Betfred Sportsbook Review
When we talk about O.G. sportsbooks, we get easily impressed by a betting site that was born in the ‘90s when the Internet was the wild wild West. But what if I told you this bookmaker’s roots go as far back as 1967? It’s true, Betfred has been a player in the game for almost 60 years now. That doesn’t happen by chance, it happens because the guys behind it know a thing or two about running a sports gambling operation.
Fred Done is the brainchild behind Betfred. What started as a small betting shop in England has become a globe-spanning enterprise, and turned Done into a billionaire multiple times over.
The Betfred name means something in the United Kingdom. It’s one of the most-used sports betting platforms in the region, plus football fans will remember when they sponsored Manchester United a few decades back.
But now Betfred is trying to grow even more, and this might be its biggest challenge yet — leaving a dent in the United States’ booming sports betting industry. The company went live with its Betfred Sportsbook in multiple U.S. states and we’ve gotten the chance to give it a go. So how does the Betfred sports betting experience hold up? We’re about to give it to you straight in this unbiased Betfred review so hang on for a minute.
States Where Betfred Bet Offers Legal Betting?
First of all, Betfred is fully legal all over the United Kingdom and pockets of Europe. However, this isn’t about that part of the business. We want to focus strictly on Betfred USA Sports, which is an offshoot of the regular company. As you can guess, this is the American subsidiary that’s tasked with growing market share in the lucrative marketplace.
Betfred is certainly trying to do just that because they have licenses in 10 different states right now. The list of states they’re legally allowed in is as follows:
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Iowa
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Nevada
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Virginia
- Washington
Here’s the thing though: how Betfred Sportsbook exists differs between each state. You see, in certain places, Betfred has a physical presence only — no online betting. The opposite also applies. To help you out, we’ve created a chart to break down Betfred’s accessibility by state. Check it out:
| State | Mobile Betting | Retail Betting |
| Arizona | ✅ | ✅ |
| Colorado | ✅ | ✅ |
| Iowa | ✅ | ✅ |
| Louisiana | ✅ | ✅ |
| Maryland | ✅ | ✅ |
| Nevada | ❌ | ✅ |
| Ohio | ✅ | ✅ |
| Pennslyvania | ✅ | ✅ |
| Virginia | ✅ | ✅ |
| Washington | ❌ | ✅ |
Expect Betfred to enter more U.S. states in 2024 and the years that follow. Because of the U.K. business, they have deep pockets and have shown a real interest in competing with the major online sportsbooks dominating the U.S. landscape. Betfred’s only chance at competing is getting in front of more users.
Betfred Sportsbook Features
One thing that was immediately clear about the Betfred Sportsbook was it’s not that deep. Look, all the major sports and leagues are available for betting. That will do for the majority of casual bettors. However, for the hardcore ones out there that like digging for value in obscure sports like, say, curling or niche soccer leagues, you probably won’t find those lines at Betfred. Here are the main sports that Betfred offers for betting in the sportsbook:
- NFL
- NBA
- MLB
- NHL
- College football and basketball
- Soccer (top leagues and international events)
- Golf
- Tennis
- F1 Racing
One area where Betfred needs to do better is banking. The Betfred withdrawal and deposit methods were shorter than we’d like. Many bettors will be fine with the support of both Mastercard and VISA cards, but allowing Apple Pay and PayPal would’ve been nice too. Betfred allows more obscure payment platforms like Skrill and Neteller, which aren’t very popular in the United States.
Elsewhere, there’s not a whole lot that stands out about Betfred. There is no rewards or loyalty program of any sort. For the most part, the platform is no-frills, which might appeal to certain bettors that just want to bet and that’s it. However, we were left wanting more of a differentiating feature but didn’t come away with anything.
Betfred Mobile Betting
Betfred doesn’t have one mobile betting app. It has several, which creates a lot of extra complexity. You see, the intuitive thing to do would be to create a single app where all U.S. users can access and gamble from. Instead, Betfred has separate apps per state (e.g. Betfred Sportsbook Ohio and Betfred Sportsbook Louisiana).
The big drawback of this is if you’re traveling, you’d have to download the respective app of the state you’re located in. You might be an Arizona resident, but traveling just up north to Colorado. While on the visit, the usual Betfred Arizona app would not work. It’s just a cumbersome process and an overall bad user experience.
The actual apps themselves are all clones of one another. So what you get out of the Arizona app is the same as the Colorado one. You might have some variance in the promotion department (more on that soon), but that’s about it.
We will applaud the Betfred live betting feature though. Ultimately, this is the big allure of betting on mobile so you can gamble on the go and at any point in the game. Betfred’s in-play system held up quite well in our trial run. Odds updated super quick, lag was nonexistent, and placing bets was cake.
Betfred Promotions
Betfred sportsbook bonuses aren’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Not surprisingly, it differs from state to state. So you might want to go straight to the source if you’re located in a state where Betfred is legal to use. Say Betfred Colorado, for example, if you go straight to the site’s webpage or mobile app, you’ll know its current offer.
We won’t want to leave you completely hanging here, however. There’s one bonus we’ve continually seen used by Betfred. It’s a sign-up bonus of sorts and this is the one you’re most likely to come across.
It’s a “no sweat” bet worth as much as $105 in free play. New users of the site will get their first bet credited back to them — IF they lose it. Betfred will match the loss dollar for dollar (100 percent) up to that $105 figure. So say you only bet $50, the free play refund will be the same amount too.
We’re not at all impressed by this offer, to be frank. It just pales in comparison to what many other competitors are offering — both in the dollar value of the deal and how it works. We mean, limiting this bonus to only losing bets just feels wrong because there are no guarantees bettors even earn any free play. Other Betfred reviews probably won’t say it but we will: this site needs to do better at its bonuses, plain and simple.
Betfred Customer Service
Here again, there’s variance for customer service based on the state you reside in. By that we mean there’s not one catch-all website, email, or phone number that bettors cross-state can contact when they need help. Instead, each state has its own unique contact information.
The good thing is Betfred offers four modes of reaching them per state — email, phone, text to talk, and website live chat. Now the text-to-talk option is quite unique because few competitors have that option so credit to Betfred for that one.
In our experience using the Arizona customer service, we found no glaring issues. No matter which contact mode we chose, we heard back from support staff at a reasonable time. So that’s a positive, but we just wish the contact information was more consistent rather than having to find the ones that line up with our specific state. This just adds unnecessary confusion into the equation.
Top Sportsbooks
As just read in our Betfred Sportsbook review, the site has some clear pros and cons to it. If you’re not quite sold on the platform or don’t have legal access to it where you live, we wanted to list alternative options. Below you’ll find five bookies that rated highly in our latest sportsbook reviews. These sites are all offshore so they’re accessible to just about anyone in every corner of the world. Get started at these sites by clicking one of the “play now” buttons in the table.
