Betfair review

• Overall info
• Betfair Sportsbook Review
• Horse Racing
• Betfair Betting Exchange Review
• Betfair Casino Review
• Customer Service
• Betfair Bonuses
• Deposit and Withdrawal
• Special Betting Options
• Mobile apps
• Our verdict
• Customer Review

Betfair is the most famous and the biggest betting exchange, but it also offers a fixed-odds sportsbook, a casino with slots, table games, and live dealer casino games options, a poker room, and other real-money gambling activities. This Betfair review will introduce its sports betting, exchange, and casino solutions and provide the readers with the updated latest information of this gambling industry pioneer.

Overall info

Betfair is a British gambling brand primarily recognized as the largest sports betting exchange with highly liquid markets and a large customer pool, allowing you to trade with significant profit. Besides, you can opt for a sportsbook to bet against a bookmaker and play chance games at the casino division powered by various top leading software providers. Betfair was initially aimed at British punters, but at the moment, it accepts customers worldwide, including residents of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Netherlands, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Finland, Switzerland, Malta, Germany, Tasmania, and a number of other European and CIS countries. The website is translated into English, Irish English, Spanish, Portugal, Russian, and German languages and accepts several currencies and international payment systems.

Betfair history

Betfair’s history began in 1999 when two gambling entrepreneurs created a brand new sports betting solution suggesting sports bettors trade with each other instead of playing against the bookmaker at fixed odds. In 2002, the company became the first gambling corporation to sponsor a Soccer team. The development of Betfair included various agreements with the international sports betting associations combating fixed matches and corruption in the gambling industry, launching of its own radio station dedicated to horse racing live broadcasts and news, and getting local licenses of various jurisdictions worldwide.

However, Betfair still remained an established company with a huge customer pool, and in 2015 it was acquired by Paddy Power, another gambling veteran, to merge into a new corporation called Flutter Entertainment, which owns the Betfair website today.

Betfire official site

Bookmaker license

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:

• The UK Gambling Commission providing licensing for exchange, casino gaming, sports betting, and software development;
• Malta Gaming Authority providing licensing for sports betting, games of chance, and betting exchange;
• Danish Gambling Authority licensing sports betting and casino products;
• Swedish Gambling Authority providing sports betting and casino gaming licenses;
• The Customs and Monopolies Agency of Italy providing a remote gambling license for sports betting, casino gaming, and exchange;
• Spanish Directorate-General for the Regulation of Gambling providing sports betting and general casino licenses;
• National Gambling Office of Romania providing a license for remote games of chance, gaming software, and a sports betting platform.

Betfair Registration

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 Sportsbook Review

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.

Pre Match Line

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:

• Corners Match Bet;
• Number of Corners;
• Corners Race Markets;
• Home/Away Team Over/Under markets;
• First Half Corners;
• Alternate First Half Corners;
• First and Second Half Home and Away Corners;
• Half with the Most Corners;
• Player to Be Shown a Card;
• Match Shots on Target;
• Team Shots on Target;
• Player Shots;
• Team Shots;
• Half Result and Total Goals, and more.

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.

Live Betting

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:

• Bet Builder;
• Corners and Cards;
• Player Shots on Target;
• Over/Under;
• Minute By Minute markets;
• Match Odds.

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

Betfair odds

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.

Horse Racing

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:

• Canterbury Park (the United States);
• Philadelphia (the United States);
• Saratoga (the United States);
• Kenilworth (South Africa);
• Clairefontaine (France);
• Randwick (Australia);
• Ipswitch (Australia);
• Fort Erie (Canada);
• Catterick (Great Britain);
• Kempton (Great Britain);
• Wolverhampton (Great Britain).

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:

• Maiden Stakes;
• Each Way;
• To Be Placed;
• 2 To Be Placed;
• 4 To Be Placed, and more.

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.

Betfair Betting Exchange Review

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 Review

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:

• Slots;
• Live Casino;
• New Titles;
• Premium Casino;
• Jackpots;
• Roulette;
• Blackjack;
• Daily Jackpots;
• Jackpot King;
• Table Games;
• Vegas Slots;
• Poker;
• Bingo.

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.

Slots

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:

• Hot Games: What the Fox Megaways, Reel King, Golden Leprechaun on Tour, Big Bonus, and more;
• Newest Releases: Gold Megaways, Rise of Giza, Ages of Fortune, Fishing Frenzy Megaways;
• Betfair Recommended Slots: Eye of Horus, Buffalo Blitz, Starburst, etc.;
• Jackpots: God Of Storms, Age of Gods, Bonanza, Gonzo’s Quest, etc.

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:

• Baccarat: one classical game by Playtech with the RTP from 82,93% to 98,94%;
• Roulette: 20p Roulette, Exclusive Betfair Premium Roulette, Penny Roulette, Betfair Exclusive Bonus Roulette, European Roulette, Original Betfair Roulette, Premium French Roulette, Betfair Roulette Money Back;
• Blackjack: Premium Blackjack, All Bets Blackjack, Betfair Original Blackjack Exclusive, Betfair Blackjack with Side Bets, Premium Blackjack Single Hand, Cashback Blackjack, Buster Blackjack;
• Video Poker: Casino Hold’em, Texas Hold’em, Hi-Lo Premium.

