The rocket-powered cars soccer game, Rocket League, is speeding onto the esports scene with a simple yet exciting format that has won plenty of admirers. The number of people playing, watching and betting on Rocket League is on the rise. Continue reading if you want to learn more about the basics of Rocket League betting.
What is Rocket League?
Rocket League is a video game developed by Psyonix, where players control a rocket-powered car in various different arenas resembling soccer pitches. They must hit a large ball into their opponents net to score and the team or player who scores the most goals wins the game.
Players have the ability to boost and jump into the air to strike the ball - they can also top up their boost by driving over marked spaces. The boost helps players to not only drive faster but also jump higher. Players can do acrobatic moves in the air, such as flipping and spinning, to help with shooting.
Different spawn points, designs and boost positions do alter the gameplay slightly, but not enough to have a meaningful impact on the result.
Boosts can be used to ram the other cars and destroy them (cars will respawn a few moments after being destroyed). A game of Rocket League takes roughly five minutes with sudden death overtime used to determine a winner if the score is tied.
Rocket League is one of the leading titles in offering cross-platform play between consoles and computers. PC players can be matched up against both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players and although the two consoles cannot be matched together yet, Psyonix is in talks with both Microsoft and Sony to offer such a thing in the future.
Rocket League: A brief history
Development for Rocket League started many years before the game was released. The founder of Psyonix, Dave Hagewood, started out as an amateur modder for Unreal Tournament 2003 (a first-person shooter) and his most famous mod was an entirely new game focused on vehicles called Onslaught.
The mod proved to be so popular, Hagewood was hired as a contractor by Epic Games (the makers of the game) for Unreal Tournament 2004 specifically for incorporating the Onslaught mode as an official part of the game.
Hagewood launched his own studio (Psyonix) in 2000 but it wasn't until 2008 that he started putting his previous experience in the industry to use. As the studio struggled to stay afloat, the company focused mainly on contract work for others, while also developing their own game in their spare time.
Psyonix finished their first game Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (often shortened to Battle-Cars) in 2008. The game proved to be a considerable success with over 2 million people downloading it after the studio decided to cut the price.
Soon after the Battle-Cars was released, a handful of people began working on a sequel but the development process was drawn-out (taking over two years in total). The majority of the development time was spent on stripping back the original game and improving individual elements such as the frames-per-second and the servers.
With matches lasting only five minutes, the time a bettor needs to allocate to watching and betting on a match is minimal.
After settling on the name Rocket League, the game was officially announced as a sequel to Battle-Cars in February 2014. The name was changed for two reasons - it was easier to remember and the length had to be reduced to appear fully in digital storefronts. The final version of the game was released in July 2015 for PC and PlayStation 4.
The following year it was released for Xbox One, macOS and Linux, with the Nintendo Swift version coming in 2017. By the end of March 2017, Psyonix announced Rocket League had sold over 10.5 million copies across all platforms and had 29 million registered players (this figure had eclipsed 40 million in 2018).
How to bet on Rocket League
With Rocket League featuring all the characteristics of a soccer match, it’s the perfect game to bet on for newcomers to esports. Also appealing to both sports fans and esports enthusiasts, Rocket League offers something for aspiring bettors from a vast array of backgrounds.
The two biggest advantages Rocket League has over sports such as soccer are the shorter match times and faster pace. With matches lasting only five minutes, the time a bettor needs to allocate to watching and betting on a match is minimal. This makes Rocket League a highly attractive proposition, especially for people with limited experience in betting on esports.
Rocket League is one of the leading titles in offering cross-platform play between consoles and computers.
The most popular market in Rocket League betting is the Money Line - this is essentially a bet on who will win the match (this includes all games in the series). Other markets available include series handicaps (where a team starts with a positive or negative handicap that they need to hold on to or overcome for a bet on them to be successful) and individual games (these are generally reserved for major tournaments).
The format used in most tournaments is either best of fives (BO5) or best of seven (BO7). The reason for an extended format compared to other esports is because Rocket League is a fast-paced game and is over relatively quickly. With teams needing potentially three or four games to win a match, the chance for upsets is diminished as teams need more than a bit of luck to win multiple games.
Similar to the different maps that should be considered in CS:GO betting, Rocket League is played in different arenas. However, the Rocket League arenas have much less an impact on the outcome of a match than the maps in CS:GO. Different spawn points, designs and boost positions do alter the gameplay slightly, but not enough to have a meaningful impact on the result.
Rocket League betting: Things you should consider
In most esports games there are a number of variables that can change the outcome of a match such as the economic system in CS:GO and the scaling ability of champions in League of Legends. In Rocket League, with it being so similar to soccer, these variables are eliminated.
Due to the lack of external factors that might influence the result in a match, the focus when betting on Rocket League should be the comparable strength of the two teams that are playing.
Players have the ability to boost and jump into the air to strike the ball, they can also top up their boost by driving over marked spaces.
Previous form is obviously important in any sport but this needs to be a relative measure when analysing the two teams in a match - it’s no use betting on a team just because they are on a good run without considering the level of opposition those previous wins have come against.
Because a match doesn’t last very long in Rocket League, the early stages are often crucial. Similar to its real-life counterpart, goals are incredibly valuable in comparison to other high-scoring sports and if one team finds a tactic that leads to success it can often take time to negate it. When betting on individual matches in a series, the first match can give a clearer indication of what is to come than some bettors might think.
Use the information in this Rocket League betting guide and take advantage of the best Rocket League odds online. Alternatively, go back to the esports hub to learn more and inform your esport betting.
