- News & Tips
- What Is StarCraft II?
- Betting Guide & Top Sites
- Betting Promos
- SCII Events
- How To Play?
- Tips On Betting
- History & Popularity
- SCII FAQ
- Where To Watch
- SCII Tier List
- All StarCraft II Betting Sites
StarCraft II (SCII) remains one of the world’s premier real-time strategy (RTS) esports, anchoring marquee tournaments across North America, South Korea, and beyond. Launched in 2010 as the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft: Brood War—the game that defined modern esports—SC2 still commands a loyal global audience in 2025, even as MOBAs and other genres dominate the mainstream. Its fast-paced gameplay, deep strategic layers, and enduring professional scene make it a fixture on the competitive calendar.
This guide is your all-in-one resource for StarCraft II esports and betting in 2025. Inside you’ll find a clear explanation of how SC2 is played at the highest level—formats, strategies, and terminology—along with profiles of top players and teams. We also break down how to bet on StarCraft II events, the most popular wagering markets, and our expert-reviewed list of the best SC2 betting sites.
Best StarCraft II esports betting sites
Terms & Conditions Apply. Visit BetOnline for more information.
The bookies' bookie
$250 in Free Bets and 100 Free Spins with first deposit of minimum $50. Full terms
StarCraft II betting tips & news
What is StarCraft II?
StarCraft II is Blizzard Entertainment’s flagship real-time strategy (RTS) esport and one of the longest-running competitive games in the world. Unlike team-based titles such as League of Legends or Counter-Strike, professional SC2 is almost exclusively played one-on-one, making it a pure test of individual skill, speed, and strategy. Matches at the pro level are typically decided in best-of-three series early on, with best-of-five or even best-of-seven finals at major tournaments. Players face off on a pool of official maps, with each map win counting toward the series total.
At the start of every match, competitors choose one of three unique factions—Terran, Protoss, or Zerg—each with its own economy, units, and tech tree. Terrans are mobile and defensively strong, Protoss field powerful but costly units, and Zerg overwhelm opponents with rapid production. Viewed from an isometric perspective on sprawling custom maps, SC2’s blend of asymmetric factions, high-speed resource management, and precise unit control creates a skill-intensive spectacle that has kept fans engaged for more than a decade.
Best sites to bet on StarCraft II
StarCraft II betting is widely available at leading esports sportsbooks in 2025, reflecting the game’s enduring popularity in North America, South Korea, and Europe. The top esports betting sites such as BetOnline or SportsBetting offer markets on major SC2 tournaments — from ESL Pro Tour stops and DreamHack Masters to Korean leagues and special showmatches — so punters can back their favorite players year-round.
The best StarCraft II betting sites share a few common traits: competitive odds, broad tournament coverage, and seamless access across desktop and mobile. Most support a wide range of banking methods — Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, and even cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in some regions — making it easy to deposit and withdraw securely no matter where you’re betting from.
-
BetOnline
-
SportsBetting
StarCraft II betting in South Korea
South Korea is the undisputed beating heart of StarCraft II esports. It’s home to the GSL (Global StarCraft II League), the longest-running and most prestigious SC2 competition in the world, along with Korean stops on the ESL Pro Tour that routinely feature the strongest players and deepest fields. The top betting sites in South Korea now provide full coverage of these local and international SC2 events — including the ESL Pro Tour finals, DreamHack Masters, and special showmatches featuring Korean stars — so punters can follow and wager on the scene that still defines elite StarCraft II play.
StarCraft II betting apps
Top-rated esports betting operators now offer fully featured mobile betting apps for iOS and Android, making it easy to wager on StarCraft II wherever you are. These apps mirror the fast-paced nature of SC2, allowing you to:
- Stream live matches directly within the app
- Place in-play (live) wagers as series unfold
- Manage deposits, withdrawals, and account settings securely on the go
BetOnline, SportsBetting and BetOnline all have responsive mobile sites and/or dedicated apps with full SC2 markets. This flexibility keeps you connected to the action during long tournaments or when you’re away from your computer.
