Available Bets on Street Fighter

Street Fighter appeals to both typical esports bettors, and also fans of virtual boxing or MMA as it is essentially the same idea – placing a bet on which fighter you think will be victorious.

With that in mind, there are a couple of different types of bets you will find for Street Fighter, as per below:

Match Winner

Matches often have a best-of-five format, which lends itself to match-winner betting.

When two players go head-to-head, there can only be one winner and, sometimes, a player can completely change the game with an unexpected moment of brilliance.

As in any sport, a moment of hesitation or a bad decision can leave a player vulnerable to their opponent, making it thrilling to watch and bet on.

Outright

Outright is the same principle as match-winner, but refers to future bets, usually placed on international tournaments such as the Capcom Pro Tour.

Instead of betting on who will win an individual match, you are betting on which player, or team, will emerge the victor.

Handicap

The handicap market is similar again to the match-winner, but here one of the players is given an advantage in the run-up to the match, usually expressed as +1.5 or +2.5 so that the odds drop significantly.

Specials

The specials markets refer to specific information within the game such as the correct score, winner of a specific round, or other bets such as the time that will be needed to complete a match.

Best Sites to Bet on Street Fighter

Street Fighter betting is offered by a variety of both esports and more traditional sports bookmakers as its appeal crosses over to fans of more traditional sports such as boxing and MMA.

With this in mind, check which markets each site is offering, and then research the site itself to see if it suits your betting needs.

The welcome offer, payment method, and user experience of the site are all things that you might want to consider before signing up and placing your bet.

We’ve done our own research, and compiled some of the sites we recommend for Street Fighter betting, below:

How to Place a Winning Bet

In terms of strategy for placing a winning bet on Street Fighter, it pays to be as clued-up on the players as possible.

Here are a few aspects of the match you should be taking note of before you place your bet:

• Current form – how is each player performing in their recent matches?
• Added to that – has there been personal issues on their social media or in the news which could affect their performance?
• Head to head stats – sometimes the better player on paper will fall to a weaken opponent due to psychological factors or the personal history between them
• Player performance in the same tournament in previous years

Tournaments

Like many esports, the Street Fighter scene is helped hugely by the existence of a pro league, created and funded by the game studio’s developers.

In Street Fighter’s case, that is the Capcom Pro Tour (CPT) which features a mix of grassroots games and international tournaments.

However, the CPT is not the only international tournament in the Street Fighter calendar.

Here is a list of the major Street Fighter esports tournaments:

• Capcom Pro Tour
• Street Fighter League PRO
• Japan eSports Grand Prix
• KO Fight Night
• Double K.O The Champions Last Chance
• Adorama Charity Tournament
• Brussels Challenge ME
• Bandwidth Beatdown
• Movistar LPG Street Fighter V International
• FAV gaming CUP
• DreamHack Anaheim
• Spititzero Cup
• EVO Japan
• Frosty Faustings
• Red Bull Kumite

Best Street Fighter Teams

Although Street Fighter is more of an individual player v player game, the best esports teams in the world have been signing up Street Fighter stars since the mid-2010s and continue to dominate across a variety of esports games.

The top ten teams in Street Fighter, at the time of writing, are as follows:

• Team Liquid
• Rise Nation
• Panda Global
• Echo Fox
• Evil Geniuses
• mouseports
• DetonatioN
• Team Envy
• Excel eSports
• Epsilon eSports

History of Street Fighter

Street Fighter is now old enough to be considered a ‘retro’ video game, with more than 30 years under its belt it’s almost vintage, yet it remains immensely popular all over the world and has made the leap to an esport game in the last ten years.

Capcom’s flagship series had reached 44 million units sold worldwide as of December 2019, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time.

The original Street Fighter was an arcade game, designed by Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto and released in 1987.

Even then, it was ported to many home PCs and other computer systems, and fans were enamoured with its martial arts base and exciting characters.

It was released for TurboGrafx-CD the same year and has since been included in the Capcom Classics Collection: Remixed for the PlayStation Portable, and Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox and in the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection for Eighth Generation consoles and Windows.

In the original Street Fighter game, the player plays as martial artist Ryu who competes in a variety of martial artists’ tournaments, going head-to-head against 10 diverse opponents, across five countries.

Street Fighter II followed in 1991, designed by Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda and, this time, players could choose which character they wanted to play as – the first game of its kind to offer this option.

The characters themselves were far more varied too, with each equipped with a different fighting style and moves, making matches far more interesting and unpredictable.

There was also the introduction of the ‘boss opponents’.

It was Street Fighter II which turned Street Fighter into a multimedia franchise, with figures adjusted for inflation, various version of the game generated more than US$10 billion.

Most of the money came from arcades, but the arrival of consoles such as Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive created more opportunities.

Since its original release, Street Fighter has spawned more than 150 different games, cameo crossovers in other games, spin-offs, movies, and TVs shows.

Even more impressively, they have by and large aged well and fans still enjoy playing the early incarnations, as much as, if not more than, the more flashy modern versions.

The 1994 live-action film starring the wonderfully miscast Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Kylie Minogue as Cammy, has become something of a cult classic.

The move to becoming an esport began in 2004, when two up and coming esports stars, Justin “Marvellous” Wong and Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, posted a video went viral of the Evolution Championship Series 2004 and included a clip from a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike semi-finals match between the pair.

In the clip, Umehara managed to pull off an incredibly difficult move, leading many to label it ‘the most iconic moment in competitive videogames’.

At one time it was the most viewed competitive gaming moment of all time, and it reignited interest in both the fighting game scene in general and Street Fighter in particular.

The Fighting Game Community (FGC) was expanding, and the well-timed release of Street Fighter 4, ten years after its predecessor attracted a lot of attention, which translated to live streams and helped Street Fighter transition into an esport game.

In 2013, Capcom announced the launch its own premier pro league, The Capcom Pro Tour (CPT), a combination of grassroots events and international tournaments.

With the release of Street Fighter 5 in 2014, the biggest esports teams in the world started to snap up the pro players and sponsorship came in for the league.

Today, the CPT encompasses competitors from 11 countries, a prize pool of between US$250K to US$350K.