Betin Sports Review

Betin Sports Summary

Betin Features

• Attractive Sign up bonus
• Decent number of banking methods available
• Refreshing and easy to navigate wesbite

Website

Betin have adopted a sparser website design than many of their competitors, with a blue, navy, white and green theme and with no multi-coloured pop outs or huge writing. In a way it is actually quite refreshing and makes navigating around the website fairly easy. The bookmaker, live betting and all of the casino and poker pages can be navigated to through the menu at the top of the page, and the list of different sports are available down the left hand side of the page. As with many firms, the login section is positioned at the top right of the screen, with the bet slip and promotions placed directly beneath. The centre of the page defaults to the current live and upcoming events, but provides the space for the markets of whichever sport is chosen by the customer. This layout works well and seems to becoming an industry standard template.

There is currently no mobile or downloadable app for Betin customers, which makes accessing their site and market quite difficult when on the move. Zoom in features have to be utilised, and the whole process is time consuming. The lack of an app or a responsive site is perhaps an indication of the company’s size and resources.

Languages

The site can be viewed in English, Italian, Dutch, German, Greek, Bulgarian (unusually), Croatian, Turkish, Romanian and Albanian. The inclusion of translation into South-eastern European languages but the failure to include popular and widely spoken ones such as Chinese and Spanish is a curious decision, but perhaps indicative of where the Betin target market lies.

Markets

The list of different sports on offer is small, with just 17 different disciplines covered. This is about all that can be expected for a smaller and relatively new bookmaker, but falls well behind the established firms in the industry. All of the major sports such as football, American football, basketball, tennis and golf are covered, but there are absolutely no markets for any niche or marginal sports such as bandy, handball or curling.

The depth of the football coverage is just ok. Most of the footballing nations are covered – with 29 different countries listed, but it is noticeable that there are no odds for the South American leagues, with the matches in Brazil and Argentina being the most notable absentees. Games in the smaller leagues around the world and in countries such as Bulgaria (whose language Betin offer their site in), are also left out.

The odds for each match are offered in decimal and are compiled to quite specific numbers. There is no attempt at rounding the figures or making them particularly palatable for customers. This again appears to be an increasingly popular trend amongst start-ups who are working to tight margins.

It is difficult to try and numerically compare the number of individual markets for each football matches against other bookmakers, as there are no numbers of extra markets listed by each game. However, for English Premier League matches, there is a fairly reasonable number of extra bets available for each match, including handicap betting, Asian handicap betting, total goals, first scorer, bookings etc.

Odds

With a lack of a competitive edge of established bookmakers, one area where Betin could generate custom could be through offering generous odds. However, they fail to do this. Taking the Chicago Bears v Dallas Cowboys American football NFL match as an example, the total book %’s for Betin and three other bookmakers of varying market position were as follows:

• TitanBet – 104.4%
• Betway – 104.6%
• Betin – 108.2%

The figures represent the accumulation of all the available odds, when expressed as percentages. If the bookmaker were to take no profit, then the book would add up to 100%. This shows Betin are not even close to being competitive with their rivals. Whilst they are far from being the best, Betin’s odds for the English Premier League football matches are a little closer to the industry standard. Taking the Arsenal v Southampton match into consideration, we can see that:

• TitanBet – 104.0%
• Betin – 104.8%
• Betway – 107.2%

Promotions

Betin attract new custom with a very generous £100 matched deposit bonus. However, the concession isn’t quite as good as it first may seem. Upon depositing up to £100, the customer is credited with an extra £100 to their account…then the terms and conditions kick in and it gets confusing.

The site suggests that before being able to cash out the bonus, customers have to accumulate ‘target points’. The required number of target Points are calculated by multiplying the deposit and bonus amount by 100. For example, if the Customer deposits £100 and receives a bonus of £100, the target points required will be 20,000 [(100 + 100) x 100] – an astronomical number by anyone’s standards.

However, the terms and conditions then go on to say that for sports and virtual sports, the bonus and deposit amount must be wagered 6 times, with odds of 1.49 or less only contributing towards 25%, odds between 1.50 and 1.99 contributing 75% and bets with odds of 2.00 contributing to 100%. The terms and conditions on the website offer the following example, which is still difficult to understand:

Furthermore, any bet of over £25 does not contribute towards the wagering requirement, so customers must place a very large number of small bets to satisfy the terms.

None of the details in the terms and conditions are clear, and being cynical, this could be by design – making it very difficult to actually take advantage of the bonus that is offered when opening an account.

Customer Service

Like many of the smaller firms, Betin does not offer a telephone number for customers to contact – they are restricted to email, Skype and fax. The customer service team work 08.30am -20.00pm Saturday-Thursday, but clearly want to get off early as they shut up shop at 16.30pm on a Friday. Anyone with a query after this time on a Friday evening will have to wait until the following morning, which isn’t fantastic. There is no live chat function, although having access to employees by Skype isn’t a bad alternative.

Payment Types

There are a decent number of ways through which customers are able to fund their Betin account.

As well as the Visa debit/credit card and Mastercard, wallets such as Skrill and Neteller are also linked up. Prepaid virtual visas are becoming a more common and Betin accepts Postepay, Paysafecard, Ukash and ecoPayz. There is also the option to deposit via bank transfer.

Overall

There is no compelling reason for a customer to choose Betin when deciding where to take their business. The initial £100 sign up bonus is attractive at face value, but under closer consideration it comes with arduous requirements which make the possibility of actually obtaining the full bonus amount minute. The number of markets and sports covered are poor in comparison to many rivals, and the odds are far from market leading. Although there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Betin, they have no unique selling point.