Sportingbet Sports Betting Review (2024)

♒ Sportingbet have become more of a jack-of-all-trades operator in recent years. They’ve added a huge casino option and provide virtual sports with their own dedicated page. However, there’s no doubt that the huge array of sports markets is their true priority. In sports alone, they offer an incredible array of markets. The question, we suppose, is whether they can stay consistent, and whether they can keep their balance as the tightrope gets thinner.

With a number of welcome offers for newcomers♌ and the site available in English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, it’s certainly a tempting proposition. We’re here to find out whether it’s as good as it looks with our exclusive and extensive Sportingbet review.

🦄 With such an overwhelming amount of content, Sportingbet may come across as intimidating to newcomers. However, their easy registration process really puts our mind at ease. It shows us that the look of complexity is only down to the sheer amount of betting options they need to pack into their site. When it comes down to the practicalities – the things that matter – they are all about ease of use.

⛎ Nonetheless, we are well aware that a lot of people still find this process to be anxiety-provoking. What we’ve done is break down the process step by step, so you can see exactly what you can expect should you decide that Sportingbet is right for you. 

♊ The details that are required here are pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few notes we want to point out. Firstly, this seems like the perfect time to mention that Sportingbet has a strict one account per person rule – as do most other betting sites. That means you need to ensure that you are using this email on this site for the very first time. In fact, if the site recognises a used email, it will not allow you to proceed unless you change it.

🎃 In addition, you will naturally want to choose a strong, unique password, as you’ll be entering sensitive information. Once you’ve done that, as well as ensured that the correct country of residence and currency are selected, you’re ready to move onto the second step.

Step two is even simpler, as it just asks for your name, sex, and date of birth. Naturally, you’ll need to be above the legal age to gamble be accepted. And that’s it – onto the final step.

🦂 Here, you’ll need to provide a phone number and address. The same point we previously made about emails also applies here. Importantly, you also get to choose if and how the site can contact you. Accept the terms and conditions, hit ‘Create my account’ and your account is ready!

It’s obviously a really simple process. We think that it’s suitable for anyone even if they’re not especially computer-confident. A couple of details we really liked was the information about the Sportingbet welcome offerꦆ at the top, and, although you can’t see from the screenshots above, the clearly available live chat option during this process. There are no banking requirements here either, meaning you don’t need to make any kind of financial commitment in order to proceed. It’s pretty much perfect.

🙈 Naturally, the next thing you’ll want to do is deposit some money so you’re able to place some bets and get on with everything that Sportingbet has to offer. Luckily, there’s a huge amount of banking options available, so there’s little chance of you missing out.

At the time of writing, the following payment methods are available: Apple Pay, Bank Transfer, CashtoCode, eMONEYSAFE, Giropay by Skrill, LuxonPay, MuchBetter, servipag, webpay, Astropay, Liberacao Boleto, Boleto Bancario, Payz (formerly ecoPayz), Diner Club Card, Fast Bank Transfer, Instant Banking, Maestro, Mastercard, Neteller, Paysafecard, PromoCode, PayPal, Skrill𒉰, Skrill 1-tap, SOFORT Banking, Trustly and Visa. There’s also a huge amount of information on each method in the terms and conditions; however, not all of these options will be relevant to you. Handily, the site makes it clear which options are available to you after registration.

As we are British users, our deposit options were VISA, Mastercard, PayPal, paysafecard, Maestro, Trustly, PromoCode and MuchBetter.

🌠 For Visa, Maestro and Mastercard, deposits are pretty much instant, and there are no fees charged for using your card. You can also withdraw using this method, although no time period is specified. Maestro does suggest that some fees may be charged. PayPal also comes without fees and takes between 10-20 seconds for funds to reach your account. You can also withdraw more than your initial deposit using PayPal.

♈ Paysafecard is available across various denominations, and can be purchased from retail outlets, like a top-up card. There are no additional fees and deposits are instant. You can even withdraw to your paysafecard account. Trustly takes a few minutes and can have fees for direct bank e-payments, although that is down to Trustly, not Sportingbet.