StarCraft II betting promotions
Because StarCraft II is still one of the most iconic esports titles, many betting sites now run special esports promotions around the biggest tournaments. Events like the ESL Pro Tour Grand Finals, IEM Katowice, and major Korean leagues often come with boosted odds, accumulator betting bonuses, or cashback offers designed to attract punters. These promos can be a great way to add extra value to your bets when the spotlight is on SC2.
If you combine these betting site promotions with expert match previews and esports betting predictions, you’ll give yourself a stronger edge when wagering on the biggest StarCraft II events.
StarCraft II bet types
The vast majority of esports betting sites we have reviewed and tested offers betting markets on major StarCraft II tournaments such as the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS), StarCraft II Corsair Cup, StarCraft Star League and the SC2 World Championship Global Finals. Most bet types are easily understandable for newcomers to online sports betting, and don’t require intimate knowledge of every possible outcome in the average high-level StarCraft II match-up.
Below, we go over the types of bets you can place on SC2 esports, based on the available markets offered by our highest reviewed esports betting sites.
- Outright Winner: You are placing a bet on the overall winner of a specific StarCraft II tournament – not the winner of an individual match, but the winner of the entire tournament in question.n supply count, or number of expansions built — but these are rarer and usually only seen at dedicated esports betting sites.
- Match Winner: You are betting on the result of the match – which team successfully destroys the other team’s base and wins. Depending on the faction chosen, the base is called a Command Center (Terrans) a Nexus (Protoss) or a Hatchery (Zerg). All sportsbooks label this type of bet differently, but it is most widely known as a ‘Match Winner’ – other labels include ‘Money Line’, ‘Straight’ or ‘Head to Head’. The odds offered on Match Winner bets are reflective of the perceived skill level of each player in question, and are usually based on their most recent win/loss records, performance and other potential personal dramas.
- Map Winner: You are placing a bet on which player will win each individual map played in the SC2 match.
- Correct Map Score: You are placing a bet on the final scoreline of the SC2 match-up. For example, you can wager whether your favoured player will win 3-0 in a landslide victory, or win 3-2 after a hard-earned battle with the opponent, with odds reflective of how the sportsbook perceives who the match will go in favor of.
Starcraft II Tournaments for 2025
| Date | Tournament | Tier | Location | Prize Money $USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 14, 2024 – Jan 19, 2025 | Master’s Coliseum 8 | A | China | $15,000 |
| Jan 6 – 26, 2025 | LiuLi Cup: 2024 Grand Finals | A | China | $7,040 |
| Jan 13 – Feb 2, 2025 | OSC Championship Season 12 | A | World (Online) | $4,599.79 |
| Feb 27 – Mar 16, 2025 | PiG Sty Festival 5.0 | A | Australia | $10,000 |
| Mar 4 – 9, 2025 | WardiTV Team Liquid Map Contest #13 | A | World (Online) | $3,000 |
| Apr 9 – 27, 2025 | WardiTV Spring Championship 2025 | A | World (Online) | $5,000 |
| Apr 28 – May 4, 2025 | PiG Sty Festival 6.0 | A | Australia | $10,000 |
| May 7 – 16, 2025 | Global StarCraft II League Season 1 | S | Seoul, South Korea | $28,652.69 |
| May 23 – 25, 2025 | DreamHack Dallas 2025 | S | Dallas, United States | $50,000 |
| May 28 – Jun 15, 2025 | Global StarCraft II League Season 2 | S | Seoul, South Korea | $29,258.15 |
| Jun 4 – 7, 2025 | Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora 2025 | A | Stara Zagora, Bulgaria | $11,404.46 |
| Jun 14, 2025 | Cheeseadelphia 2025 | A | Philadelphia, United States | $5,970 |
