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In the past years, Europe seems to be the west’s last contender for the Summoner’s Cup in the World Championship. One reason the region has stayed competitive is because of its thriving grassroots scene, and the EU Masters is a huge part of that. Read our guide to see who comes out on top in Europe.
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Despite being a development league of the League of Legends European Championship, the Amazon European Masters is a region-wide tournament with a huge following. With an impressive 11 regional leagues, it draws in over a hundred thousand viewers during its peak.
But before you start betting on the region-wide tournament, it might be good to familiarise yourself with the teams you can bet on and the bets you can place. Find out what the betting market looks like in the EU Masters 2022, from the beginning of the play-in stage all the way to the knockout stage of the main event.
Moneylines are your go-to bets in a league with as many games as the EU Masters. With the number of teams hoping to compete in the tourney, there are going to be countless opportunities for punters like yourself to see value in no-name teams. Do your research and look up roster changes, past performances, and trends to see who can upset which “favourite” in the tournament. after that, bet on the team you think will come out on top of the match you’ve chosen. Simple!
Once you’ve eased into moneylines, you can go up a notch with total bets – otherwise known as over/under betting. Here, you simply predict whether the game you’ve bet on will go over or under a total number of kills, towers, dragons, barons, or even the duration of a game. For total betting, we advise you to first go on to platforms like Games of Legends to familiarise yourself with a team or region’s playstyle.
From there, apply the basic knowledge that the longer a game goes, the more objectives to be taken. This means that regions with slower game times could have more kills, towers, and dragons than a fast, one-sided game. But as always, do your due diligence and check the exact playstyle of the team you’re betting on.
As its name suggests, handicap betting places a ‘handicap’ on teams by requiring them to win by a set lead to win the bet. In the EU Masters, you can place handicap bets on kills and maps won.
For kill handicaps, you could either place a -6.5 bet on LDLC OL against a lesser-seeded team like SK Gaming Prime or do the opposite and place a +6.5 bet on the underdog. In the former, LDLC OL needs to be ahead by a minimum of seven kills to win, while in the case of the latter, SKGP can be behind 6 kills and still win the bet.
This logic applies all the same in map handicaps, but only for best-of series. In the knockout Stage, a +1.5-map handicap means that your chosen team must win one game in a best-of-three series or two games in a best-of-five series. Meanwhile, a -1.5-map handicap means that the team you bet on has to win two straight games in a best-of-three or at most, a 3-1 score in a best-of-five.
Lastly, a fun way to wager outside your day-to-day bets, propositional betting or prop betting doesn’t care about who wins or loses, but rather tries to figure out how a game will turn out by the dot.
In bet365, you can place prop bets on objectives such as the first team to get Baron, first blood, destroy an inhibitor. But aside from those, you can go even crazier and bet on the largest multi-kill in the game, whether the total kills will be odd or even, the first dragon to spawn, which team will get to a certain number of kills…the possibilities are endless!
Again, much like total betting, it can pay off to do your research on platforms like Games of Legends and Oracle’s Elixir, where you can see stats like First Baron Rate, First Blood Rate, and more. This way, even if it is one of the harder betting markets to figure out, you can still better your odds and win big.
The League of Legends European Masters – also known as the Amazon European Masters – is the premier amateur tournament of the region. It has 28 teams from the 11 European regional leagues competing to see which region stands above them all. With all these teams competing, it’s easy to see how popular of an esport game League of Legends continues to be in Europe.
Rise Up | Amazon EU Masters pic.twitter.com/DOVptn32gi — Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 30, 2022
Rise Up | Amazon EU Masters pic.twitter.com/DOVptn32gi
— Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 30, 2022
EU Masters is only second to the LEC, and was once known as the Challenger Series being the rookie development league that it is. Having teams coming from all over Europe, the tournament sees a lot of viewers supporting their own homeland on the big stage.
In around 2013, the League of Legends Championship Series Europe was established right when League of Legends started to grow in the region. In the following season, the region followed North America and created its own organised, developmental circuit in the EU Challenger Series. Back then, amateur teams would be formed from the ranked ladder and compete all the way to the promotion tournament, where they get a chance to qualify for the then-EU LCS.
