Betfire official site
Betfair has always been serious about its acknowledgment and legal status and put much effort into obtaining various sports betting licenses to promote its services as an approved local bookmaker and casino in different countries. At the moment, Betfair (their owner Flutter Entertainment and its sister companies responsible for various Betfair’s divisions, e.g., sportsbook, exchange, casino, lottery, etc., to be precise) is registered and regulated by the following gambling authorities:
To join Betfair, you must press the Join Now button and go through two steps. The first step involves entering your account details: email address, password, a security question, and indicating your residence country and preferred currency. If you have a referral code from an existing user or a promo code, you must enter it in the dedicated field on the same step. The next step is about your personal data: name as per passport, sex, mobile number, postcode, or address. You can also set your deposit limits per month, week, or day. After you finish registration, Betfair asks you to allow up to a couple of minutes before they can verify your contact details.
Registration panel
Betfair’s traditional sportsbook has thirty sports to wager on at fixed odds; to be precise, not all of them are sports disciplines: you can bet on Current Affairs, for instance, Time Person Of The Year, Nobel Prize winners, or Politics like the next US president.
Although it is expectable for gambling platforms with an exchange to have a pretty limited offer for fixed price betting, Betfair pleases the punters with a generous number of markets for many matches and tournaments, especially when it comes to major Soccer leagues and Tennis meetings.
The sportsbook layout is very easy to navigate; although the banners with the top promotions and special betting offers might be a bit distracting, they still do not spoil the overall look and convenience of the sportsbook section. Each discipline has a separate page with quick links offering you to opt for the Highlights, In-Play offer for a chosen sport, All available competitions, and Outrights. Punters can choose between Fractional, set by default, and Decimal odds formats.
Although you can expect a limited sports betting offer at fixed odds at the platform featuring a betting exchange, Betfair surprises us with a large number of various markets for popular sporting events. As a British bookmaker, Betfair is more focused on English Soccer Leagues and Horse Racing, but you can still find a wide range of different markets for Tennis, American sports like Basketball or Football, and some other mainstream disciplines and events. Less popular sports have a smaller betting offer and are represented in Straight Bets and Futures Markets.
Bet line
Top Soccer events involve up to two hundred markets, with Bet Builder and Cash Out options. For instance, a line may look the following way:
ESports is represented in a pretty standard way: the overall offer mainly involves the top popular Counter-Strike: GO, Dota 2, and League of Legends tournaments. Among the best-covered events are the CS: GO – ESEA Premier Division, DOTA 2 – The International, and the ESL One, LOL – CBLOL Split Season. The markets are usually limited by the Maps Winners, Match Winner, and Map Handicaps.
Betfair has a very extensive offer for live betting; there are various promotions for live events like Odds Boost, and you can use the Cash Out feature. A single event may involve about a hundred markets. For instance, you can see the following betting options for a Man City vs. Arsenal game:
Many events have live streams; to watch the broadcasts, you must be a registered user with a positive balance on their deposit. If live-streaming is not available, you can monitor the game with the help of animated graphics. Among the decently covered sports in the in-play section are Tennis, Basketball, and American Football; the others mainly include a couple of standard markets. The odds are updated quickly, and the website layout allows you to place quick bets on the last-minute markets.
Live betting
Most gambling platforms with a betting exchange do not normally have very lucrative odds in their sportsbooks: the main customer pool trades on the exchange, so there is no need to attract it by the industry’s low margins. Betfair is not an exception and operates with a margin varying between 6%-9%. You can find better odds in the horsebook and when you bet on Asian Handicaps and Money Line of the top leading Soccer games, but overall the in-play and live betting margin is not competitive enough to call Betfair bookmaker a profitable place.
Betfair is superior when it comes to Horse Racing bets: you can choose from different bet types on the racing events in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, the United States, and more. The racing offer is spread to both sportsbook and betting exchange, so you can opt for the fixed odds coming along with special offers like Price Boost or trade on the exchange laying or backing the suggested price. The sportsbook covers about three hundred racing events daily, and the exchange may involve about seventy races per day. The registered users with positive deposits can watch the races via an embedded live streaming service available on the PC website version, mobile browsers, and the app.
