Betfair Review

As mentioned, Betfair was launched in 2000. Its founders, Andrew Black and Edward Wray, decided that they wanted to create a new way for punters to be able to place bets on their favorite sporting events. Usually, a bookmaker would set the odds for a match. Wray and Black wanted to put that decision making into the hands of bettors (more on that to follow).

Betfair has focused heavily on the UK and European gambling markets, where soccer is such a huge sport from a betting revenue perspective. The company has two gaming licenses: one from Malta and the other from the UK. Having these two licenses proves that Betfair is one of the most reputable businesses in the online gaming space; the UK Gambling Commission license is particularly difficult to receive, given all the due diligence completed by the regulatory board. All of this adds up to your money being highly secure at these sites (with one major exception, which I will discuss later on).

In 2010, the decision was made to take Betfair public on the London Stock Exchange. This allowed the company to raise significant capital and further cement itself as one of the industry giants. At the time of this review, the valuation of Betfair was hovering around the 2 billion USD range.

In 2014, Betfair was one a few online gaming companies to receive a license to operate in New Jersey, one of the few US states to allow regulated internet gambling. This is a license only for the casino, but that is an excellent foothold for the company as it makes its way back into the US market.

On February 2, 2016, the company announced a merger with another European online gaming giant, Paddy Power. The net result of this merger is the largest company by revenue of any of the regulated online gaming groups.

Betfair uses proprietary software for their sportsbook offering. When they started the company, no one was licensing betting exchange software, so they had no choice but to build it in-house. While there are ongoing development costs associated with this, it is much lower than they likely would have had to pay in royalties to a third-party software company.

For their casino platform, Betfair has chosen to work with several partners. The most prominent of these software vendors is Playtech. One of the industry’s top casino software developers, Playtech manages both the download and instant-play versions of the Betfair Casino. For the non-download version of the games, content from suppliers such as IGT, Ash Gaming, CORE Gaming, Red Tiger Gaming, and SG Interactive have been integrated into the lobby. The result is an excellent combination of games featuring different themes and looks that will surely make any player happy and engaged.

The platform is also available via mobile devices. Depending on jurisdiction, you may be able to download their native app to your Android or iOS devices. Otherwise, you can access the site and games through your device’s browser.

Well, this is a no-brainer, right? I will go into detail about how the betting exchange works a little later on in this review, but I can tell you that being able to set the lines yourself and find people willing to take the wager is a complete game-changer for sports bettors. If you haven’t tried the platform yet, I encourage you to get on to it right away; you’ll be hooked from the first accepted bet!

Sometimes when an online gaming site has so many different products and variants, the website can end up as cluttered as a teenager’s bedroom. Thankfully, this is not the case at Betfair. As the company has grown and added more options for you, their web development team has worked tirelessly to ensure that finding your way around the site is not an issue. As opposed to many cumbersome sites I have come across in my reviews, the Betfair navigation is clean and easy to comprehend, meaning you will spend less time clicking aimlessly and more time being able to place bets.

While I could do some more digging and probably find some more things to dislike at Betfair, there really is no reason to do so when I can spend more time explaining to you how one of the world’s biggest sites tried to correct a terrible oversight in one of the most absurd ways ever.

You may find when Googling Betfair that a lot of sites like this have blacklisted the company, and you will also find a significant number of player complaints. After much research, I noticed that almost all the negativity centered on one promotion gone wrong.

In 2010, the company launched an aggressive “Happy Hour” promotion which offered players an unlimited number of 50% deposit bonuses to a maximum of $100 each time, with an absurdly low 10x wagering requirement. While this promotion only lasted for 4 hours, the result was disastrous; it spread like wildfire online, and players basically figured out that by just playing the minimum amount of times and by making massive numbers of deposits during those hours, they could gain an edge over the house. While this was noteworthy on its own, what happened next was nearly disastrous.

Realizing that they had just taken a multi-million-dollar hit on this promotion, Betfair decided to freeze all the accounts that had benefited from the offer. Following that, they started to confiscate money from these balances without any real explanation – there was no breach of the terms and conditions of the promotion. Rumor has it that they were also able to take money back from a player’s bank account; that is an egregious offense if true. The end result was the single largest confiscation of funds from player accounts in the history of the online gaming industry.

