket League is one of the most accessible esports, as the concept is simply to beat the other team, by scoring more goals and winning more points.
It’s based on football (soccer) but instead of human players, you are playing with rocket-powered vehicles.
Games are short and fast and you can either play by yourself or in a team of up to eight players using the multi-player mode.
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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
Most competitive games are played by two teams of three but you can customize your team to a variety of sizes and configurations.
As in soccer, the winners are the team who have scored the most goals in the allotted time. Most rounds only last five minutes, with teams needing to win between two and four rounds to be declared the winner.
However, like many esports, while getting to grips with the basics is fairly simple, becoming a great RL player takes skill, patience, and countless hours of practice.
Few tips to get you started:
- Use the training mode to practice and also get to grips with the camera settings before you play a real game
- Attack isn’t the best form of defence! – Defending should be your default until you get more confident.
- Use the handbrake to help you control your car’s positioning
- As in football, chasing the ball uses up energy and can be fruitless – look for who is in the best position to tackle on your team
- Likewise, pass rather than shoot especially if you are new to the game – chances are the opposition will anticipate anything you can throw at them
- Use your boost wisely, so you don’t get caught out unable to trackback to defend
- There are no height restrictions, so use every surface including the goal roof
- Learn about the different kinds of kick-offs to prevent conceding an early goal
- Use your nose – the nose is one of the hardest parts of the car, use it for 50/50s, and hitting the ball down the park quickly and efficiently
- Ignore toxic players and don’t let them get in your head – if you rage quit, you’re the only one who is disappointed
Available Bets on Rocket League
One of the major draws of betting on Rocket League is that as matches are so short, you can claim your winnings much quicker than you can when betting on other esports games, or traditional sports.
There are three types of betting markets offered most often for Rocket League, described below:
Match-Winner
Match-winner markets are quite literally betting on who you think the winner of the match will be, just as in traditional sports.
However, in the case of Rocket League, this means betting on which team you think will win the most rounds.
Due to the fast-paced nature of the game, momentum can switch sides quickly, making betting more exciting.
Outright
Outright is the same principle as match-winner, but refers to future bets, usually placed on international tournaments such as the RLCS.
Instead of betting on who will win an individual match, you are betting on which team will win the final, or reach a particular stage of the competition.
You may also be betting on who will finish top of the regional league, for example.
Handicap
The handicap market is similar again to the match-winner. However, here one of the teams is given an advantage in the run-up to the match, usually, the starting handicap is +1.5 or +2.5 so that the odds drop significantly in favour of the team given the starting advantage.
Best Sites to Bet on Rocket League
Rocket League is not considered to be one of the biggest esports games, such as Dota 2, or League of Legends, so you may find that fewer sports bookmakers offer Rocket League betting markets.
However, that means that those that do so are likely to be more committed to esports and, as such, may provide better odds or even related bonuses.
The peak of the Rocket League season is the June finals of the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) and this is when the majority of sites will offer markets.
We’ve compiled a table of our recommendations for the best sites to bet on Rocket League, below.
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
Placing a Winning Bet on Rocket League
Once you’ve found your chosen bookmaker, it’s time to do some research on the sport itself, and the players participating.
Think of it as you would a traditional sport – you probably aren’t going to bet on a team you know nothing about, right? Instead, consider all the usual factors:
- How your team is playing recently – are they in form?
- Head to head stats – Have the two teams met before? – who came out on top?
- If it’s a tournament, look at previous performances in the same tournament and other big events to see if the team/players can handle the occasion
- You can also check social media and industry news for anything going on behind the scenes that is likely to distract the players and affect their performance
Rocket League Tournaments
As with some other esports, such as StarCraft, the Rocket League esports tournament scene exists largely due to the game developer, in this case, Psyonix, creating its own league.
The Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) was developed by Psyonix to take advantage of the popularity of the game on Twitch and other streaming services.
First established in 2016, the RLCS is a semiannual tournament which features qualifying rounds in North America, South America, Europe, and Oceania.
The qualification rounds are played in a round-robin format, online, with the finals being played in different cities.
The first RLCS prize pool was $55,000 and has risen each season, with 2017’s prize pool reaching $300,000.
In 2017, a second division was added, the Rocket League Rival Series (RLRS) which allowed promotion and relegation to become a factor.
The two bottom teams of the RLCS and the top two in the RLRS compete to see who will end up playing in each league the following season.
In 2020, a new format was announced for the RLCS. Known as RLCS X the new format sees the teams divided into regional splits and all earn points, culminating in three seasonal majors. The grand prize is $1,000,000.
Best Rocket League Teams
The best Rocket League teams are ranked in terms of both their tournament earnings over a season and their final standing in the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS).
According to these stats, the best Rocket League teams at the time of writing are as follows:
- Team BDS
- NRG
- Spacestation Gaming
- Renault Vitality
- Team Envy
- G2 Esports
- Galaxy Racer
- Top Blokes
- Giants Gaming
- Endpoint
History of Rocket League
First released in 2015 by Psyonix, for Windows and PlayStation 4, Rocket League was the sequel to the developer’s 2008 video game Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, Battle-Cars for short.
The game had a novel concept – football (or soccer, as it’s known outside the UK) but played with rocket-powered cars.
Battle-Cars was a moderate success and built up a loyal fanbase who were ready and waiting for a similar title, providing it could make the necessary improvements to take it from a novelty game to one which could compete in the wider video game market.
Development of the sequel began in 2013 but Rocket League wasn’t released until 2015, because Psyonix had been busy upping their game.
Critics and fans agreed that the overall gameplay and graphics had improved, and Rocket League won a number of industry awards.
Single or multi-player modes meant friends could team up (up to 8 per team) to try to score goals and points against the opposing team.
Later updates meant ice hockey fans and basketball enthusiasts could also get in on the action with new modes for each of the two sports.
Ports for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch were added in 2016, with versions for macOS and Linux following, helping the game to reach a larger audience. Rocket League won three BAFTA video game awards in 2016: Family, Multiplayer and Sport.
Rocket League saw sales of more than $10 million, and recorded 40 million players by 2018. It has also established itself as an esports game, in recent years, aided by the creation of Psyonix’ Rocket League Championship Series, and professional players also playing through ESL and Major League Gaming.
The popularity of Rocket League has only grown, in the years since its release, helped by media deals, such as NBC broadcasting the 2017 RLCS live.
RL has been one of the leaders in cross-platform games and went free-to-play in 2020. Still a relative newcomer to the esports scene, the future looks bright for Rocket League.