SkyBet Review

SkyBet is part of Sky Betting & Gaming, which includes SkyVegas, SkyCasino, SkyPoker and SkyBingo. They are owned by, you guessed it, Sky and their main headquarters is in Leeds. It was not until the early 2000s that SkyBet began to form, and it would not be until around 2006 that they made themselves known to the betting world.

Deposit & Withdrawals

SkyBet are known to be extremely swift when depositing money, with the usual Debit/Credit cards the main method of choice. PayPal is also included, but they do not allow Skrill or Neteller, unlike a growing number of other online betting companies. The minimum deposit is £5, whilst if you wish to withdraw money it is £10 minimum. Despite this, money is usually paid into your account fairly quickly, though it can prove annoying when trying to get winnings on the site after a successful bet.

Customer Service

Located on the top right-hand side of the page, SkyBet’s customer service can be access through their ‘Help’ button. Taking you a general FAQ, scrolling down reveals a ‘How to Contact Us’ section where you select a category and a drop-down menu appears to fill out with the option of ‘Call, Chat or Email’. Their phone lines are open 8am-Midnight, so not 24/7 like some others, though their live chat is available around the clock.

License Information

SkyBet Odds can be displayed in 2 different ways: Fractions or Decimals. Most people will be used to seeing odds as fractions (e.g. 2/1) . But they can also be displayed as decimals, (e.g. 3.0)

Betting limits

SkyBet are weak here in relation to other bookmakers. Maximum amounts that can be won (excluding stake) by one customer in one day’s betting regardless of stake is £500,000 with lower maximums on less common sports.

Types of bets

Due to being one of the leading bookmakers around, SkyBet make sure to keep their odds at the top of the market. Their offerings on British-based sports, such as football, rugby, golf and horse racing are arguably the best around. Their selection of sporting events on the market is good, with football having more obscure offers including bookings, corners and amount time-added on, though the selection of bets for overseas sports can be lacking, especially with well-watched sports like the NBA, where it seems only winners and scores can be bet on. Winning bets are usually limited to £250k, as well as offering their ‘Super 6’ on Premier League scores.

Sport coverage

SkyBet have a strong sports and virtual sports coverage with 38 different types of sports to bet on. Check out an A-Z on their site.

In-play experience

SkyBet’s in-play betting is pretty much the same as most of their competitors. As detailed, their selection of bets is vast, offering pretty much anything you could want with a number of sports. However, their live streaming is what lets them down. Although not all bookmakers offer extensive live streaming, with the standouts being Bet365 and Unibet, SkyBet do not offer any live streaming except for horse racing. Considering, alongside BT Sport, their TV arm is one of the primary sports broadcasters, it means their lack of streaming is even more disappointing than others.

Live streaming

Live streaming is offered on SkyBet, but is another area where they lag behind other bookmakers. The minimum stake to watch a race or event live is £2

The Skybet website is quite ordinary really and is not particularly user freindly with sports sections available on the left and the top but with offers underneath the top menu which are cut off and do not show all the information. It does not have a good flow.

The colour scheme works well with a simple blue and white set up, but the layout needs work. The top menu features football, horse racing, In-play, virtuals and roulette.

The issue you will have is that once you click on one of these selections, they are not available on the following screens.

All in all this site needs some work from a users perspective.

When we take a look at the margins on betting, we see that Skybet are not overly generous with an all round margin across sports of 5.4% which is certainly in the middle tier of “odds value” from the sportsbooks we have reviewed.

Where Skybet are weak is in football as they have arelatively high average margin of 6% and you will, certainly find better value on other bookmakers if you are a football punter. If you like to bet on US sports then you will actually find that Skybet are one of the best for Base ball and American Football with margins running at 4.2% and 4% respectively.

One area where Skybet are pushing out the value boat is on horse racing. You will now find they are offering up to 8 places on the bigger horse racing handicap events and the odds offered are still comparable to other bookmakers offering less attractive place betting terms.

Ok, we started off the review talking about the Skybet website and that it is not user freindly and needs some work. The same cannot be said of the market coverage and bet offers.

One bet in particular which is very interesting is the “What The Stats Say Accumulators”. Here you will be given prices based on various groups of options.

As an example here is one recent offer:

4+ in-form teams to win (out of Vitese, Manchester Utd, Rangers, Huesca, Young Boys, Wehen Wiesbaden) so you have 6 teams and if any four win you are a winner. The actual price for this scenario was odds of 4/5

Now of course you have to weigh up if this is a value bet to you.

In terms of the volume of markets covered on Skybet, in football you will see many thousands of markets in football. Where Skybet are strong is in the offers they have for more obscure leagues and football being played at the lower level. Just a few examples are the leagues in Poland, Belgium, Greece, Israel, Switzerland, Turkey and these are just a few. You can even bet on minor Asian leagues as well. For the football and In-play punter the market offers at Skybet are some of the best available.

Well as we have mentioned above, the amount of market offers provides some great In-play opportunities. In terms of the In-play betting interface, well this is where you will be pleasantly surprised.

Although the main site needs some changes in navigation, the In-play interface is very very good. They use a white background with light grey boxes for each market and the market title in dark grey. This makes it very easy to read.

Each market has a down arrow to the right which can be clicked to open the market. You then find the bet on the left side with the prices bolded in red on the right side. A really clear and simple layout.

Well let’s start with the Sky Bet Club. You can get a £5 free bet every week. Just spend £25 each week between Monday 00.01am and Sunday 11.59pm and you’ll get a free £5 bet. keep spending aminimum of £25 each week and keep on grabbing those free five pound bets.

The main bonus offers are enhanced accas and price boosts. The enhanced accas are usually trebles and upwards and focus mainly on football. SkyBet will select a range of teams to win their games and give you an enhanced price. If you back the three teams in a normal bet you are going to lose out by around 5-7% as this is the difference.

It may not sound like a lot but on very short prices this is probably music to favorite backers ears.

In terms of the price boosts you can get up to 10% increases on first and next goalscorer as well as individual teams to win.

Depositing and withdrawing is both fast and safe with Skybet. Skybet have recently started using the 3D secure deposit process which is a security measure that is specific to various banks. It means that you have to enter a password when you deposit funds online. This password is only known to you and your bank so this is a great way of protecting your deposit transactions into your Skybet account.

In terms of withdrawals Skybet now have their “fast withdrawals” service. This is only available for Barclays customers at the moment but SkyBet are looking to implement this with other banks.

Using this will allow you to withdraw up to £200 in just 2 hours.

In terms of deposit and withdrawal methods, then you have the following choice available: Visa, Mastercard, Maestro and Paypal.

Live chat is only available to logged in users

Being part of the Sky group of companies you can certainly trust that Skybet have all of the required licensing in place to run their sportsbook, and of course their payment processing is set up at the very highest security levels.

In terms of responsible gambling, Skybet are one of the leaders in offering support options if needed. They are committed to Responsible Gambling and have a number of self-help tools to help you manage your gambling and betting limits. They are a GamCare accredited sportsbook and bookmaker and work with a number of independent charitable organisations who can offer help or answer any questions you may have.

The technical side of the site uses the latest SSL and 256 bit encrytion technology.