London Royal Ravens vs Toronto Ultra – Call of Duty League Betting Preview

Toronto Ultra vs London Royal Ravens

Friday, April 2 – 12:00 PST

In today’s free esports betting preview, we take a look at the opening 2021 Call of Duty League (CDL) Los Angeles Guerrillas Home Series Group A match between London Royal Ravens and Toronto Ultra. Given the schedule these two teams have to go through by the end of the stage, this match will decide which of the two will finish in third, so it’s fair to say we are in for a banger.

Toronto Ultra are good, but not good enough

Toronto Ultra’s start of the 2021 season was anything but inspiring. After finishing Stage 1 with a disappointing 1-4 record, the Ultra found their stride and took down both London Royal Ravens (3-2) and Minnesota RØKKR (3-2) in Stage 1 Major playoffs, only to get humiliated by Los Angeles Thieves (0-3) in the third round of the Losers Bracket.

Although they’ve managed a fairly good run, Toronto Ultra have yet to impress with their performances in Stage 2. Outside of their 0-3 loss to Atlanta FaZe, Ultra managed to force Thieves and Los Angeles Guerrillas to five maps (2-3), which is good but not great.

The teams Toronto beat are either struggling with their form or are just playing poorly, so it’s hard to praise them too much for their 2-1 record. Their true test, however, begins this week, as they take on Royal Ravens and the surging NY Subliners.

Team Stats – Toronto Ultra

Search&Destory isn’t Toronto’s strong suit, even though they won eight out of 17 maps throughout both stages. Their S&D struggles also played quite a role in their subpar performance against Guerrillas last time out, however, you can’t really praise them too much for their recent respawn performances either – largely Control. All in all, Toronto have a lot of work to do.

Royal Ravens need to bounce back

London Royal Ravens are a team that has proven they can be extremely potent, but then there are games where you have to question whether they’re consistent enough to achieve anything remarkable. So far this stage, the Royal Ravens demolished LA Thieves (3-1) and Los Angeles Guerrillas (3-0), yet suffered a humiliating loss against New York Subliners (1-3) on Saturday.

Although the score alone is not exactly humiliating, it’s the way London lost that match that should take a toll on their morale. Looking back, London lost the series opener with 250-209 on Checkmate-Hardpoint but made quite a comeback on Express – S&D, where they held a 5-1 lead, but…

… they ended up losing 5-6. In some ways that comeback was a deja vu from way back in 2012, when Complexity with James “Clayster” Eubanks (now on Subliners) produced a comeback against OpTic after being 0-5 down to win the MLG Fall Invitational 2013 and create one of the most memorable moments in CoD esports history.

Team Stats – London Royal Ravens

Much like Toronto, the Royal Ravens aren’t doing too well on S&D, but look fairly decent on respawn maps. That said, they put up quite a solid S&D performance against Subliners (5-6), which is at least some sort of improvement, granted Subliners aren’t exactly a good S&D team. Regardless, London should have an edge on both respawns, which technically represents 2/3 of the series.

London Royal Ravens vs Toronto Ultra Betting Picks

These sides last met during the Stage 1 Major, when Toronto Ultra claimed a fairly unexpected 3-2 win, winning Garrison- Hardpoint (250-142), Raid – Control (3-0) and Moscow – S&D (6-4). The question is, however, how much of that performance will they manage to translate to Friday’s bout, considering how uninspiring Ultra looked in their series with Guerrillas last weekend.

Based on what we have seen from these two sides of late, London should not be priced over 2.00 and I would even go so far as to say that they should enter this match as the favorites. While I don’t expect a complete blowout, London are the better team and should win this match fairly comfortably.

Prediction: London Royal Ravens to win – 2.07 Pinnacle