SFV ELEAGUE Offers A New Game For Bettors This Week In Esports Betting

[toc]Seeing as we already covered the League of Legends Mid Season Invitational Group Stage in our article earlier this week, we are going to take a look at a new esports betting market from Bet365 Esports — the SFV ELeague tournament.

New addition to a booming franchise

For those who have not yet come across Street Fighter V, it’s the latest incarnation of one of the most popular arcade and console games of all time.

Street Fighter is, at its heart, a very different game from the four main esports games. It is a single-player game where a player adopts one character from a selection of warriors. Then the player battles against another player who also selects from the same list of characters. The first player to win a stated number of rounds wins the matchup.

Battles take the form of hand-to-hand combat, although players can employ a number of special moves and powers. Deplete an opponent’s energy bar to zero to knock them out and claim victory for that round.

The game is extremely well-known in the console gaming community where it is one of the most popular beat ‘em up games and has attracted millions of players.

Where are we at in the SFV ELEAGUE?

The SFV ELEAGUE event began with preliminary group stages in late March. There were four initial groups, each containing eight players who faced off against all other players in their group and were then seeded. The bottom two players in each group were eliminated from the tournament at this stage.

Currently, the tournament is at the Bracket Tournament Stage. This is where the six players remaining in each group play through a tournament to claim the two spots available in the playoffs (which begin May 26).

So far, three group tournaments have been completed, and the Group D tournament takes place this weekend, with the final two playoff spots up for grabs.

The three top seeds from each group — Punk (Group A), Fuudo (Group C), and PR Balrog (Group B top seed) — have already qualified for the playoffs. The bottom seeds from each group that have also qualified are Momoch (Group A), Daigo Umehara (Group B), and Wolfkrone (Group C).

The action kicks off this weekend, and here are the latest esports odds: Luffy (2/7) is taking on Ryan Hart (5/2) in the opening game, while in the other opening match Chris Tartarian is 6/5 to defeat Xiao Hai, who is the 8/13 favourite with Bet365 to take that game.

Following these opening games, the winners will enter the winners bracket, and the losers drop into the lower bracket. The two winners will compete in Round Two of the event for a place in the Round Three where the second seeded Phenom awaits. The two losers will battle it out to take on  Group D top seed Nuckledu for a place in the top group final.

All matches are best-of-five series with each game comprising of three rounds of action.

Once the final two qualifiers for the playoffs are known, there is a weeklong break before the playoffs get underway on May 28. Of course, bettors can enjoy betting on both the playoffs and all this weekend’s StreetFighter V action at Bet365.

Plenty of CS:GO betting for Esports Championship Series Season 3

After two DreamHack events in the past two weekends (plus the Intel Extreme Masters event in Sydney last weekend), it has been a busy time for CS:GO teams. In addition to playing in these events, many have been competing in the Esports Championship Series Season 3 in both North America and European qualification zones.

Both qualifying competitions started back in April. Each team is playing for one of four places available in each qualifying zone in the ECS Season 4 Finals. Additionally, the bottom two teams in the group are relegated to the Season 3 Promotion tournament where they will take on the best teams in their development league for a place in the top division next season.

European qualification

In the European section, we are midway through the Week Four matches, and there are plenty of big matches taking in the coming days. These include Fnatic taking on Virtus.pro and G2 Esports facing mouseesports. Natus Vincere and Team Dignitas are also active in what is one of the busiest weeks of the season.

The table in the European section sees three teams with 15 points (mousesports, Astralis, and Ninjas in Pyjamas); however, they could all be caught by FaZe Clan, which have a 4-0 record on 12 points. G2 Esports also have a decent 3-1 record and could also overtake any of the top three teams. The same is true of Team Dignitas and Team Envyus, who both have 3-3 records at the time of writing.

North American qualification

In North America, Renegades have come in for Team SoloMid, who were unable to complete a fixture and so they currently stand on 6 points with a 2-0 record. Ghost Gaming have a 0-10 record and sit at the bottom of the table, but the remainder of the teams are relatively close, with Cloud 9 and Counter Logic Gaming leading the way with 6-2 records ahead of Team Liquid (5-1) and OpTic Gaming and NRG Esports (both 4-4). SK Gaming are 3-1; Immortals are 3-5, followed by Luminosity Gaming with a 3-7 record.

As in Europe, it is a busy week for fixtures in this section. The top two teams in the table, Counter Logic Gaming and Cloud 9, are competing — plus Logic Gaming face OpTic Gaming, Team Liquid face Renegades, and SK Gaming face NRG Esports.

Punters can bet on all these games with Bet365’s excellent esports betting service.

Image credit: Leonel Calara / Shutterstock.com