A single event can gather up to £100,000 matched bets, so it is pretty easy to find betting markets of high liquidity. Among the top popular covered events are the following:
Horce racing betting line
The number of markets varies depending on how popular the race is; a single event may include the following betting options:
Betfair took care of inexperienced users and added a detailed description of each betting market; you can read it by pressing the ‘I’ sign next to the bet type.
The exchange offers trading on the same sports markets you can find in the sportsbook; the biggest market depth is available for Soccer, but the line still includes other sports and non-sporting events and eSports as well. Like every other exchange, Betfair offers Laying or Backing the markets and indicates the already matched amount for each bet.
You can bet on Totals, Handicap, Full Time and Half Time, Both Teams to Score, Cards, Corners in Football events; Set Winners, Tie Break, Correct Score, and more on Tennis; Handicaps, Quarter and Half Times, and Totals on Ice Hockey — to name just a few markets for the most popular sports. The line is very saturated, and the same is true for live betting: you can find extremely lucrative odds, so keeping in mind you are not limited in terms of the winning amount, Betfair can bring you solid profits.
Betting exchange
The minimum betting exchange stake is £1; it used to be £2, but recently Betfair has reduced it, which attracted more beginning traders and allowed them to create more liquid markets. They also have a pretty unique commission model. The basic commission is 5%, but there is a discount program that makes a commission size lower depending on how many reward points you earned. For instance, if you win £400, you must multiply this amount to the basic commission of 5%. Say your personal discount is 40%: in this case, you have to multiply the result by 1-40%; your final commission will be £12. The discount rate varies from 2% to 50%; to get the minimum commission, you must have at least 1,000 reward points. You do not pay any commission for your lost bets. Still, traders earn Betfair points for both won and lost bets and can also win extra points for the Exchange Games (Poker In-Play and Blackjack In Play), located in the dedicated section.
Betfair casino is regarded as one of the top digital casinos in the United Kingdom and Europe. It works with the leading software providers like Netent, BluePrint, Playtech, Play N Go, Cayetano, Red Tiger, and more. The library amounts to several hundred slots, mini-games, table, and card games, and live dealer tables. You can opt for one of the casino sections as follows:
Although the number of different sections may give you an idea of a vast choice, it is not exactly like this: the same game can be replicated in two or more categories, so the overall collection turns out to be much smaller than you could expect from one of the most famous gambling brands.
The average payout in Betfair casinos varies from 90% to 98%, depending on the selected title. The casino does not require any downloadable software, so you can instantly access it from your account via a PC and mobile browser or one of the dedicated apps.
The slots library is pretty limited, so it may seem too mediocre to the most sophisticated casino enthusiasts; it lacks very popular titles as Betfair does not cooperate with some famous providers like Microgaming, and you can mostly find only the most mainstream slots. The collection still involves various slot types: from classical fruit machines to modern video slots, Megaways slots, and certainly jackpots with large payout amounts. You can find slots in two sections: Slots and Vegas Slots. The first one includes the following categories:
Betfair provides a brief description and the RTP information for every slot; to read it, you must click the I-sign on the game’s preview.
Casino games
The Jackpot King section is dedicated to the largest Betfair jackpot slots series: Jackpot King Goonies, Deluxe Jackpot King, Diamond Mine Megaways, Slots of Gold, Fortunes of Ra, and more — about thirty titles overall. The payout may reach £1,000,000.
Daily Jackpots collection includes twenty-one slots, for instance, Vault Cracker, Bounty Raid, Primate King, Zeus Lightning Power Reels, and other popular or exclusive titles. There are hourly and daily jackpots and a daily booster.
The other Random Number Generator based-activities include table games:
Besides, you can participate in slot tournaments with cash and free spins prizes.
In the Betfair Live Casino, you can play all sorts of table games with live dealers; there are also exclusive tables and classical Playtech titles. There are the following categories:
You can also ring the changes on your casino gaming experience by opting for Bingo, Slingo, and Virtual sports betting. There are daily free Betfair Bingo games, loyalty points boosters, and a £200 bonus that can be spent on Bingo tickets. Among the Slingo games are such titles as Centurion, Britain’s Got Talent, Rainbow Riches, Slingo Extreme, and more. Virtual Sports involve Flat Horse Racing, Jumps, Sprint Horse Races, Club Football, Greyhounds, and Motor Racing.