Then, in 2018, Riot restructured the Challenger Series into the European Masters, as the EU LCS transitioned into a franchise-based system which would later be known as the LEC. The European Masters would feature an all-new format, with teams competing from across Europe. This has enabled a healthy stream of talent to keep rising from the grassroots because of the amount of competition supported by the region.
Now, the EU Masters is in its fifth year and serves as the scouting grounds for the best of Europe’s upcoming talent. Among its many countries, here are the regions currently competing in the EU Masters:
The EU Masters brings together 28 teams from Europe’s 11 national leagues (such as the LFL, Ultraliga, and Superliga) to represent their respective regions. Based on their seeding, the teams are either put straight into the group stage or the play-ins to weed out the competition. The tournament circuit is held across spring and summer, much like the LEC. Its spring season starts in April and ends in May. Meanwhile, the summer season starts in August and finishes in September.
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters format explained! pic.twitter.com/kGMyGhL3nL — Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 22, 2022
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters format explained! pic.twitter.com/kGMyGhL3nL
— Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 22, 2022
In the play-ins, 16 teams are first split into groups of four, where they compete in a double round robin. Matches are held in best-of-ones until the top two teams from each group qualify for the knockout stage, where the remaining eight teams face off in best-of-threes to see which 4 teams qualify for the main event. To reward teams for doing well in groups, the 1st place teams seeded from the group stage will be facing a 2nd place team.
Heading into the main event, 12 teams directly qualify from the European national leagues, with the last four qualifying from the play-ins. Much like the play-ins, the main event is divided into the group stage and the knockout stage. In the group stage, teams are seeded into four groups based on their regional standing. For this stage, groups cannot have more than one team from the same region. Matches are still held in best-of-one in a double round robin format, with the top two teams from each group advancing into the final playoffs.
In the main event’s knockout stage, the last eight teams standing compete in a single-elimination bracket. But this time, matches are held in best-of-five spectacles, allowing teams to fully showcase their strength. The competition continues until one champion remains at the top of the European Masters.
The EU Masters is the premier semi-professional tournament of Europe only coming second to the LEC. As such, it features a hefty prize pool of €150,000 per split of competition. For teams who break into the Top 16 placement, they will receive at least €2,500 up to €40,000 for the champion of the tournament. This split, teams will be receiving the following prizing distribution:
But for many of its competing players, the reward comes in the attention they get from scouting agents looking to recruit the next caPs of the LEC. This is because, as mentioned, the EU Masters is the successor to the past Challenger Series, which was the stepping stone to pro in Europe before the transition to today's franchise system.
As mentioned before, the EU Masters is divided into two stages: the play-in and the main event. With the expansive player base of the European server, only a select few can eventually make it into the big leagues such as the EU Masters and the LEC.
Each region or country is given an equivalent number of seeds depending on their performance in past tourneys. This is why regions like France and Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have two seeds straight into the main event and up to two more in the play-ins. To qualify directly into the main event, a team must perform at the top of their given regional league.
For the main event, the 12 teams qualified for the summer split are listed below.
Meanwhile, the play-in stage accommodates 16 teams from a total of 11 regions. This includes lesser-seeded regions, such as Portugal, Benelux, Greece & Cyprus. Here are the following 16 teams qualified for the play-in stage in summer:
The Amazon European Masters is one of the biggest leagues in Europe. If you put it into perspective, 11 regional leagues feed into EU Masters. Of those 11, each one has its own tournament league, where rookies climb up the ladder hoping to eventually reach the LEC. So, there could be over hundreds of teams you need to be up to date on if you want a good shot at winning those bets.
As such, it can be hard to follow all the regions and teams that will be competing in EU Masters, so we’ve made it easier for you and laid out the top teams to keep an eye on throughout the tournament.
Already early into September, the play-in stage of the EU Masters 2022 summer split has concluded with the four teams qualifying for the main event been decided. Out of the 16 teams, only GameWard, Anorthosis Famagusta, Vitality.Bee, and SK Gaming Prime remain. These teams will have a chance at making their names known in Europe come the group stage.
