Betfair Australia Review

Betfair is one of the largest and oldest brands in online sports betting. They first launched in the UK back in 2000 and Betfair Australia received their first licence to operate in Australia back in 2005. Check out our full Betfair review of its features below.

About Betfair

Betfair is one of the world’s largest and Australia’s only peer to peer wagering platform. The Betfair Exchange offers superior value, control and opportunity to the traditional bookmakers as users are placing and accepting bets against other users, not the bookmakers.

Betfair launched in the UK back in the year 2000 and has since become one of the industry leaders worldwide. The Betfair brand merged with Paddy Power back in 2016 to become one of the biggest gaming conglomerates in the world.

What is a Betting Exchange?

The first question new punters will ask about Betfair Australia is “what is a betting exchange?” To put it simply, the regular Australian sports betting websites that most are familiar with are called ‘bookmakers’. They set the odds, you place a bet and go from there. On Betfair, you are the bookmaker yourself.

Basically, punters are betting against each other and Betfair charges a small commission to the winner of the bet. This style of online sports betting, known as an ‘exchange’, offers punters two options – to back and/or lay. This can be thought of as either being the bookmaker yourself (lay), or betting against a bookmaker (back), except, in this unique situation, the bookmaker is just another Betfair punter like yourself.

The great thing about a betting exchange like Betfair Australia is that they cater for advanced / professional punters and also cater to regular punters who just want to place bets like they would on a normal sports betting website. Sports betting exchanges are also great because they often feature better odds than sports books. This is because the market price of bets are set by the betting public and not some greedy website looking to take a high sports betting “vig”.

Betfair Betting Markets

In short, Betfair Australia often has the best sports betting / horse racing odds in the country. Unfortunately, however, there may not be a market offered on all events or there may not be enough “liquidity” in certain markets for you to bet as much as you would like. This is just a fact of betting exchanges – if people aren’t “laying” bets, then you won’t be able to back those bets.

Quite often what you will find is that markets open up for betting closer to the event i.e you might not be able to bet on a certain AFL game on a Wednesday, but the night before the game or the day of, the markets will have plenty of liquidity. A simple rule is that the more popular the sport / event, the more likely there will be lots of juicy odds for you to back or lay. To ensure that there is a market in every event at all hours, Betair are currently in the works of launching a bookmaker to coincide with their exchange. This is great news for even those who prefer the exchange betting markets, as they will now be able to simply compare the odds of the two and take the juiciest price.

It is arguably horse racing where Betfair Australia excels. Ask any professional punter where they bet on horses and they will invariably answer Betfair. On horse racing, Betfair already offers their exchange and a bookmaker (tote) option. The odds are often the best on the exchange and you can get a better idea of what the market is thinking and can wait for the best odds before betting. Like many other sports betting websites, Betfair also offers a “best of” feature on horse racing odds. This applies when betting on the bookmaker and sees punters get the best payout between the major TAB markets (S-TAB, NSW, TATTS) and the Betfair starting price.

Betfair Website

Betfair went through an aesthetic redesign in 2014 and made the site perhaps more user friendly to the general betting audience who may not understand the intricacies of sports betting exchanges. Luckily, for those advanced Betfair users who preferred the old site layout, there is a link at the bottom of the home page which takes you to the old Betfair.

Betfiar Mobile App

Betfair offers a mobile app that is available on both iOS and Android devices. The Betfair app has went through some upgrades over the past few years and is now a sleek and enjoyable experience. The black interface looks really cool and the useability is leaps and bounds ahead of the version that Betfair first rolled out a few years ago. 

Betfair Promotions

The one downside to Betfair is that because you are betting against other punters and not the bookmakers, there are no promotions on offer.

Betfair Deposit/Withdrawal Options

There are lots of deposit and withdrawal options on Betfair Australia and the process couldn’t be easier.

Betfair Customer Support

Betfair offers world class customer service, plenty of options for live betting and some of the smoothest and best financial transactions in the business.

WHAT ARE YOU REALLY GAMBLING WITH?
For free and confidential support call 1800 858 858 or visit Gambling Help Online at www.gamblinghelponline.org.au.

Editor's note: Take care when signing up to new sports betting agencies. Be sure to read all terms and conditions of any bonus offers, deposit/withdrawal requirements and identification verification on each respective site, as some of the information on this page may be outdated. Before You Bet will do their best to keep this page up to date, but takes no responsibility for any information on this page being incorrect.