Drakelounge.com
Year established: 2017
Mobile compatible: Yes
Jurisdiction: ?
Overall rating: С
Recommended: For recreational players
Drakelounge eSports Review
Established in 2017, DrakeLounge is a sportsbook tailored to esports punters, boasting odds on many of the leading titles professional gaming has to offer. Aside from being a derivative of luck box betting site DrakeMoon, there’s limited background information to be found on DrakeLounge; cursory searches mainly yielded a community divide between the site being a scam or not, somewhat common to see from a newer site. A little more digging and we found that scam accusations could be chalked up to the slow customer support during DrakeLounge’s adolescent stages - something that has since improved significantly.
Betting Markets
The markets are what you’d expect from an esports-specific betting site; DrakeLounge offers lines on the usual suspects such as League of Legends, Overwatch, CS:GO while including some uncommon titles likely to attract a wider audience. The markets are pretty basic compared to what we’ve seen from other esports-dedicated sites; typically they’ll be more than a few aspects of a match to wager on while DrakeLounge seems to primarily support outright winners only. DrakeLounge has a unique fantasy option you can access to play and collects some winnings from - the rules are better detailed on its FAQ page, but it operates similarly to traditional fantasy but with a gaming twist. Quests are weekly challenges you can complete in line with your betting; objectives such as depositing money from the site, betting on the daily match and so on and so forth. Completing the weekly quests will deposit a few extra dollars into your account, allowing you to keep the action rolling and overall breaking up the monotony. In terms of markets, DrakeLounge offers a great selection, despite lacking a bit of depth we’re ultimately pleased with the spreads you can find here. In addition, the fantasy option and weekly quests are a unique way to mix things up and give the betting site their own personalized flavor.
Live Betting
While DrakeLounge doesn’t support live betting, the closest you can get to this experience is their fantasy games. In surfing over to the fantasy tab, you will find live fantasy games occuring in which you can enter in for a chance at taking home some of the prize pool. As mentioned, fantasy works very similarly to traditional fantasy drafts, only DrakeLounge’s adaptation is limited to a series, so there’s no long-term commitment in picking players. Upon joining a fantasy match, a player is given $50,000 to spend on players to formulate a roster from; players’ salaries are based off an algorithm that takes in KDA average from recent outings.
Usability of the Site
We’ll admit, there’s been a few sportsbook’s that have nearly won us over on design alone - DrakeLounge wasn’t one of them; while the site’s layout and aesthetic isn’t the worst we’ve come across, it certainly doesn’t do anything to enhance our experience. There’s an option to switch between a light or dark color scheme with a click of a button; we could appreciate this as DrakeLounge defaults to a white background that can be hard on the eyes - I’ve always preferred the darker tones, but that could just be me. Luckily, that’s only the cosmetic side of things, everything else DrakeLounge provides in terms of usability is pretty much right up to par. Navigating the site is easy and spreads are displayed quite clearly throughout the site; online sportsbooks should always strive towards simplicity, thankfully DrakeLounge meets this criteria. In terms of depositing, your options are limited to CS:GO skins only; this factor is going to severely curb their audience in our opinion - restricting play to bettors that have a Steam account only. While a wider deposit menu would have been suitable for a larger audience, the skin-only option creates more of a niche group in terms of users. Reports of customer service are spotty - if you’re looking to submit a ticket, the best method seems to be their support page, although it’s been mentioned it could take up to 48 hours to collect a response.
Conclusion
All in all, DrakeLounge would appear to be a viable option for esports bettors. Our take is that newer sportsbook are always going to be subject to a vast scrutiny as they build up their reputation - DrakeLounge has since cleaned up their act and has been verified across a number of outlets. As an esports-dedicated sportsbook, the markets on DrakeLounge were a little disappointing; yes, you can find practically any game a bookmaker would accept bets on - only the lack of depth of these markets were a bit of a letdown. The fantasy and quest options are definitely nice touches to DrakeLounge, far from the primary function of a betting platform, however a nice way to mix things up and keep yourself entertained - gaming sites are supposed to be fun, right? DrakeLounge’s overall user-interface wasn’t one of the best we’ve seen, but it also wasn’t the worst; ultimately we can conclude that it satisfies all the basic criteria. Positives are that it’s easy to navigate, spreads are non-convoluted and you can customize the design to your preference. In terms of downsides, the depositing options being limited to only CS:GO skins ranks the highest; if you don’t have a Steam account to deposit and withdraw skins from, you might as well start looking towards another sportsbook. If you do however, DrakeLounge would be a suitable betting platform; the narrow audience that DrakeLounge adheres to is just a little too hyper-specific for our liking, nonetheless, if you’re a bettor that fits this bill, go over to their site and have a look.
Advantages:
- A lot of matches you can bet on such as Overwatch, CS:GO, Dota 2 and LoL;
- Unique mode named “Fantasy” which adds another dimension to matchbetting;
- Pretty decent esports odds;
- A scoreboard of all the best users;
- Quick overview of today’s upcoming matches and recently finished ones;
- History of all your previous bets, your total losses, and total wins;
- Great store always filled with nice skins and refilled daily;
- Smartphone and Tablet optimized;
- Easy and clear design;
- User-friendly Interface.
Disadvantages:
- Low income potential;
- Only accepts CS:GO skins for betting;
- The odds are not very good, favoring the site by 20%;
- They take 10% of the total prize pool for Fantasy games;
- You need to bet $80 to be able to use the chat room;
- Customer support is slow to reply;
- Cash out by purchasing skins.
Payments:
CS:GO skins
*Keep in mind to double check information. Be prepared for changes to restricted countries, bonuses, currencies, deposit and payment options, languages, contact info.
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