American Football Basketball Cricket Cycling Darts Esports Football Golf Handball Horse racing Ice Hockey Motorsport Olympics 2026 Poker Politics Rugby Union Snooker Tennis WWE Other sports Other odds
Old odds

Tips on Finding the Best Bookmakers

If you are a bettor, it is essential that you find the right bookmaker. While many bookmakers might make similar claims about being the best and having the most amazing offers out there, it is important that you be able to distinguish between the genuinely good ones and the rest.

How to do this? There are several specific criteria that you should look for. This is particularly the case if you do online betting as you don’t want to put your money down in a potentially shady place. Once you’ve got your priorities in order, you can get on out there and find bookmakers on FIRST.com.

 

 

Clear terms and offers

The first thing that you should look for is a company that has its terms and offers clearly laid out. Go to a quality website, and you will notice the terms that different bookmakers lay out. You should see the following criteria:

  • Transparent terms and conditions
  • A range of different sporting events
  • Different types of bonuses

Licensing

Bookmakers have to have the right licenses. Regardless of the country you are in, national book making websites should be regulated by the national government of the site you choose. There should be clear licensing indicators on the page that demonstrate the page is regulated by the appropriate government body.

You should also be able to cross-check this information by going to the relevant regulatory authority and looking up the bookmaker. If you are not able to do this, there might be something fishy about the website.

Bookmaker reputation

It is also important that the bookmaker you choose have a solid reputation among users. If a site has been around for some time, there should be a good deal of feedback available on different websites.

There are plenty of review websites where players leave reviews of bookies. Look for feedback on the following features:

  • The speed of processing requests
  • The legitimacy of payment systems
  • The level of customer support
  • A history of any kind of lawsuits or scandals with the company
  • Overall satisfaction with the site

When you look through reviews, be sure to distinguish between ones that are genuinely objective feedback and those that might be overly dramatic. Betting can be a very emotional experience, of course, and people who don’t end up with the result they want may be inclined to leave bad reviews simply because they lost. And this applies to everything from American football to cycling to golf.

Range of events

A really high-quality bookmaker will offer a range of sporting events not only involving different sports, but of different types of events. Look for the following:

  • Both pro and lesser-known leagues and tournaments
  • Regional championships, youth competitions, and unusual sports
  • Different types of bets within a given event, including outcomes, totals, handicaps, etc

A really good platform will provide users with a degree of flexibility when it comes to betting, and will allow them to use their own analytics when making decisions about what to bet on and how.

Well-organized sites

The best bookmakers will provide sites that not only offer a range of sports, but which allow you to choose in clear and easy ways. There are a lot of sites out there that present flashy offers when you go to them and don’t provide clear instructions about navigation, particularly on mobile devices.

Look for sites that offer filter choices upfront. You should be able to filter events by sport, by the time they take place, tournament type, odds, and other parameters. The more options there are for filtering, the better.

Secure payment systems

Last but not least, you should find a site that offers a secure payment system. The best ones will offer SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. This is the highest level of encryption between the user’s browser and the platform. The presence of SSL encryption in payment systems ensures that user’s banking information won’t be compromised in making transactions.

Always keep an eye out for red flags

Beyond this, you should use common sense when it comes to betting sites. Just like anything else in life, if something sticks out to you as being a potential red flag, you should stop to investigate it further. While one bad review might just be an indicator of an angry player, it wouldn’t hurt to look into what the complaint is to see if it might be legitimate. So look carefully, and when you find the right bookmaker, you can start betting away with confidence!