While it took some time to recover from this, the company continues to thrive, and I am assuming that marketing person has long since been fired. As there haven’t been any complaints like this since the incident, I am of the belief that, however catastrophic, this was a one-time event, and I am willing to give Betfair a second chance here.

So…what is a betting exchange, anyway? Well, let me try to explain in simple terms. Both Wray and Black had business acumen, and they realized that rather than having one single bookmaker create the odds with which the public must bet, an open exchange could be created. In this scenario, anyone could create a wager on a match and then post it into the exchange, waiting to see if anyone would take the bait.

Let me give you an example of how this works, using NFL football as an example:

Say you want to make a bet on the New England Patriots vs. the Green Bay Packers. The sportsbook has the line set at New England -3.5 points, but you are a huge Patriots fan, consider yourself a savvy insider, and you are confident they are going to crush the Packers. At Betfair, you can select the game, and then create your own wager: let’s say in this case, $100 that the Patriots will win the game by 7 points. Once you create the wager, it is posted on the exchange, where it sits until someone who thinks they would love the Packers and 7 points accepts the bet. At that point, there is a bet between you and another player, with the winner of the bet paying Betfair a commission for the action.

See how much fun that could be? Now you can be the bookmaker, posting lines that you feel are more attractive based on what you feel the outcome of a game is. Now…imagine thousands of gamblers and hundreds of sporting events, and you can imagine how busy that exchange is!

A couple of points to make a note of: when you post the wager on the exchange, the money is held from your account, even if the wager isn’t accepted. If the bet goes without action, then the money is returned to your account after the game starts. You do, however, have the option of freeing up the money by canceling an unclaimed bet before the game starts.

While there were instantly competitors to Betfair in this exchange space (Flutter being the largest of them), the advanced nature of these bets wasn’t for the average bettor, so Betfair now manages the largest online betting exchange by far, with most other sportsbooks choosing to go the more traditional route.

While Betfair is clearly a sports betting-first site, that doesn’t take away anything from their casino offering. The company knows how valuable an excellent casino offering can be, and with the partners they have chosen, you will be able to see the quality from the second you click on their casino link. Let’s take a look at some of the games being offered.

Casino players can choose from two different welcome bonuses for their first deposit:

• 100% to a maximum of $100 to be able to be used on all casino games
• 200% to a maximum of $400 for slots play only

Obviously, it is much harder to clear bonuses playing slots. However, if you are looking to maximize the bonus, this is still your best bet. Personally, I chose to make my first deposit with a sports betting bonus, as I felt that gave me the best chance to actually come away a winner, even though the bonus was significantly smaller.

The bonus for live dealer games is slightly different. While the bonus is only 50%, the maximum is $200, and you also receive 5 chips to be played at Live Roulette. I like this bonus, as it forces players to try out the live dealer games, which as I explained earlier are increasingly popular in the space.

Unlike many of their competitors in the UK market, Betfair does not have any live betting shops to aid in the processing of payments, relying 100% on online transactions. However, they do have all the primary options for players who want to make deposits and withdrawals. There have been a few complaints about how long it takes for a withdrawal to be processed (a common complaint across the board in this industry), but given that this is a public company, it isn’t because the company doesn’t have the funds to pay.

The Betfair casino comp program is managed by Playtech. The terms are straightforward; you earn between 1 and 3 comp points for every $10 wagered in the casino, and points can be redeemed at a rate of $1 for every 100 points.

Definitely. Let me be very clear here: I was a Betfair customer until they took away my access in 2016 when they stopped taking action from Canada. I LOVE the betting exchange idea and think it will continue to grow and become more commonplace as the years go by. These guys were the pioneers of this style of sports betting, and continue to lead the pack with their exchange. Having added high-quality casino games and a fantastic VIP program, they match up very well against their competition.

Yes, they did something awful to their players, but that was eight years ago. Since then, there have been no significant issues, so I think we can put the past behind them. As a result, I highly recommend Betfair to you for all your betting needs.