Besides, you can participate in slot tournaments with cash and free spins prizes.

Live Casino

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:

• Live Roulette: Spin and Win Roulette, Bonus Roulette, Football Roulette, Instant Roulette, Spread Bet Roulette, Instant Roulette;
• Live Blackjack: Quantum Blackjack, All Bets, Blackjack Lobby, Power Blackjack, Infinite Blackjack;
• Game Shows: Money Drop, Spin a Win, Buffalo Blitz, Lightning Dice, Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt, Mega Ball, God Of Storms, Dear Or No Deal The Big Draw;
• Baccarat and Sic Bo: Classical Baccarat, Lightning Baccarat, Sic-Bo Deluxe, Side Bet City, Hold ’em Live.

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

Poker Section

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.

Customer Service

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:

• Most Frequent Questions;
• Account Verification;
• Login and Registration;
• Deposits and Withdrawals;
• Casino Games;
• Sports;
• Promotions;
• Player Protection;
• Other Questions.

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 Bonuses

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.

Deposit and Withdrawal

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:

• Visa/Mastercard Credit and Debit Cards. The UK and Irish customers can not use credit cards according to the UK Gambling Commission Still, the withdrawals are available via all card types for all countries;
• Neteller;
• Skrill;
• PayPal;
• Web Money;
• PaySafeCard;
• Qiwi;
• Apple Pay;
• UK Express Bank Transfer;
• Australian Bank Transfer;
• Non-UK Bank Transfer;
• Cash deposits via Paddy Power shops.

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:

• Credit and Debit cards: the withdrawals are processed within two-five working days;
• Neteller: four hours;
• Skrill: four hours;
• PayPal: four hours;
• Web Money: four hours;
• Qiwi: four hours;
• Apple Pay: two working days;
• UK Express Bank Transfer: the funds will appear on your account the next working day;
• Australian Bank Transfer: two working days;
• Non-UK Bank Transfer: two working days;
• Fast Funds: a system available for Visa Debit and Prepaid cards; the withdrawal made via Fast Funds will arrive at a Visa card. You will see funds on the card within a couple of seconds and may take up to two hours in the worst case; the option is available for the UK, Ireland, and Spain citizens;
• Prize out: an exclusive method for British and Irish customers, allowing to withdraw funds on Gift cards; you can request an e-gift card at Betfair website and receive it via email.

Special Betting Options

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:

• Betting Betfair: Betfair features a large platform full of useful information. You can find there the most actual sports news, listen to podcasts on various topics, for instance, Football Only Bettor, check out the best bets of the day, and read a vast number of articles on betting tips for Horse Racing, Cricket, Tennis, Golf, Politics, Boxing, US Sports. Besides, there are daily betting tips and long-reads about sports, exchange and sportsbook betting, and more;
• MatchMe: a feature released to help traders have their bets matched quicker and easier. As Betfair itself explains it, MatchMe is a helpful trading tool using modern smart technologies allowing you to protect the bets from significant odds fluctuations and keep your bet unmatched at the original price if necessary;
• Lay Betting Calculator: the Betting Betfair website we mentioned above contains useful tools. The Lay Betting Calculator is one of them: you can enter the stake amount, odds, and commission percentage and receive an automatic calculation of the bet liability, return amount, and total profit;
• Odds Converter: a simple tool allowing you to convert Fractional odds into their Decimal equivalent;
• Cash-Out: Betfair was one of the first gambling companies offering Cash Out features to their customers. This service allows you to lock your profit in multiple bets when you are not sure if one of the selections is correct. By cashing out, you take back a part of your stake, allocating the already gained profit;
• Exchange Auto Cash Out: a feature allowing you to set the desired profit amount before you place your stakes. When the profit is reached, the extra bets will be cashed out automatically;
• Bet Builder: a bet created from multiple markets from a single match. To use Bet Builder, you must indicate the stake amount in the Bet Slip and add markets eligible for Bet Builder; you will see them among the other markets of a selected event. The Bet Builder is available for many sports and can be found in pre-game and live betting sections. Among the markets qualifying for Bet Builder are the Match Odds, Handicap, To Lift the Cup, to qualify for the next round, Extra Time Betting, Over/Under Goals, To Score a Hattrick, and more; the overall selection consists of about fifty markets;
• Acca Edge: an analog of an Acca Insurance feature you can often find in various online sportsbooks. The Acca Edge also insures your accumulator bets but refunds stakes in the form of cash instead of free bets and is not limited in terms of the refund amount;
• Best Odds Guaranteed for Horse Racing: all UK and Ireland races from 8 a.m. are a subject of the Best Odds Guaranteed service, which implies a payout at the bigger odds if they change after you placed a stake the Starting Price;
• #OddsOnThat: gamblers are allowed to post their own markets and odds on Twitter with an #OddsOnThat hashtag. If Betfair is willing to accept your offer, it will appear among the other markets under the #OddsOnThat tab.

Mobile apps

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.

Our verdict

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.

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