🤡 Withdrawals can take 1-2 business days to be approved by the site's internal review team, then another 1-2 business days to appear in your account.

🍨 Sportingbet offers PromoCode, a 12 digit-code that, when entered, will appear in your account as a free bet. Naturally, this cannot be used to withdraw funds. MuchBetter also has no fees and is instant, but does require you to complete the transaction through your phone.

💜 This is really detailed stuff by Sportingbet, and as we said, more information can be found on the site itself. Also, these are the details of what you can expect as a UK player. By all means, if other payment methods are relevant to you, check them out on the terms and conditions on the site.

🐬 The only information that wasn’t immediately available was regarding any withdrawal fees. Now, these can be tricky, as they are generally out of the hands of the operator and they are judged to be typical. But more information would be helpful, even if it was just to reflect those sentiments. Now, we know that a lot of people find the whole banking process stressful, so, just like the registration process, we’ll be giving you a step-by-step example.

𒁃 The first thing you need to do is pick the deposit method that is right for you. If you were unsure about what methods were available to you specifically, this should make it clear.

✨ Next, you’ll need to tell the site how much you want to deposit. For Visa, the minimum is 10GBP. This is also where you will add your banking information.

༺ After this is done you will be able to see your deposited amount credited to your account. You are now ready to bet!

We decided to put our full £10 on Colombo FC, so we selected the market and it then appeared on our betting slip, as shown above. You can also see how much you stand to win; this is a great way to check if you are unsure about how much odds are worth. If you are happy with the amount, hit “PLACE BET” to confirm.

🦹 Our bet won, so it was time to withdraw our winnings. Once again, your withdrawal options are made crystal clear and naturally depend in part on what you used to deposit. Select your preferred option.

𒁃 Once selected, we simply requested the winning amount. Within moments, we received the above confirmation, and received our funds in a matter of days. And that is all there is to it!

We hope that this helps reassure anyone nervous about the banking process that  It is all made remarkably simple. That means that banking with Sportingbet is not just versatile, it is easy too.

Sportingbet offer a generous welcome promotion, where users can get up to £50 in free bets, an odds boost token, 20 free spins, and a £10 casino bonus when signing up and completing four welcome challenges. This promotion stands to offer a whole lot of value to new players  – assuming those terms and conditions are kept at a high quality.

Sportsbook Bonus Description

𝄹 Now, onto those pesky terms and conditions – in other words, how a promotion sinks or swims. Each welcome challenge has its own set of T&Cs, so make sure to read them before claiming the promotions. No promo codes are required for users to claim the offers, but keep in mind that when depositing with certain payment methods you may not be able to redeem them.

⭕ One of the most important things to keep in mind is that you need to be from the United Kingdom to be able to claim this promotion. This is a fairly common type of restriction, but even so, it is not nearly as big an issue as it initially appears. According to our chats with customer service, there are different sign-up offers depending on which market you are from. This means that, although some people may not be able to enjoy this welcome offer, there should be another they can make the most out of.

𒀰 As is the case with all of the promotional terms and conditions here, there is a very strict one bonus per person rule. It’s important to note here, and in general, that this includes accounts from the same IP address and the same household. So, be sure that no one you are living with also has a Sportingbet account to avoid disappoint. This may sound harsh, but it’s actually standard practice to avoid people taking advantage of the offer.

♛ All in all, it’s a terrific promotion. Other than a few necessary caveats, it delivers what it promises, therefore sweetening the deal and giving people a reason to give Sportingbet a try. For your average player, this is the perfect introduction.

That’s far from all that’s available at Sportingbet. However, before we go on, we must point out that a lot of the bonuses that are available are personalised. This not only means that you would be getting different promotions depending on where you were from – in a similar situation to what was discussed with the welcome bonus – but you can also get bonuses that are individual to you and how you like to play. This is obviously a huge positive.

