Fearless Draft LoL – An Esports Betting Analysis
Riot Games is introducing a new and exciting Fearless Draft format to multiple competitions as of 2025. With the potential to change the game while influencing esports betting, we’re here to dive into the format and explain what it means for LoL betting.
Fearless Draft LoL – A Game Changer
Let’s first get to grips with what a Fearless Draft is and why it transforms the traditional best-of-series, whether it’s BO3, BO5 or BO7. Here’s how Riot Games described the format for new LoL tournaments in a press release:
‘In Fearless Draft, any champions used in previous games of a best-of-series become unavailable for both teams in subsequent games, regardless of which team selected them. This results in an additional set of bans known as “Fearless Bans.” The standard 10 bans from the pick/ban phase (“Standard Bans”) remain in place for every game.’
So, beyond the typical 10 Standard Bans for every game, no team is allowed to use any of the 10 heroes from any of the previous games as explained:
| Game in a BO5 | Standard Bans | Fearless Bans |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | / |
| 2 | 10 | 10 |
| 3 | 10 | 20 |
| 4 | 10 | 30 |
| 5 | 10 | 40 |
A New World for Special Betting Markets
Naturally, as the match progresses to game 5, professional teams and the best LoL players will be tasked to make the most of the 170 League of Legends characters available to them.
Riot Games has developed this format to tackle stale metas and teams constantly abusing the same pool of 20-30 characters. Overall, we believe it will have the following effects on LoL betting:
- Increased skill ceiling – the best LoL players with the widest pool of knowledge of the game will have the chance to show off their dominance while others lag behind
- Improved viewership experience – the wider the variety of characters, the better for viewership to avoid stale meta experiences
- More special betting markets – bans become a more significant part of LoL matches, giving esports betting sites the chance to dive further into this market
- Live betting markets – considering that it will be more difficult to predict which LoL heroes will be featured in a match, it’s likely that live betting markets will continue growing in popularity as bets are placed after heroes are selected
In conclusion, it’s fantastic to see Riot Games experimenting with this format for both the LCK Cup and the First Stand tournament before taking this further.
If all goes well, we’d love to see other MOBAs follow the idea considering its potential for esports betting.
