The Best Six Months for Esports Betting
More matches, sloppier lines, bigger edge. 10,000+ bets exposed the pattern.
If you've been betting on esports for a while, you've probably noticed the pattern. The first half of the year is when everything pops off. More matches. More inefficiencies. More value. Check the LCSLarry results tracker and it's obvious: January through June is where the money's at.
We're about to enter that window again. Let me break down why the first six months of the year consistently produce the best betting opportunities.
When Do the Major Esports Actually Run?
Every game has its own schedule, but they all follow the same basic rhythm: January starts a flood of matches that doesn't slow down until summer.
League of Legends
LoL runs year-round on paper, but the real action is January through August. That's when you get daily matches across LCS, LEC, LCK, LPL, CBLOL, LLA, PCS, plus MSI in May. Worlds from September to November has fewer games overall. December? Dead. Teams are rebuilding rosters.
Call of Duty League
CDL runs January through July, then basically shuts down until the next year.
Dota 2
Dota is tournament-based rather than league play, but the pattern holds. Elite events run almost back-to-back from January through October. The best betting windows are January through July before things wind down for the year.
Counter-Strike 2
CS2 is the closest to year-round, but the tournament density is way higher early in the year. February through July stacks IEM Katowice, ESL Pro League, RMR qualifiers, BLAST Spring, the Major, and IEM Cologne. You get another burst from September through December with BLAST Fall and World Finals, then late December goes quiet.
Why This Matters for Betting
From January through June, everything runs at once. LoL splits, CDL Majors, CS2's premier circuit, Dota's tournament season. All of it overlapping.
That means:
- Way more matches to bet on across every title
- Books can't keep up, so lines get sloppy
- More mispriced props for the model to exploit
This is why our results spike during this stretch every single year.
The Numbers
Here's how the model actually performed from January through June 2025 on props rated 60%+ confidence:
| Month | Win Rate | ROI |
|---|---|---|
| February | 68.4% | +119.1% |
| March | 62.6% | +54.7% |
| April | 65.7% | +87.5% |
| May | 60.7% | +36.8% |
| June | 61.6% | +44.2% |
That's over 10,000 tracked bets. Not a small sample.
Early Season Chaos = Edge
January through April is chaos in competitive esports. New rosters are figuring each other out. Patches drop and flip the meta. Teams are testing new strats. Coaching changes take time to show results.
- New rosters building chemistry
- Meta shifts from patches
- New champions, agents, strategies in play
- Map pool rotations
- Coaching staff changes settling in
Sportsbooks are slow to adjust to all of this. They're still pricing teams based on last split's performance while the actual competitive landscape has completely shifted. Our model catches these changes fast. When books lag behind reality, that's when mispriced lines pile up.
Q1 and Q2: Everything Lines Up
All major esports starting their seasons at once. Roster uncertainty and meta changes creating pricing mistakes. Books struggling to keep up with the volume.
That combination is why Q1 and Q2 ROI typically lands somewhere between +40% and +120% depending on the month. It's the most +EV environment of the entire year.
If You've Been Waiting
If you've been on the fence about joining, or waiting for a good time to start, this is the window. January through June is when match volume peaks, edge opportunities are fattest, variance smooths out over hundreds of plays, and the model fires consistently.
Prime season is right around the corner.
Get in before the season starts