Tennis Betting Sites & Offers
Tennis is a sport loved professional bettors and gamblers and there must be a reason for that. The nature of the game means it is all about the players and small margins make big differences.
Tennis is a very popular sport for online bookmakers too and you guarantee to find good offers especially around the big Slams and ATP/WTA events. Tennis is also the most streamed sport by online bookmakers, giving the user more choice of where to bet than ever.
Here we list all the best and most reliable offers available for betting on tennis. Further down find details on the best bookies for tennis and major offer terms to be aware of. Don’t get caught in the net, keep up to date with the top tennis offers with latestbettingoffers.co.uk.
New customer enhanced tennis welcome promotions are found on our front page.
Grand Slams & Major Tournaments
Tennis Free Bets, Insurance & Bonus Offers
bet365's fantastic Tennis Acca Boost includes any Singles and Double matches from any Grand Slam, ATP, WTA or Challenger Tour event, as well as Singles and Doubles matches from the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup. You can earn up to a 70% boost if your pre-match accumulator with bet365 of 2 or more selections is successful, the relevant boost will be added to your returns.
This boost is only available to new and eligible customers.
This boost applies to winnings on pre-match accumulators of 2 or more selections on the standard To Win Match, First Set Winner and Set Betting markets for Singles and Double matches from any Grand Slam, ATP, WTA or Challenger Tour event, as well as Singles and Doubles matches from the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup.
The maximum boost that you can receive is £100,000 or currency equivalent.
Where a Bet Boost is offered for a multiple bet (for example a pre-built Treble), Tennis Acca Boost will not apply.
This boost will not apply where a bet has been fully Cashed Out. Where a bet has been partially Cashed Out, the boost will be calculated based on the remaining active stake. Where all selections within the bet have been marked as won and this has been Cashed Out for the full return value, the boost will apply.
If a qualifying bet is edited using our Edit Bet feature, the boost will be calculated based on the new stake. Where a bet has been edited to include or amend a selection for an event that is In-Play, the boost will no longer apply.
Bets placed with Bet Credits or combination bets with bonuses such as Lucky 15s or Lucky 31s will not qualify for this boost.
Best Tennis Bookmakers
Bet365
All round best tennis betting site for unparalleled coverage of both major and minor matches, great market depth, streaming, features and long term offers.
Coral
By far the best tennis bookie, this is a sport that Coral dominate. They have the most streaming, best in play, good tournament offers + honest good odds and terms.
BetVictor
Free bet offers during bigger events and one of the best for match betting odds, along with good streaming and plenty of personalised promotions.
Betfred
For the big tournaments Betfred often run a free bet club along with price boosts and tennis specials. Market range and depth is also superb pre-game and in-play.Tennis Betting Guide
Tennis is a great sport to bet on as there are very few variables. It all comes down to the individual player on the day and so a small amount of knowledge about how they might play can have a big influence on the success of your wagers.
Many professional and high stakes bettors prefer to bet on tennis for this reason. If you bet on the right line at the right time you can make some serious profits with this sport. There are also plenty of offers and enhanced deals to further sweeten the market. Below we discuss some aspects to consider when betting on tennis.
Void Bets
As with other sports if a match is called off or abandoned you will get any single stakes back in cash. If that match was part of an accumulator then the void game will be removed but the remaining selections will continue. This is useful to know if you are using acca insurance or a bonus as this may mean your bet is no longer eligible or you will get a lower tier of bonus.
For set, game and special bets you will be refunded if the game is called off before it starts. If the game is called off part way through, in the second set for example, then bets placed on the result of the first set will still stand. This can vary with bookies, some will refund all stakes, others won’t, it is worth checking individual terms.
Injuries and disqualifications can have a big effect in tennis, as this is not a team game there are no substitutes to take over. If a player retires through injury or is disqualified then the other player will be the winner and bets will be paid out accordingly. If a player retires before your bet can complete (e.g. you’ve bet on the winner of the third set and the game is called off in the second) then your bet should be voided and stake returned.
Outright Betting
Tennis, unlike say football, is made up of countless major and minor tournaments throughout the year. As each event lasts only 2 weeks at most the outright win bet is therefore the most common market for tennis.
These lines attract the most free bet, enhanced odds and money back offers and can be exceptionally good value for money so shop around.
Match Betting
By far the best value market when betting on tennis, this is partly due to competition between bookies but mainly due to the fact there are only two outcomes, either one player wins or the other. When you have very uncomplicated markets like these bookies find it very easy to balance their books and so the commission rates, or margins, tend to be lower.
For men’s matches you can get tons of good promotions that can add up over time. The most common offer is money back or double winnings if your player loses in the 5th set. Unfortunately as the women’s game only runs to a maximum of 3 sets there are less of these types of deals available.
Set Betting
Betting by the set doesn’t carry as many offers and the odds value tends to be worse due to a larger number of markets and less competition. This doesn’t however mean that these are not good bets to place. Set betting can be a great way to get a return on an outsider who is unlikely to win the match but may win the odd set along the way.
Conversely if the top seed has lost a couple of games in a row the odds of them winning the set or match can lengthen. This can be a good opportunity to get better prices on the favourites if you think they have just had a dip and will come back into the set or match and win.
Often these bets are placed in play, by watching a match live you get a feel for whether a player may drop a set or not and if you back the outsider at the right time you can get some great odds. Plus, so many bookies stream live tennis it makes sense to gauge the match first before placing these wagers.