Live dealers
Betfair poker is a part of the iPoker network and operates on downloadable Playtech software. It features tournaments and cash games with up to seven thousand members gathered in a room during peak hours, so you will always find an activity and opponents.
The poker client is easy to navigate and allows you to set the colors and layout, timebank, Auto Rebuy, and other parameters for cash and tournament games. Besides, you can use third-party poker tools, like Pokertracker or Auto Sitting scripts: although Betfair does not feature any native software, they do not prohibit it, so the room will be comfortable for professional players. You can also play casino games and mini-games via the poker client, but many users regard it as more of an inconvenience as the game’s tabs might be distracting sometimes.
Speaking about cash poker games, you can select between Limit, Pot Limit, and Non-Limit Hold ’em, Hold ’em 5, Omaha, and Omaha Hi-Lo. Limits vary between NL20 and NL1000; there are tables for all kinds of players: from beginners and amateurs to professional high rollers.
The tournaments include Twister, Speed Poker, Sit N Go, and classical tournaments. Twister has three formats: Twister, Wild Twister, and Twister Age; the Twister players can participate daily in the jackpot race with a £12,000 prize pool. Sit-And-Gos also come in several variants: HU, Six-max, Nine-max, and Eighteen-max.
If you face any issue or have a question, you must apply to the help center, located under the Help tab located at Betfair’s page footer. The center contains the answers to the top popular or more complicated questions. You can either search the articles by keywords or select from the following categories:
The articles explaining the betting rules or any other essential points are very comprehensive and will be helpful for even very beginners. Besides, some of them contain short video instructions.
If you did not find the answer you required, you could contact the customer support team by pressing the Get In Touch button, enabling the live chat available for logged-in customers and guests.
Unfortunately, there are no other ways of contacting Betfair representatives, but the Live Chat experience showed that this channel works fine enough to manage without any other contact options. If you have a problem gambling, you can find the contacts of the National Gambling Helpline and other help sources on the Betfair dedicated page.
Betfair offers a good selection of bonuses for the betting exchange, the sportsbook, and the casino. You can choose between several welcome offers and participate in regular or seasonal promotions. There is a referral program and various rewards programs allowing to gather Betfair points and change them for free bets, special offers for horse racing, and more. One of the drawbacks about the Betfair bonuses is that many of them are exclusively available for customers from the United Kingdom or Ireland, so make sure you know all terms and conditions and know if you are qualifying for a particular promotion. In the table below, we will give the details about the welcome bonuses and regular promotions, but there might be seasonal offers and private bonuses that appear under a dedicated tab in users’ accounts. Betfair suggests that the customers opted-in for regular email notifications providing you with customized offers based on your sports betting and exchange experience.
Bonus type | Bonus conditions |
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Sports Welcome Bonus | Create a Betfair account and top up your deposit. Place at least five bets of £10 and receive £20 in the form of a free bet. You can repeat this action up to five times to get the maximum bonus amount of £100 free bet. All free bets can be used at Betfair sportsbook and must be wagered within 72 hours. Single cashed out or exchange bets are excluded from the offer. |
Betfair Referral Program | Get a personal referral link on the promotion’s page and share it with a friend. If your friend joins Betfair, you will receive a £10 free bet for the friend’s first £10 stake at Betfair casino, sportsbook, or exchange made no later than 60 days from the moment of registration. You can share the referral link five times. |
Rewards for Racing | Each at least £1 stake on horse racing at the Betfair sportsbook brings you one reward point. When you register an account and top up your deposit with at least £10, you instantly receive 2,000 reward points. The points can be changed for valuable prizes on the horse racing venues. |
Multiples Betting Offer | Bet on multiples at least £20 and earn a £5 free bet to use within the next day. The qualifying bets include Bet Builder betting but excludes single, exchange, and cashed out bets. |
Exchange Welcome Offer | Join Betfair and bet at least £20 on the exchange. If your bet loses, you will receive a refund of £20. If you bet more than £20, the maximum refund will not exceed this amount. |
Casino No Deposit Bonus | Join Betfair and instantly receive fifty free spins. No wagering requirements are applied, but the offer is valid for seven days after you opt it. Check terms and conditions to get acquainted with the games included and excluded from the offer. |
Poker Welcome Bonus | JJoin Betfair Poker room and receive a 200% deposit match to your first deposit; the maximum bonus amount is £200. |
Poker VIP Club | Join Betfair Poker VIP club to receive a regular 35% rakeback and participate in rake races to have a chance of winning jackpots. |
Betfair accepts several payment systems for customers worldwide and offers some exclusive features for safer and quicker transactions.