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters Play-In Group Draw! pic.twitter.com/RzqsgeAsYQ — Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 22, 2022
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters Play-In Group Draw! pic.twitter.com/RzqsgeAsYQ
In the group stage, the first-round robin has already finished, which just leaves us with the second and last round robin of the main event. GameWard and Dusty have qualified for the playoffs and six teams remain to join them from the rest of the groups. But as we soon head into the knockout stage, it’s a whole different ball game with clear-cut favorites that could take it all home.
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters Group Draw! pic.twitter.com/km71SwKsLc — Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 25, 2022
The 2022 Summer Amazon #EUMasters Group Draw! pic.twitter.com/km71SwKsLc
— Amazon European Masters (@EUMasters) August 25, 2022
Backed by French football club Olympique Lyonnais, LDLC OL stood atop the 2022 LFL Summer season as the region’s first seed in EU Masters. After a disappointing finish in the 2021 season, they fielded top-jungle duo Ragner and Yike, and since then, everything’s been smooth sailing. First place in Spring, first place in Summer… all they need now is a championship finish in EU Masters. Last time, they got stopped by Erik “Rekkles” Larsson and Karmine Corp in the Spring finals 3-1. But this time, they only have themselves to blame should they fail to get a hold of the trophy once more.
Coming after the LFL in EU Masters, the Unicorns of Love return after dominating the 2022 Prime League summer season. The Unicorns have had some much-needed changes after also losing to Kcorp last Spring in EM 2022. Now with Cloud9’s former support Winsome, the team has looked stellar, even taking down teams like LVP SL’s Giants and Ultraliga’s Zero Tenacity, which were heavily favored in their group. Thus, UOL is the tournament’s pink—er dark horse coming into the last half of the main event. A 3-0 standing is hopefully just the start of their deep run in the tourney.
Lastly, we have the new-and-improved Team BDS Academy vying for their own championship win in EU Masters. With Adam joining the team, BDS already has two LEC-caliber players in their ranks, with Crownie carrying from the bottom lane. And as we’ve seen, their experience shows on stage, with these players being the key pillars of their team. Take note that despite being France’s second seed, they did manage to take down LDLC OL earlier in their playoffs run to send them to the lower bracket. We can see Adam alongside Team BDS Academy looking to prove that they’re better than the competition in EU Masters.
Since EU Masters takes the best teams from Europe’s national leagues, it only makes sense that it’s held after these leagues have already finished their respective seasons. As such, for example, the Spring split of EU Masters was held on April 4 and ended after a month-long tournament run on May 7. The entirety of the play-ins all the way to the Grand Finals of the main event is held in too short a timespan to allow for the schedules of all these regions to coexist with one another.
Meanwhile, the summer split of the European Masters started last August 24 and will run until September 25, right before Worlds. This is to ensure that all attention will be on League of Legends’ most prestigious tournament of the year.
Because the EU Masters has teams competing from all of Europe, Riot has a host of channels to stream and broadcast the games in the native region’s respective language to accommodate viewers. However, primarily, you can watch all the competition live on Twitch and YouTube. Games begin after 17:00 CET and run as late as before midnight at 22:00. To follow all the action outside of the league, you can check Twitter, Instagram, and their official website.
Refer to the table below for the full list of streams and the languages they’re cast in:
The Amazon European Masters has an almost overwhelming number of teams and games to bet on. Being a developmental league with 11 regions feeding into it, it is near impossible to take note of all the teams joining the league. But that’s where the opportunity lies – by seeing value in teams that have yet to go big, you can win bets on upsets that can give quite the profit. And while France and the LFL have been known to dominate the EU Masters in the past few years, Spain, Germany, and Poland have all won the league once upon a time.
The Amazon European Masters is the premier League of Legends development league of Europe, with 11 participating regional leagues.
The 2022 summer season of the EU Masters began last August 24. Its main event is still underway and will conclude by September 25, 2022.
Because there are 28 competing teams in the region-wide tournament, EU Masters is divided into the play-in and the main event. Each stage has its own round robin group stage and single-elimination knockout stage.
Since its inception, the EU Masters has had a generous €150,000 EUR prize pool divided among the Top 16 teams. After all’s said and done, the top team gets to claim €40,000 EUR.
To start betting on the ongoing EU Masters, head on to our trusted bookmakers like 1xBet, Rivalry, and bet365. To know the ins and outs of these bookies, check out our bookmaker reviews.
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