| Jun 17 – Jul 13, 2025 | RSL Revival: Season 1 | A | South Korea | $7,250.79 |
| Jun 21 – Jul 20, 2025 | Championship of Russia 2025 | A | Moscow, Russia | $7,631.74 |
| Jun 27 – 29, 2025 | HomeStory Cup XXVII | A | Krefeld, Germany | $10,000 |
| Jul 22 – 25, 2025 | Esports World Cup 2025 | S | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | $700,000 |
| Jul 27, 2025 | FEL Cracow 2025 | A | Kraków, Poland | $10,000 |
| Aug 8 – 17, 2025 | uThermal 2v2 Circuit Main Event | A | World (Online) | $15,000 |
| Aug 12 – 28, 2025 | WardiTV Summer Championship 2025 | A | World (Online) | $5,000 |
| Aug 30 – Sep 27, 2025 | Maestros of the Game | A | Paris, France | $20,000 |
| Sep 4 – 28, 2025 | RSL Revival: Season 2 | A | South Korea | $7,186.54 |
| Nov 1 – 2, 2025 | SC4ALL: StarCraft II | A | Philadelphia, United States | $6,000 |
| Nov 7 – 9, 2025 | Stellar Fest | A | Ottawa, Canada | $10,835.68 |
How does StarCraft II work & how to play
StarCraft II is a 1v1 real-time strategy game played on large battlefields divided into multiple expansion zones. Each player starts with a main base, a set of workers, and a small amount of resources. The primary objective is to destroy the opponent’s base while defending your own, and victory usually goes to the player who manages their economy and army composition more efficiently.
Here are the core pillars of SC2 gameplay for newcomers:
- Choose a Faction: Pick Terran, Protoss, or Zerg. Each race has unique buildings, units, and abilities that reward different playstyles.
- Gather Resources: Workers mine minerals and harvest vespene gas, which fund your army and technology. Expanding to new resource nodes (“expansions”) is crucial to staying ahead.
- Build & Tech Up: Construct buildings to unlock new units and upgrades. Balancing your economy with your tech path is a key strategic choice.
- Train Units & Control the Map: Build armies tailored to counter your opponent’s composition. SC2 rewards both macro (building up an economy and army) and micro (controlling individual units precisely).
- Take Objectives & Attack: Timing is everything. Well-planned pushes, harassment of enemy workers, and decisive late-game battles often decide matches.
At the pro level, these fundamentals are applied at blistering speed — elite players routinely exceed 300 actions per minute (APM). Most professional leagues and tournaments use a group stage into knockout format, with Bo3s in the early rounds and extended series in playoffs.
Quick tips for betting on StarCraft II
StarCraft II betting strategy is all about combining game knowledge with smart wagering habits. Understanding how races, maps, and player form interact can give you an edge over the bookmakers when picking winners. Below are some quick, practical tips to help you apply a solid StarCraft betting strategy to your wagers.
- Track Race Matchups: Always factor in which race each player is using and how they perform in that matchup (TvZ, PvZ, PvT). Certain pros have signature builds that excel against specific races.
- Watch Recent Form: Look at the last few tournaments or online cups to see who’s hot and who’s slumping. SC2 is highly skill-based, and current form often trumps reputation.
- Follow the Map Pool: Maps rotate regularly. Some heavily favour certain styles (rush maps for Zerg, defensive maps for Protoss). This can tilt a series.
- Check Series Format: Best-of-five or best-of-seven sets reward consistency; best-of-three can lead to more upsets. Adjust your bets accordingly.
- Use Promos Responsibly: Many sportsbooks offer odds boosts or cashback on SC2 majors like the Esports World Cup. Take advantage of these, but always gamble responsibly.
These tips, combined with expert previews and up-to-date results, give you a sharper edge when betting on StarCraft II tournaments.
How popular is StarCraft II as an esport?