With that said, it does limit to an extent what we can analyse. We don’t know which individual promotions you are going to get, because we don’t know what they are exactly. Then again, we suppose you could say that about promotions generally. A𓆉 good bonus page is always changing, and always moving with the times.

That’s part of the reason we always recommend that you check the site's terms and conditions yourself – not just to get the fullest picture, but also to see if anything has changed. The best thing we can do, then, is to provide an overview of the type of promotions that are available to us at the time of writing. It might not be exactly what you would get, but it should give you an idea of the type of quality you can expect.

💧 At the time of writing this review, on the bookie’s sportsbook, we have four promotions immediately available.

🐟 The first is “We Love Accas”, which is a £5 weekly free bet when you bet £10 on accas that week. To qualify, they must be 4 sections or more and with minimum odds of 1/2. It is valid for 3 days. Vitally, these must be on football, but beyond that, the terms are standard. This is a great way of rewarding acca users.

In addition, there is also Acca Insurance𓆏, where you get your stake back if one leg lets you down. The minimum selection is 5 and all selections must have minimum odds of 1/5. The maximum you can get back is £10, while the minimum stake is £5. It’s another great way of adding value to a person’s accumulator.

Speaking of adding value to an accumulator, there’s also an offer for enhanced odds on accumulator bets. This one is really simple: you get improved odds on selected markets. Similarly, there’s also a best odds guaranteed promotion.

ꦍ Taken in a vacuum, we’d say that while these promotions are good, we would like to see more based on markets other than accumulators. However, considering they are merely there to complement the welcome bonus and personalised offers, we think they do their job perfectly. They offer great value where it is needed, with fair terms and conditions throughout.

ﷺ It also shows us that the focus here is clearly on the more casual player. This means that some high rollers may be disappointed. There’s no notable VIP or Loyalty service that we’re aware of, hence its omission from this review. While we do recognise this as a flaw – Sportingbet would have a slightly larger audience base were it to include these types of bonuses – we also do view its negative aspects as limited.

Sports

ꦡ At the very start of this Sportingbet review, we mentioned that we were really blown away by the sheer wealth of markets that are available. And, well, that hasn’t changed. What has, though, is that we are much less worried about the platform buckling under the weight of taking on so much, considering how good their betting product has been thus far. This is great, because now we can simply enjoy the sheer amount of sports available.

🌌 You’ve got all your favourites here, including American Football, Athletics, Aussie Rules, Bandy, Baseball, Basketball, Basketball Virtual, Beach Volleyball, Biathlon, Boxing, Combat Sports, Cricket, Cross Country Skiing, Cycling, Darts, Floorball, Football, Football Virtual, Formula 1, Gaelic Sports, Golf, Handball, Horse Racing, Ice Hockey, Motorbikes, Motorsport, NASCAR, Netball, Nordic Combines, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Ski Jumping, Snooker, Table Tennis, Tennis, Tennis Virtual and Volleyball. And all of this is without even mentioning the specials and esport options.

It’s a staggeringly comprehensive A-Z, for sure, and one which has the markets to back it up. These aren’t just here for a namesake. If you look at Rugby League🙈, for instance, you can expect markets on various competitions as well as several dozen on individual games, and in many instances, even those on lesser-known markets. That’s just an example. In terms of variety, they are exceptional pretty much across the board, as far as our research could tell.

ღ Of course though, none of this means anything if the odds aren’t up to standard. In all honesty, we already knew that Sportingbet had quality odds before checking. We’ve done a lot of articles looking at different odds and they consistently rank highly. Nonetheless, we thought we’d look at a margin example using the overround.

For those of you not in the know, the odds overroundജ is the amount all converted odds come to above 100%. A totally fair and balanced odds sheet would naturally finish at 100%. However, the bookmaker requires a margin to consistently make money and stay in business, so the amount above 100% represents their edge. Generally, below 110% can be considered decent and the closer to 100%, the better.

