Bookmakers

What makes a bookmaker different

Odds are decimal, football comes first, and the licence is national: a bookmaker taking bets in Italy needs the Italian licence, in Sweden the Swedish one, and so on. The big European groups hold ten or more licences each and run a separate site for every country. In Africa, where regulation is younger, the same brands and a family of Curaçao-licensed operators compete on mobile money and light apps.

What to expect

• Licences. National regulators in Europe (UKGC, ADM, ANJ, GGL, DGOJ and others), the MGA as a second licence, national boards in Africa, and Curaçao for the international sites.
• Payments. Cards and bank transfer everywhere, e-wallets where bonuses allow them, PostePay in Italy, Trustly in the Nordics, M-Pesa and Airtel Money in East Africa.
• Bonuses. Deposit matches and free bets, with rollover in accumulators at minimum odds.
• Features. Cash out, bet builder, live streaming and statistics are standard on the larger sites.

The bookmakers we tested

Twenty-one of our twenty-two operators are bookmakers in this sense, from the European groups with local licences to the Curaçao platforms that dominate Africa and Asia.