
IEM Melbourne is the next stop on the Counter-Strike esports calendar, and the outright betting odds paint a pretty clear picture about who the favorite to win is.
To be direct, the favorite is Team Vitality. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and friends have been white hot in 2025 and are going to be the clear betting favorite for months to come. Still, the actual odds are a sight to behold and they still have a tough road ahead at this tournament. Here’s a full betting breakdown for the outright winner of IEM Melbourne 2025, and the favorites to win.
IEM Melbourne 2025 will have 16 of Counter-Strike’s top teams competing, though there are notable teams passing on the event. Here are all the teams competing at IEM Melbourne and the betting odds for each one to win the event:
Team Spirit, G2 Esports, and Aurora are noticeably sitting out on this event. Team Spirit in particular is a late scratch from the tournament, with Complexity stepping in to replace them.
That has left MOUZ and Team Vitality as runaway favorites to win IEM Melbourne 2025. Vitality in particular has a line with an implied probability of victory that is above 50%.
Team Vitality looks like it might be at the beginning of a dominant run at the top of Counter-Strike 2 esports.
Throughout Counter-Strike esports history, when one team is ranked as the best, they’ll sometimes have a monthslong stretch where they win every big tournament. From Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas back in the day to Astralis in 2018, to Team Liquid in 2019, to NaVi in 2021. It’s something of a Counter-Strike tradition.
Team Vitality took over as the top-ranked Counter-Strike team in March. That came after winning IEM Katowice, ESL Pro League Season 21, and BLAST Open Spring consecutively. Across those tournaments, it has a 16-match winning streak, and it has lost just six maps during that stretch. Betting sites are buying in on Vitality having one of those dominant runs, and for good reason.
If Vitality doesn’t win IEM Melbourne, the next-in-line as the favorite is MOUZ. MOUZ and Vitality went head to head four times in March and while Vitality won all four matches, the bottom line is that MOUZ keeps making it to the finals of these events. MOUZ was even on match point in the finals to BLAST Open Spring.
Past those two are NaVi, FaZe Clan, and The MongolZ. All three teams have been active throughout 2025 and have posted generally strong results. NaVi and The MongolZ both placed top four in IEM Katowice, while FaZe is coming off a top-four run in PGL Bucharest. Though Team Falcons actually won PGL Bucharest, the squad is buried in the middle of the betting odds hierarchy.
Think you know who will win? Place your bets here!
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