We’ll stick to rugby once more and use a National Rugby League match between Penrith and Cronulla as our example. Penrith had odds of 3/10, which translated to 76.9%. Cronulla had odds of 5/2, which translates to 28.6%. There is also a small possibility of a draw, which was given odds of 25/1, which comes out at 3.8%. Altogether then, we have 109.3%, which is decent for this market – albeit on the high side.

♚ One more example would be S. Recife vs Santos in Serie A. The former had odds of 3/2, which comes out to 40%. Santos had odds of 17/10, which comes out to 37% and a draw was given 11/5, giving our final set of odds 31.3%. All of these converts to 108.3%, which is another set of good odds.

🎶 In addition to this, a huge selection of markets are also sports specials: who would win certain tournaments, transfer predictions, new manager predictions, and all those kinds of interesting markets which really are a cherry on top of the sports betting market cake.

Esports

Considering the explosion of popularity that esports have enjoyed in the last decade, we felt they deserved their own shout out here. This is especially the case when you consider the massive amount of options that are available at Sportingbet. Options here include CS:GO, Call Of Duty, League of Legends, Rainbow 6 and Rocket League💯. There’s a decent amount of markets too, including things like map victories alongside overall winners.

Esports generally do not have the same amount of markets as traditional sports though, so they aren’t quite as overwhelming as some of the examples you’d find in markets like football, for instance. However, this is generally the case with many other bookmakers♒, and not much of a reflection on the bookie. We did note, however, that some esports are absent, so although the market choice here is impressive, it is a notch below what we saw elsewhere.

🐎 In terms of margin too, esports are generally higher than traditional sports. Once again, this is true across the industry, and not just at Sportingbet.

🐠 Let’s take the London Royal Ravens vs Toronto Ultra as an example. The former got 3/4 odds, which translated to 57.1%, while Toronto Ultra got 21/20 odds, which translates to 48.8%. This comes out at 105.9%. To be honest, although we expected good odds, we really did not anticipate them being quite this good. Amazing stuff.

ඣ All in all, there's a great esports selection – just a few sporting additions would make it perfect.

Other Specials

We mentioned some of the sports specials that are available as part of Sportingbet. However, there’s plenty more to be enjoyed here. These include general specials as well as Entertainment and Political betsꦯ. Obviously, these kinds of markets vary massively according to what current events dictate. That said, we were impressed by what was available.

ඣ We could choose between Academy Award and Grammy winners, whether Joe Exotic from Tiger King would receive a presidential pardon, the winner of the Vienna election and who will replace Pope Francis, to give but a few examples. They’ve really gone above and beyond here, providing a creative and interesting selection of additional bets, and just proving how excellent Sportingbet are all across the board.

Cashout & Bet Builder

Both Bet Builder and Sportingbet Cash Out are available; however, Build-a-Bets are not available to cash out🌜. You can use a minimum of 10 picks from a single match to build your bet. Do note that if one element of your bet is cancelled, so are the rest, and your maximum winnings here are 2,500 Euros, or, we believe, its equivalent.

One of the top cash out football betting sites 𒊎doesn't specify any markets, however, they are widely available. The only downside is the lack of partial Cash Outs. Otherwise, it is as simple as hitting ‘Cash Out’ when you think the time and the deal is right.

✤ One general point before we finish this section is that there are no specified maximum amounts you can bet, as far as we are aware. That’s because it depends entirely on the individual market alongside your account. In other words, it’s all relative. We would say that the limits are usually high enough to not be an issue for the vast majority of users, and if you have any questions, you can always go to customer service.

💛 Overall though, their sporting product is fantastic: world-class. The positives overwhelm the small negatives to where they feel close to irrelevant – even if there are some small areas where we see that improvements could be made.

In terms of variety, the live betting𒁏 offer at Sportingbet is excellent and is every bit the equal of its world-class pre-match counterpart. If you can reasonably bet on it live, you’ll most likely find it here. The structure of the site really helps with this too. They have a selection of the biggest live events coming up, down to the minute. The number of submarkets remains just as impressive; we explored the selections available on a club-friendly match and had a huge amount of main, handicap, number of goals, correct score, 15 minutes and team options to choose from.