When StarCraft II launched in 2010, it inherited a ready-made competitive scene from its legendary predecessor StarCraft: Brood War. Millions tuned in on Korean television and early live-streaming platforms to watch pro players battle at blistering speeds, with South Korea cementing itself as the epicenter of the RTS genre. Blizzard later expanded the ecosystem with the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS), which helped spread SC2’s reach into North America, Europe, and beyond.
Over time, however, the rise of other Esports games like League of Legends and Dota 2 shifted the esports spotlight. These team-based games drew bigger sponsor investment, offered million-dollar prize pools, and resonated more with younger audiences. StarCraft II maintained a dedicated player base but gradually lost mainstream visibility, especially after the broadcasting-rights dispute between Blizzard and the Korean e-Sports Players Association (KeSPA) in the early 2010s disrupted the game’s traditional TV coverage in its strongest market.
Despite those headwinds, SC2 remains a pillar of competitive RTS gaming. Its expansions (Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void) are still used in tournaments worldwide, and Blizzard’s WCS successor — now folded into the ESL Pro Tour and DreamHack circuits — continues to produce high-level competition. Prize pools are smaller than MOBA giants (usually in the tens or hundreds of thousands rather than millions), but the scene is stable and fiercely competitive.
In 2025, the Esports World Cup in Riyadh put StarCraft II back on the global stage with a $700,000 prize pool and international qualifiers. South Korea remains the talent hotbed, Europe hosts some of the strongest non-Korean pros, and online tournaments like WardiTV and HomeStory Cup keep the grassroots scene vibrant. While SC2 may no longer dominate headlines, it endures as one of the most skill-intensive esports and retains a loyal fanbase who still flock to Twitch, AfreecaTV, and YouTube to watch the best players in the world.
History of StarCraft II Esports
StarCraft II was released by Blizzard Entertainment in July 2010 as the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft: Brood War, the game that essentially launched modern esports in the late 1990s. Brood War’s televised leagues in South Korea built the first generation of professional gamers, so SC2 entered the market with a ready-made competitive infrastructure and a global audience eager to watch. Within months of launch, major tournaments were being broadcast on Korean TV and online platforms like GomTV, MBCGame, and AfreecaTV.
Blizzard formalised the scene with the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) in 2012, creating a unified global tour with regional qualifiers in North America, Europe, and Asia. This structure gave rise to the first generation of SC2 stars—players like MC, MVP, and Nestea—and cemented South Korea as the dominant region. At its peak, WCS events attracted hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers and prize pools over $150,000, while smaller circuits like HomeStory Cup, DreamHack, and MLG kept the international scene vibrant.
In the mid-2010s, SC2’s mainstream visibility began to wane as MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2 exploded in popularity, offering larger team-based tournaments and million-dollar payouts. The 2012 broadcasting-rights dispute between Blizzard and the Korean e-Sports Players Association (KeSPA) also disrupted traditional TV coverage in South Korea, shifting most viewership to online platforms. Nevertheless, SC2 endured through its expansions—Heart of the Swarm (2013) and Legacy of the Void (2015)—and the rise of community-driven events like WardiTV, OSC, and PiG Sty Festival.
Blizzard eventually partnered with ESL and DreamHack to fold SC2 into the ESL Pro Tour in 2020, replacing the WCS as the official competitive circuit. This move stabilised the ecosystem and gave non-Korean players like Serral, Clem, and Reynor a platform to consistently challenge Korean dominance. By 2025, StarCraft II still commands a loyal global following, with premier events like the Esports World Cup in Riyadh delivering $700,000 prize pools and grassroots tournaments filling out the calendar year-round.
From its roots in South Korean television studios to today’s international online broadcasts, StarCraft II has proven to be one of the most enduring and skill-intensive esports in history—an RTS title that helped define competitive gaming and continues to thrive more than a decade after its launch.
StarCraft II betting FAQ
- You can watch for free on the official StarCraft channels across Twitch and YouTube, plus Korean platforms such as AfreecaTV. Many top esports betting sites also embed live streams so you can watch and bet on the same platform.
