Sporting Bet

Sportingbet is one of the biggest internet gambling operations in the world and parent company Sportingbet PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange where it is one of the top 250 listed companies.

Sportingbet has its Head Office based in London although it is a global company with interests around the world and licensing in many different jurisdictions including Alderney and Australia.

Worldwide, Sportingbet has over 2.5 million customers across over 200 countries and handles more than 1 million betting transactions every day.

BACKGROUND

Sportingbet was originally founded in 1997 by Mark Blandford who had run a chain of betting shops during the nineties. Mr Blandford sold his betting shop business to Tote Bookmakers in order to be able to launch Sportingbet as an internet betting business.

Sportingbet proved to be an immediate success and was soon floated on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Following the 2001 floatation, Sportingbet continued to grow rapidly and acquired other internet gaming companies including the poker network Paradise Poker in 2004.

Mark Blandford stepped down from the day to day management of the business in 2006. In the same year Sportingbet suffered a setback with the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in the United States. The Act which effectively banned the acceptance of bets from US citizens had a significant impact on Sportingbet’s business much of which was derived from the US at the time.

Sportingbet closed down all of its US facing business and began to focus on expanding its interests in Europe and other territories.

OFFERS AND PROMOTIONS

Sportingbet is a competitive bookmaker and regularly offers customers excellent value concessions and bonuses. UK horseracing and football are the major focus of most Sportingbet offers and the company has offered refunds to customers whose horse selection is beaten by less than half a length in featured races or entire race meetings.

Sportingbet constantly seek to provide fresh offers on other sports and has provided some great offers on tennis, darts, basketball and cross-sport accumulator bets.

BETTING OPPORTUNITIES

As might be expected from a top global sportsbook operator, Sportingbet offer odds on an unrivalled number of betting markets and typically have over 60 pre-event markets on every football match.

Sportingbet has invested a lot of resources towards in-play betting which has been a major focus in recent years and the Company estimates that in-play betting accounts for over 55% of betting turnover

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

The Sportingbet website is very well designed and simple to use. The quick links section in the top right hand corner navigates Sportingbet’s customers to the most popular current events quickly and there is also quick access to the in-play section.

Sportingbet’s in-play application is available in a flash and non flash version.

Current Sportingbet offers and promotions are prominently displayed on the right of the home page and overall the site has a fresh and modern feel to it.

NAVIGATION

Navigation the Sportingbet website is via tabs on the left side bar and top of the page and various quick links on all pages.

Most of Sportingbet’s betting markets are only 2-3 clicks away and with the more popular market much less. The time it takes for Sportingbet’s pages to load is minimal and customers can breeze around the many features of the site very quickly.

The Offers tab at the top of the page is particularly useful as it loads a page with all of the details of Sportingbet’s current offers.

Sportingbet accepts payment for bets via Neteller , Click2pay , Moneybookers , Cheque , Bank Transfers and the following cards; Visa, MasterCard, Delta, Switch, Maestro.

Sportingbet accept a larger number of currencies; AUD, CAD, CHF, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD, JPY, SEK, SGD, USD.

Betting odds can be displayed on Sportingbet’s site in UK, US or European format and the site can be viewed in 24 different languages as follows;Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish

MOBILE BETTING

To access the Sportingbet Mobile application you need first to go to mobile.sportingbet.com and download the app from there or enter your mobile number in the form on the Sportingbet site and they will forward you a link to access the Sportingbet Mobile site.

Full coverage of all markets including in play is available via the mobile app.

LIVE STREAMS

At the time of writing, Sportingbet does not provide a live video streaming service or live audio commentaries.

FORM AND STATS

Sportingbet provides comprehensive statistics for the following sports; Football, Tennis, Ice Hockey, Handball, Basketball, US Football, Baseball, Golf, Formula 1, Cycling, Volleyball .

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Sportingbet provides a Contact Us tab that can be accessed via all pages and staff can be customers can seek help via email, telephone and a live chat service.

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