⛎ The layout here also makes making fast decisions all that much easier. The margins maintain the same high quality, but once again, we’ll look at those margins to check.

𓂃 At the time of writing, a Scottish Premiership match between St Johnston and Aberdeen was taking place. St Johnstone had 33/20 odds, which translates to 37.7%, Aberdeen had 17/10 odds, which translated to 37%, and a draw had 21/10 odds, which translated to 32.3%. Altogether, that comes to 107%. At this point, they’ve pretty much proven comprehensively that their odds are excellent.

The cherry on top is their live streaming service♑. You might not expect too much in this regard, as live streaming is often only found on household names, and although Sportingbet is very popular, we don’t think they are quite at that level yet. But once again, they have defied our expectations. At the time of writing, there were Table Tennis, Football, Basketball and Ice Hockey games that you can watch. All you have to do is make a deposit to have access to live streaming. It’s a terrific live offering.

ꦛ Naturally, there’s nothing more important on a betting site than your security. Now, with a reputation like Sportingbet, we don’t imagine there are many people out there that are concerned that Sportingbet is illegitimate. There does tend to be a limit to how far those kinds of sites can get, and this is far, far beyond that. Nonetheless, you may be curious, and it pays to be vigilant. So, with that in mind, we’re happy to say that Sportingbet has a licence from the relevant to the British market. They also have a licence from Gibraltar for customers elsewhere.

🦹 In addition, they also utilise 256-bit encryption, a five-level security system and multiple firewalls. In other words, this means that all your sensitive data is made as safe as it possibly could be. Alongside this, there’s a huge amount of information about their policies on your data, so you know exactly where you stand. We already mentioned that they utilise SSL encryption earlier in this review, but another important side point is that this also has the added benefit of preventing minors from using the site.

It is crystal clear that they take their duties with regards to responsible gaming very seriously, and there’s no clearer example of this than their responsible gaming section and practical measures, such as utilising daily, weekly and monthly deposit limits as well as things like self-exclusion🍰. They even ensure that if you want to change your betting limits, you have to wait 24 hours to do so in order to prevent you from making any rash decisions. In addition to their excellent customer service, there’s also a dedicated email address that you can contact if you have any complaints. To put it simply, we have incredibly high standards when it comes to security, and Sportingbet well exceeds them.

⭕ Before we start talking about actual communication channels, we would like to reiterate that the Help section on Sportingbet is simply fantastic. We’ll admit that on occasion, there were pieces of information we would like to see added, but we don’t think there’s a single operator where that is not the case. Everywhere else, they go absolutely above and beyond in their FAQ and Help section. Astonishingly detailed stuff.

💖 The only flaw is that the bot you talk to before being passed onto a customer service team wasn’t able to answer many of our questions. Perhaps that’s because, as we were reviewing the site, our queries were more detailed than would be considered usual, but the chatbot didn’t always work for us. Other than that though, it's a brilliant system.

🌌 Onto contacting the actual customer team, where there are a few different options available. There’s the live chat, that is available between 9 am and 9 pm, the phone number, which is available for both UK and Canadian users, and email, which can provide more permanent records of the answers to your questions.

▨ To give you a look at how your interactions with customer service is likely to go, we thought we’d share some of our experiences.

♏ First off, there’s live chat. The above image shows one of the many questions we had for them during our research. We found them to be fast and helpful each and every time. The only issue, beyond that it’s not round the clock, is that they require you to give them your information each and every time. This is a small nitpick, but we feel that it should be mentioned here. Other than that, though, they were fantastic, consistently going above and beyond what could be expected of them.

🍬 We also contacted them by email. As you can see in the above screenshot, we asked what languages customer service was in, and this is the response we got. What is most impressive is that we got this response quite literally within the hour.

𝕴 Lastly, there is the phone line, which is every bit as excellent. We got through right away to ask about the personalised promotions and found them very helpful and informative. All in all, a terrific level of customer service.