- In 2025 the headline event is the Esports World Cup in Riyadh with a USD $700,000 prize pool. Historically, the WCS Global Finals and the GSL seasons have been the premier SC2 competitions.
- Korean stars such as Maru, herO, and Classic remain elite, while Europeans like Serral, Clem, and Reynor regularly challenge for titles. Check recent tournament results and form before placing bets.
- Yes—when you use our recommended sportsbooks. Reputable brands offer secure payments, fair odds, and responsible gambling tools. Avoid sites without a track record or reviews.
- Pick a top betting site, create an account, and deposit via a secure method (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, etc.). Navigate to Esports → StarCraft II and choose a market (e.g., match winner, map winner, correct score, or outright champions). Start small and focus on major tournaments.
- Core markets include Match Winner (series result), Map Winner (Game 1, Game 2, etc.), Handicap (e.g., ±1.5 maps), Correct Series Score (2–0, 3–1), and Outright Tournament Winner. Niche props (e.g., total maps over/under, first to a supply milestone) appear occasionally at specialist esports books.
- Average pro games run between 8–20 minutes, but best-of series (Bo3, Bo5, Bo7) can span 30 minutes to over an hour depending on the format.
- Follow recent form, race matchups, and map pools, track meta shifts and balance patches, and compare odds across sites. Shop around for the best price and use promos responsibly to add value.
Where to watch StarCraft II esports
The best place to watch professional StarCraft II matches is on Twitch. The official StarCraft II category on Twitch streams live games from ESL, DreamHack, WardiTV, and Korean broadcasters like AfreecaTV. Most premier tournaments — including the Esports World Cup, GSL, and DreamHack Masters — are shown free and in high definition.
You can also find official VODs and highlights on the StarCraft YouTube channel and on AfreecaTV for Korean-language coverage. Many top esports betting sites embed live streams directly on their platforms, letting you watch and bet at the same time without leaving the site.
StarCraft II races & meta tier list
StarCraft II revolves around three distinct races — each with its own units, strengths, and playstyle. Choosing the right race and understanding its current meta builds is a huge factor in betting on SC2 matches.
- Terran: The most flexible race, with highly mobile bio armies (Marines, Marauders, Medivacs) and versatile mech options. Known for strong defensive play and dropship harassment.
- Protoss: Advanced technology and high-damage units such as Zealots, Stalkers, and Colossi. Protoss armies tend to be expensive but extremely powerful if managed well.
- Zerg: Overwhelm opponents with speed and numbers. Cheap units like Zerglings and Banelings flood the map, while powerful Hive-tech like Ultralisks and Brood Lords close out games.
2025 meta tier List by matchup strength
| Race | Tier | Notes (2025 meta) |
|---|---|---|
| Zerg | S | Serral and Reynor keep Zerg at the top in most international events. Strong late-game tech and creep spread give Zerg an edge in long series. |
| Protoss | A | Classic, herO, and MaxPax show Protoss is still deadly in PvT. Macro builds and Disruptor usage are peaking in 2025. |
| Terran | A | Maru, Clem, and Cure anchor Terran’s top-level play. Bio-mech flexibility makes Terran dangerous, but struggles slightly vs elite Zergs. |
(Tier rankings are based on 2025 tournament results and player performance. Balance patches or new maps can shift this meta.)
Understanding each race’s current form helps you interpret match odds — for example, a Zerg vs. Terran final in 2025 may favour the Zerg player slightly if both are elite.
All StarCraft II betting sites
-
GG Bet
-
Stake
-
BetOnline
-
Betway
-
888 Sportsbook
-
Vavada
-
Thunderpick
-
Casumo
-
888starz
-
William Hill
-
Kirgo.com
-
1xBet
-
Rivalry
-
Picklebet
-
SportsBetting
-
Unibet
-
Dabble
-
Pinnacle888
-
Bet365
