Betser Sports Review

Betser Summary

Betser Features

• Innovative new promotion format
• Great Scandinavian sports coverage
• Low rollover on bonuses

Website

The website is slick and well designed. Customers are met with a homepage, offering them the chance to sign up for an account with a centrally located form. The menu bar is located towards the top of the page in the centre, and bettors can choose to visit the bookmaker, casino, league, or look at the offers Betser are currently running (there are also two addition pages ‘store’ and ‘locker’ that can be accessed once an account has been created). The bookmaker has the industry standard layout – list of sports down the left hand side of the page, popular and live bets in the middle, with an attractive graphic above, and the bet slip is located on the right hand side of the page. A black, white, blue and orange theme is utilised. Bettors can flick between the main page of odds and just the live odds on the menu bar, and they are also able to access their desired market quickly through the search bar. Although the layout is fairly standard, Betser have done well with their colour scheme and choice of font and the site is easy to navigate around.

Bonuses

The bonus aspect is where Betser intend to stand out from their competition. Many firms will offer a generic sign up bonus, but in addition to that, the Scandinavian bookmaker go one further, providing ‘Balls and Brains’ rewards. Basically, for every €5 that is bet, customers are given one Ball (when the bet is over odds of 8.00 ) or one Brain (when the bets struck has odds of under 8.00 ). These can then be redeemed in the store on Free Bets. Different concessions require varying numbers of Balls or Brains, and it is a great idea to stimulate interest from customers and keep them placing bets.

There is also the more generic welcome offer which gives new customers a 100% matched deposit up to €100 if the bettor is from Sweden, Finland, Norway or Germany and up to a maximum of €25 for citizens of other countries. There is a 5x bonus amount requirement for wagering before the bonus and initial funds can be pulled out, and in today’s climate, that is far from terrible (odds must be a minimum of 1.80  on each bet).

Betser also run other promotions, such as money back on goalless draws in the English Premier League and insurance on accumulators. Very solid offerings indeed.

Sports Markets & Odds

There is a total of 29 different sports for bettors to get their teeth into. As a Scandinavian bookmaker, it comes as no surprise that there are some sports included that are popular within the North European market. Ice hockey, floorball and handball all make an appearance and there are all of the staple events that are popular around the world with bettors (football, tennis etc.). There are no markets for horse racing or greyhound racing, as these events aren’t so popular in Sweden and the surrounding countries, and including them requires a lot of labour for the constantly changing markets.

Within the sports, the number of markets could definitely be improved. Take for instance Floorball, and the Swedish Allsvenskan North division. There are odds for 5 games which start in 24 hours’ time, but all that is available is the 1X2 market – no prop bets, total goals etc. which is slightly disappointing. The odds on these games are not particularly competitive either – from three matches that were analysed, the average book percentage came to 111.9% (the closer it is to 100%, the better). Could this be because although floorball is a Swedish sport, it is still small and imperfect knowledge means the bookmaker has to price up events cautiously? To check, we looked at the odds of the English Premier League football matches to compare with a more popular and widely priced up sport and league. The average book percentages sat at 107%, which is clearly better than for floorball, but not particularly competitive for football (top firms sit at around 102.5%-103%, which the majority in the 105-106% range). Incidentally, the number of additional markets for Premier League games is around 90, which is a little under average.

The number of sports offers by Betser are decent, but the firm need to improve the competitiveness of their odds and increase the number of additional markets for each match/event.

Currency

At this time, customers are only able to deposit in Euro.

Banking Options

There are several banking options that can be used:

• Bank transfer
• Credit card (Mastercard, Visa)
• Neteller
• Skrill
• Zimpler
• iDeal

There are no fees for depositing, but when withdrawing more than once a month, customers are subject to a 2.5% withdrawal fee.

Restricted Countries

There are a number of restricted countries:

• U.S.A
• UK
• Italy
• France
• French Guiana
• Réunion
• Guadeloupe
• Martinique
• China or Hong Kong
• Austria
• Belgium
• Portugal

Languages / Customer Support

The website can be viewed in Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, English, or German.

Customer service can be contacted on live chat or via e-mail. The representative was quick to join on live chat and was helpful and prompt when answering any queries. Customer service can be reached between 10am-Midnight CET every day. It is slightly disappointing that they don’t have a telephone number for customers to contact.

Mobile App

There is no specific mobile betting app, but Betser’s website has been optimized for handheld devices. There are still a few bugs when accessing the site from a mobile device – the pages aren’t that responsive and a few of the icons load out of turn. Having said that, it is useable.

Verdict

For a new bookmaker, Betser have to be applauded for their novel approach to bonuses. They add a new element by rewarding customers differently depending on whether they bet on outsiders or on shorter priced selections. This will definitely entice people to bet on their site. They definitely have room for improvement when it comes to depth of markets and competitiveness of odds, but for a new company, this can be forgiven as they need to stay above water whilst they grow their brand. Betser have potential to be successful in the years to come.