In this paper, we present an output feedback based design of event-triggered sliding mode control for delta operator systems. For discrete-time systems, multi-rate output sampling based state estimation technique is very useful if the output information is available. But at high sampling rates, the discrete-time representation of the system using shift operator becomes numerically ill-conditioned and as a result, the observability matrix becomes singular as the sampling period tends to zero. Here, a new formulation of multi-rate state estimation (MRSE) for a small sampling period is presented. We first propose a new observability matrix and then discuss its relationship with the observability matrix defined in the conventional sense. For the delta operator system with matched uncertainty, we have presented the design of MRSE based sliding mode control (SMC). Additionally, to make the control efficient in terms of resource utilization, MRSE based event-triggered SMC is proposed. The absence of Zeno phenomenon is guaranteed as the control input is inherently discrete in nature. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated through numerical simulations, considering a ball and beam system and a general linear system as a numerical example. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd