Riot Games Opens Door to Betting Sponsorships for League of Legends and VALORANT Teams

In June 2025, Riot Games announced that it would make a big change in its policy regarding gambling sponsors. Henceforth, licensed sport betting platforms may collaborate with top-level teams in League of Legends and VALORANT in the Americas and the EMEA region.

This is contrary to the long-standing practice of Riot to avoid gambling sponsors in the main esports events.

John Needham, the President of Riot and publisher divisions and Esports, shed light on the decision in the form of a blog post. He explained that betting on the games from Riot is already done by people using uncontrolled sources, and that reality could no longer be overlooked.

By working with officially licensed operators instead, Riot feels it can do more to take care of the fairness of its competitions and enhance the overall experience of the fans.

Why Riot Changed Its Rules

Riot says that the majority of its partnered teams are requesting opportunities to generate additional revenue to enable them to remain afloat during an increasingly expensive competitive landscape. One method Riot can use to sponsor its teams without necessarily compromising the integrity of the competitions is by allowing approved betting sponsorships.

Riot also reported that gambling on League of Legends esports and VALORANT esports events surpassed $10.7 billion in 2024, most of it occurring via unregulated and illegal betting platforms.

One of the main reasons why Riot amended its policy was due to the increased size of this underground betting market.

How Betting Sponsorships Will Be Managed

To keep fans’ betting secure, as well as to safeguard the competitions themselves, Riot has drawn up rules regarding betting collaborations that all teams are required to abide by:

• Approval and compliance: Any sponsorship activity requires all the betting partners to be examined and registered by Riot.
• Data access for integrity: Only official Riot esports data, offered by GRID Esports, will be permissible for bookmakers to use for building betting markets. This is to assist in match-fixing and data corruption.
• Compulsory team integrity programs: Betting sponsors have to create internal protocols that would educate the players and staff on competition integrity and responsible gambling.
• Limited brand recognition: Betting/gambling brands shall not be depicted on team jerseys when they are broadcasting or included in official Riot social media content. Only the teams have permission to do promotions, and they must follow Riot’s rules.

Cryptocurrency Betting Sites and Their Role in Esports

Cryptocurrency betting platforms tend to cover a broad range of esports, such as League of Legends, CS2, Dota 2, and VALORANT.

Review sites like CryptoManiaks help the fans in the comparison of what they can get at these sites. They look at welcome bonuses, promotions, VIP benefits, as well as reliability, such as these Stake bonuses and promotions. This is important in crypto betting where some of the sites may have exclusive offers to cryptocurrency users. The rules on how to use the crypto bonuses are also explained with the help of the guides.

Through this, these sites will make it simpler to identify licensed and reliable places of betting on the games of interest to esports fans.

How the Community and Teams Responded

The esports community has reacted differently to the announcement. There have been statements by some organizations that they will not seek betting sponsorships because of the exposure of the younger fans to gambling promotion.

But to others, this move by Riot was a viable action to assist teams in diversifying their revenue in the ever-expanding competitive environment.

Interestingly, as well, most of the largest esports organizations have sponsors in betting or gambling, which points to how normal such arrangements were before the existing regulations.

Conclusion

At this point, Riot’s new policy is relevant only in those areas where sports betting is licensed and regulated, primarily, the Americas and Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA). This does not apply to areas with tougher gambling policies, like in China and parts of the Asia-Pacific.

Riot has indicated that it will keep an eye on the outcomes and make some adjustments as teams start adding approved sponsors. People in the esports industry will be interested to know whether this cautious strategy can help balance the finances available as a team with the integrity of competition over the long term.