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Legality — Presence of a License
A bookmaker is considered legal if it has the appropriate permission (license) to provide services of a certain type — accepting bets on sports, political, or cultural events. This license is issued by a state authority — the regulator of gambling activities. Having a license means that the bookmaker will conduct all its activities exclusively within the legal framework. In addition, this provides the following advantages:
- Reliability and honesty. All actions of legal bookmakers are carried out within the framework of the law. Therefore, bettors can be confident in fair winnings, corresponding to the stated odds, and full payouts within the commitments taken upon themselves. All financial flows go through official channels associated with banking systems;
- Timely and full payouts. Depending on the chosen payment system, transferring funds to the player’s account can take from 15 minutes to 3 banking days. However, in most cases, processing a withdrawal request takes only a few hours. Delays in this case are usually associated with system malfunctions or technical regulations of banking systems;
- High level of data protection. Leakage of personal data into the network through hacking the bookmaker’s database is virtually eliminated. The SSL encryption protocol is used for storing and exchanging data between the bookmaker and the client, ensuring quality encryption protection.
Action Line
The variety of sports events and the depth of the action line on them are one of the main factors in choosing a bookmaker. In this regard, bettors operate with two main concepts:
Line breadth — refers to the assortment that includes all types of sports and key tournaments listed separately for betting. Often, experienced bettors refer to the breadth of the line as the number of competitions in a particular sport. For example, the MMA line may only feature the most popular competitions like KSW. However, more reputable bookmakers offer a range of other lesser-known tournaments. Essentially, this means that the bookmaker’s administration has the ability to attract experts to analyze these tournaments and matches, which is an undeniable advantage.
Line depth — is an indicator of the variety of bets on a sporting event. In addition to standard totals, accumulators, and handicaps on the outcome, the bookmaker may offer bets on statistics: the number of corners, yellow cards, the time when the first goal will be scored, etc.
Margin and Odds
When it comes to odds for a particular outcome of a sporting event, they should be more or less equal across all bookmakers. However, there is the following rule: the lower the odds compared to the assessment of other bookmakers for similar sporting events, the higher the margin of the bookmaker itself. What does this mean for the player? Such bookmakers charge a high percentage for their services with each bet. This, in turn, means that the player will receive lower winnings for the same amount of money than they could with a bookmaker with a lower margin. It is worth noting that to compensate for potential risks, bookmakers always set a higher margin for less popular sports and lesser-known competitions.
Transactions
As the interaction between the bookmaker and the bettor is directly related to financial transactions, it is recommended to study the specifics of depositing and withdrawing funds before registering. It is advisable to pay attention to the following three points:
Deposit Methods
Usually, all deposit methods provided by the site administration are active, and the funds are credited to the account almost instantly.
Withdrawal Methods
Most bookmakers have a rule that you can withdraw funds only using the same method that was used for depositing. However, there are some exceptions. First of all, this applies to mobile operator accounts. It is possible to deposit funds from such an account, but it is not possible to withdraw funds to it. The second exception appeared relatively recently — cryptocurrency. If the account is funded using any of the offered cryptocurrencies, there may be restrictions on withdrawals. In particular, there may be a need to convert the cryptocurrency into a type that can be withdrawn. Most commonly, this includes BTC, ETH, or LTC, and less frequently XMR, USDT, and DOGE.
Withdrawal Processing Times
This is one of the most controversial points, as there can be many limitations on completing this transaction. Depending on the chosen payment system, the processing time for a withdrawal request can range from half an hour to three banking days. This indicator also depends on the type of funds being used. Cryptocurrencies, unlike fiat currencies, are withdrawn almost instantly. The specific time can be obtained from the administration or other players on the platform.
In Conclusion
Many experts recommend considering a much larger number of factors when choosing a bookmaker, including website design, availability of a mobile application, bonuses, and promotions, among others. However, as practice shows, the design and layout of the navigation menu are almost identical for most bookmakers. A mobile application is available for any modern bookmaker. And the most generous bonuses are issued only once during the registration process, with the requirement to wager them. Therefore, these criteria can easily be classified as secondary factors.
