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Bethard - Closed

Bethard will no longer accept any new UK registrations as from 16th June 2020, and operations will cease on 6th July 2020.

They are the latest in a long list of brands to leave the UK in light of higher taxes and stricter regulation.  Fortunately there are still 100’s of brands to choose from, the best of which are listed on our betting sites and new sites pages.

You can read more about what happened to Bethard in our news section.

Originally aimed at the Scandinavian market, Bethard gained a license to trade in the UK in 2018 and brought with it something a little different in terms of the markets available.

For such a young site they do a great job of balancing what a European bettor might want alongside a UK bettor, but they show their commitment to the UK market by offering full UK and Irish horse racing alongside sports like football, American football, tennis, golf, darts, and even niche options like Winter sports and floorball.

A plucky customer and no mistake, Bethard’s website over delivers and is the perfect place for the more laddish bettor who doesn’t want to have to deal with all the fuss that comes with some of the big name bookies that are snowed under with extra’s that not many people actually use.

Sportsbook

As far as new sportsbooks go, this is one of the best I have seen at the point of launch. It only opened in 2018 for UK punters and looked good right out of the box where other new sites need a bit of time to warm up.

It’s not yet the titan bookie it no doubt wants to become though, and because they know they can’t go pound for pound with the big boys in many areas, Bethard have instead doubled down on what the core of an online sportsbook needs to be; it needs to be highly functional, it needs to have plenty to bet on, and it needs to offer useful and experience enhancing betting features, so let’s cover each one of those topics individually.

Website Functionality

Bethard Football

This website scores extremely highly when it comes to usability. It’s intuitive, responsive, and doesn’t overwhelm the user at any point either, giving plenty of space for the various sections on each page to breath.

It feels like a blokey place to do your betting too thanks to the branding and the black and yellow colour scheme. It’s a solid effort.

When navigating it is useful that the filtering options are available from the sports list itself as well as on each sports individual page, this means you can browse markets quickly and effectively, with the calendar based options (today, tomorrow, next 7 days) allowing punters to plenty of control over what they see.

There is a search bar available but this disappears once you leave the homepage, which can be annoying if you suddenly remember a game you wanted to look at as you have to either search manually or go back to the homepage to use the search bar. Quick links will also prove useful for those betting on the most popular sports and events.

Betting Markets

Bethard Markets

This is where Bethard prove themselves as a serious bookie. With a list of 30+ sport categories to bet on ranging from the ever popular football, tennis and golf, to things like pool, politics, beach soccer and bandy, your betting activity can be as mainstream or as alternative as you wish.

There are plenty of betting lines to play with as well, with a snapshot below to give you a taste:

  • Football – OU on cards, goals, corners, penalties, etc. Asian handicap, specials, goalscorer markets, period betting, winning margin, odd/even, multi goal, goal method. And on it goes.
  • Tennis – OU games in set, exact score, various set betting, tie break, point/game/set/match winner, tournament outrights, deuce.
  • Ice Hockey – Total goals, total team goals, lots of OU markets inc goals, specific player markets such as shots on goal, period betting like first to score, winning margin, handicap betting.
  • Basketball – Race to x points, highest scoring half, winning margin, spread by quarter, spread and OU alternative, moneyline 1st half/full time, total team points, etc.
  • American Football – Specific player rushing/receiving/passing yards, touchdown scorers, OU touchdowns, spread and winner per half and quarter, 1st to score, odd/even, alternatives.

So there is a lot to get hold of and plenty of opportunity for bettors who know their teams/sports well and can spot value in specific areas.

Obviously the smaller sports have fewer betting markets and options but that is par for the course, and the horse racing on offer covers the UK and Ireland and a bit of international racing too. No greyhound racing though.

To give you an idea of market depth I have used the same 5 sports listed above:

Sport Fixture Markets
Football Premier League Match 124+
Tennis ITF Match 31+
Ice Hockey NHL Fixture 76+
Basketball Euroleague Fixture 53+
American Football NFL Game 117+

Again, smaller sports offer less depth of market, but overall, when compared to some of the bigger sites Bethard are punching above their weight not only with the range of sports they offer, but also with market depth and variety.

Betting Features

Bethard Match GraphicChoosing SB Tech as their platform provider was a savvy move from Bethard, because they offer some of the finest betting features in the industry.

You won’t find much in the way of promotions for the Bethard sportsbook (although that is not the case for their casino), but they provide betting features such as cash out, statistics both in game and as a separate betting tool that goes into a lot of depth on most sports, a results service, and most importantly, live betting.

There is no live streaming, but their live betting platform is so good that you barely miss it. The slick interface is multi-purpose and also include a live match tracker that displays the action as it happens via an updating ‘map’ of the pitch/field and constantly updating stats and in game incidents.

They also offer fast markets on a lot of events which really spice up the less interesting periods of a game, because you can bet on certain things to happen in the next couple of minutes; a corner, a goal, etc.

About

Bethard LogoAfter a bit of a false start in 2012, Bethard, part of The Bethard Group, was re-launched as a brand in 2016. They already had a licence from Curacao and Malta, and these were soon joined by a licence to operate in the UK at more or less the same time that they brought Zlatan Ibrahimovic onboard as a brand ambassador.

This showed the industry that they had money to spend, and showed potential customers that they had clout.

The Bethard Group are not just operating in the BTC market, they also offer their services to other businesses in the B2B market, providing their own gaming platform service, Together Gaming.

They are quickly building on their early success with licences in Ireland, Spain, and Sweden, with more no doubt to follow soon, so the company clearly have ambition. In a few short years they have grown from a few professional gamers talking and dreaming in their bedroom, to a multi-national business with 90+ employees.

In their own words:

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Casino and Games

Bethard Casino

Not all sports fans are interested in this side of things, but even if you only place the occasional tenner on the blackjack it’s good news if your go to sportsbook has a high quality casino attached.

Bethard certainly does, and it hosts games from developers like NetEnt, Quickspin, Microgaming, Yggdrasil, and the live casino masters, Evolution. Anyone who knows online gaming will recognise these names as the best in their field.

This is also where you can find Bethard’s virtual sports, oddly enough, on top of the plethora of slots, jackpots, table games, instant win games, and the live casino which provides lots of blackjack and roulette etc. run by live dealers streamed to your computer screen.

The Bethard brand was created by a couple of professional gamers, so you can be sure that this side of the operation will be pretty much perfect.

Support

Customer SupportFinally, a quick word on support. It’s nice to feel like your bookie cares about their customers enough to lay on a few members of staff to help them when they need it, and Bethard make sure this service is available 24 hours a day every day of the week.

For a new site, that is extremely good news.

You can access support using:

  • Live chat
  • Email
  • Social media

…although social media isn’t specifically there for this purpose. Ok, there’s no phone support, but give them time.

Live chat is usually answered within a couple of minutes and the support agents are good guys from my experience. The FAQ is a little lack lustre it has to be said, but that’s hardly the gravest sin in the world of online gambling.

Final Thoughts

Positive ReviewAll in all, Bethard is a cracking middle of the range sports book that works really hard for its customers, providing quality service and support and decent odds too.

Yes, it is lacking a few advanced features and won’t tickle the fancy of bettors who like to feel like they are getting a deal by signing up to all the promotions, but there is still value here, and no one could argue against the site itself.

If you are looking to expand your portfolio, or just want a site that isn’t as weighed down as some of the big brands but still offers a very healthy range of markets, then Bethard is a great shout.

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