♊ In terms of aesthetics, Sportingbet keeps things relatively simple. That doesn’t mean the site looks bad by any means – far from it. It’s very easy on the eye. We can’t assume what kind of design you enjoy, but it’s fair to say that Sportingbet's will offend very few. That said, it’s not exactly reinventing the wheel. It’s layout and structure are all fairly straightforward.

ꦜ However, this does have huge benefits when it comes to usability. The amount of content is truly staggering, and what is just as impressive is that they manage to balance it in a way that makes using the site a breeze while keeping all those options immediately available. It’s a tough balancing act, and we can’t help but think their rather conservative design choices are to this end.

🎀 Sportingbet isn’t about gimmicks. They’re not flashy and they aren’t about to change the way you think about how betting sites should look. Their focus is on providing the best betting site they can. And with this amount of content, that means no fluff and no wasted space.

✱ This is also backed up by a technically brilliant performance. Everything – and there’s a lot of content here – moves as straight and clear as the horizon. There were no slowdowns, no jitters and no serious flaws of any kind during our use of the site. Considering their reputation in this regard too, we have a reason to think our positive impressions are indeed shared by many. If you want substance over style (and the style isn’t all that bad), then this is pure perfection.

All that design brilliance can also be found as part of the fantastic Sportingbet mobile app, which you can enjoy on either Android or iOS♈. This essentially means that whatever device you prefer to bet through, Sportingbet has it covered. This, for us, is just another example of how seriously this operator takes its role of being as open and easy to use to as many people as possible. You see it in the design, you see it in the promotions, and you see it here.

🐼 The mobile version is every bit as terrific an experience as the desktop option. Amazingly, there seems to be no loss of content on the mobile app, from what we can tell. We can’t be 100% certain on that, but if there is missing content, we could not find it. In addition, everything works just as smoothly, no matter what option you pick. That means the terrific live experience is every bit as great here as it is on desktop.

𒅌 All of this has one caveat, which is that the casino and sportsbook requires a different version of the app. Considering the sheer amount that’s available on each, we can hardly say we are surprised.

🐽 The focus for us is, of course, the sportsbook side of things. However, we are well aware that many of you like your operators to do a little bit of everything. And indeed, despite their name, Sportingbet is very impressive elsewhere as well.

They have an amazing selection of casino games🌠, which should come as little surprise considering the incredible software developers that are on board. Microgaming, NetEnt, Play’n GO and more show that their casino offering is no afterthought. And they aren’t just there to simply show face either, providing a huge selection of Slots, Table Games, Instant Win and Jackpots.

There’s also a new games section, which shows us that they are only just beginning to achieve their potential. That may be hard to believe when you check out their incredible live offering. Evolution Gaming🐽 takes the reigns here, and if you know anything about live casino betting, you know this means quality. You can choose from your favourite table games like Blackjack and Roulette, alongside more left-field examples like Crazy Time, Dream Catcher and Mega Ball. This isn’t just a sportsbook with a casino; this is a sportsbook and a casino, and it’s one capable of standing toe-to-toe with the very best.

Part of the reason the casino is this good is because of its promotions. That’s right – they don't take a back seat in this regard either. Among their promotions are tournaments, money back on Friday offers, daily drops, daily bonuses, weekly wins and super jackpots. Feel free to check them out for yourselves, but everything we looked at had that trademark level of Sportingbet quality and fairness in its terms and conditions.

🤪 It’s fair to say that we found Sportingbet to be very impressive. Some betting sites try to look distinct to stand out, with a few trying out different gimmicks in order to do so. Sportingbet stands out through sheer quality. This is made clear through its promotions, customer service, betting variety, odds quality, design quality and more.

🐎 What really brings this all together, though, is the laser-like focus that is on making this site as accessible to the casual player as possible. Just look at how the site is put together: it’s abundantly clear ease of use is at the absolute forefront of their minds at all times. That’s not to say that this site isn’t suitable for experts and high rollers – it absolutely is. It’s just that when it comes to a more mainstream betting audience, they are among the absolute best.