You can top up your account using the following options:
All deposits are free of charge; Betfair does not take any deposit fees, but you might have to pay extra commissions charged by the banking systems.
The withdrawals are also available via the same payment options with some restrictions. The processing times and terms are the following:
Betfair online sports betting offer is superior in terms of various additional services for the sportsbook or exchange bettors: it provides multiple special options and useful tools, allowing you to gamble with more profits and pleasure. In the list below, we will briefly describe such extra features and tools:
Betfair features multiple apps for iOS and Android: instead of releasing a single fully-equipped heavy app involving all kinds of gambling activity, the company opted for separating each type of gambling into a native app. Thus, you can download a Sports app, Casino and Live Casino apps, Poker, Bingo, and Exchange apps. You do not need to have different accounts, though, and can access all of them using a single login and password.
Each app allows you to deposit funds and request withdrawals, contact the customer support team and use all features available for particular gambling activity on the main desktop version. We will give you brief specifications of the sports betting apps; you can check the other apps in the App Store or Google Play as both versions are available for downloading via the stores and do not require separate files to be installed.
Mobile app platform | Specifications |
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iOS |
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Android |
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Betfair is a perfect place to trade on the exchange: the selection of sports disciplines and extra tools making betting easier are superior. The sportsbook coverage can also be impressive, although the profit may be lower than at other leading bookmakers. The number of various additional services, unusual bet types, and lucrative promotions is very competitive, so we can definitely recommend Betfair to sports bettors of all kinds. Being a very established and reputable gambling brand with a long history and tons of positive reviews from customers, Betfair remains one of the best sites to wager on sports and play casino games. One of the perks is the poker room, regarded as one of the strongest poker offers in the industry, so it can be one more reason to give Betfair a higher rating than many betting sites have. Their casino offer, though, seems to be a bit weak, but the advantages outweigh the minuses, so we can definitely recommend Betfair to all sorts of gamblers from the approved countries.
Unlike traditional sportsbooks, a betting exchange allows players to offer their own bets and offer the odds. The other traders can lay or back the bets. Such an online sports betting approach allows bettors to find better odds than at standard fixed-odds bookmakers as there is no margin involved in the odds: you only pay a commission fee for using the exchange software from your winnings.
Betfair holds several gambling licenses approving their operations in different countries. In some jurisdictions, Betfair services are limited by only a sportsbook and a casino. At the moment, the platform is registered by the following countries: The United Kingdom (The UK Gambling Commission), Malta (Malta Gaming Authority), Denmark (Danish Gambling Authority), Sweden (Swedish Gambling Authority), Italy (The Customs and Monopolies Agency), Spain (Spanish Directorate-General for the Regulation of Gambling), and Romania (National Gambling Office).
You can use credit and debit cards, e-wallets like Neteller, Skrill, Paypal, Web Money, and Qiwi. Besides, you can use Apple Pay and Bank transfers. The customers from the selected countries can also withdraw via the Fast Funds system and claim the funds to their Betfair Gift Cards.
You can opt for three welcome bonuses: for a sportsbook, betting exchange, and casino. When you join Betfair, you immediately receive a no deposit welcome bonus for casino gaming: fifty free spins on qualifying slots. The sportsbook bonus is a £20 free bet for the first five bets at stakes from at least £10; the bonus is extended to the first twenty-five bets with the maximum bonus free bet amount of £100. The exchange bonus is the refund of the first lost exchange bet of at least £20; the maximum refund amount is £20.
Betfair does not hold any gambling license that makes it legal in the United States. Thus, you can not join the customer pool and participate in any gambling activities Betfair offers if you reside in the USA. Both gambling law and Betfair access restrictions make registration and betting impossible for US customers.