This market isn’t just restricted to who will win the set, you can also punt on the exact score, whether it will go to a tie-break, total games in the set and more.
Game and Point Betting
Online bookmaking has revolutionised tennis to the point where it is now possible to not just bet on the winner of an individual game you can bet on the score of the game and even the winner of the next point.
This is where knowledge and astute observations come in to play. If you can pick the right time for a player to have a dip or a resurgence then a few cleverly placed in play bets can give you some good returns.
Handicaps and Other Markets
Tennis as a simple contest between two, or four, competitors is brilliant for all types of handicap, 3-way and over/under betting markets.
Get these lines for the match, set and even the games during the match. Again picking the right moment for these wagers can pay off when betting in play especially.
Handicap markets are also a good way to get better odds on the odds on favourites if you think they may win by a big margin.
Accumulators
Perfect sport for acca bets, mainly because there are a lot of matches in parallel allowing you to pick from a large range of matches that will all settle in a short space of time.
Tennis acca bets are the third most popular behind outright and match bets and so betting sites have a range of offers to attract you, including bonuses, free bets and insurance. If you place a lot of tennis multiples it makes sense to bet with a bookie with good accumulator offers.
Beware however many acca offers have minimum odds requirements and tennis is one of those sports where the favourites can have very short prices. If for example there is a minimum qualifying price of 1/2+ each leg there is no point trying to put an acca on with a 1/10 favourite in there. Always check the terms of tennis accumulator promotions.
In Play Betting
Tennis is perhaps more suited to live in play betting than any other sport. Men’s matches can last over 3 hours sometimes so there is plenty of action to bet on and with the ability to now bet on the winner of an individual point the in-play opportunities are almost endless.
Bookies obviously know this and so many now offer cash back on in play bets. You should never bet to get cash back but on the other hand if you already place a lot of live bets you may as well take advantage of the money back deals from the likes of 888 Sport as these will add up over time.
Live Streaming
Tennis is the most streamed sport by betting sites and this is great for the punter as you do not need to choose between the bookie with the best odds and markets and those where you can watch the action live.
Betting on tennis live without streaming is almost senseless when you consider the number of free streams available. Coral for example stream almost every level of tennis match, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of games each year. Remember too that many bookies will let you stream so long as you have a positive account balance and so you can always watch with one bookmaker and bet with another if they have better prices or markets.
Payouts and Limits
Tennis is a major sport and so top bookies will have high payout limits. Don’t however take this for granted and always check the maximum pay-out for both tennis and the specific bet you are placing before you stick a big bet on.
The screenshot below shows you an example of maximum payout rates for various tennis bets from a high limits bookmaker:
Tennis History, How To Play, Rules & Competitions
There are a whole series of sports out there that were invented by the British, only for other nations to become significantly better at them than us. The most obvious example is surely football, which was developed in England as an offshoot of rugby, yet we’ve only ever won one major tournament – the World Cup in 1966. The Americans took to golf as though it was their national sport, with the Ryder Cup regularly being won by the players representing the US rather than their European counterparts. Even cricket is so blatantly English that it’s used in a term to describe someone doing something that’s not very gentlemanly, or ‘just not cricket’. Of all of these sports, though, tennis is the one that perhaps best reflects the Englishness of its origins.
It’s also very much on the list of sports that began life in the UK and was soon exported all around the world, with countless players from the likes of Spain, Serbia and Switzerland going on to dominate the game in recent times. Yet just how British is it? How did the game of tennis first come about? More importantly for those of you who are uninitiated, how do you play tennis in its numerous formats? They’re the questions that will hopefully be answered on this page, giving you a real sense not only of the game’s history but also its present. We’ll also have a look at the game’s major tournaments, drawing your attention to the players who have been most successful in them over the years. Might that give you some clue about tennis’s future?
History Of Tennis
Though the rules and laws of tennis were first outlined in Britain during the 1870s, the game can actually trace its history much further back than that. A game called ‘jeu de paume’ was played in France as long ago as the eleventh century. The words translate as ‘game of the palm’, with something that resembled a ball being hit by the palm of the hand. It continued to be played this way until the sixteenth century, at which point rackets were invented and began to replace the palm of the hand as the thing with which players would hit the ball. It was at that point that the game earned its name, taken from the fact that players would shout the French word ‘tenez’ at each other as they were about to serve. ‘Tenez’ means ‘here it comes’, giving the opponent fair warning that the ball was on its way.
This game developed into one that is known as ‘Real Tennis’, though it has been known as ‘Court Tennis’ and ‘Royal Tennis’ over the years, depending on where you were talking about it. The title was one that was applied retroactively in order to distinguish it from the game that we know of nowadays as ‘Lawn Tennis’. Though the modern game is significantly different from the older one, thanks in no small part to the massively more convoluted rules, the game that we play today is a direct descendant of it. By 1596 there were around two hundred and fifty Real Tennis courts in the capital of France alone, though Henry VIII had popularised the game in England years before. He’d had a court specially built in Hampton Court in 1530 and it’s believed that Anne Boleyn was watching a game being played when she was arrested.
The Royals continued to enjoy it in the years after Henry VIII’s reign, with Queen Elizabeth I apparently a lover of it, lending it the ‘Royal’ of its title. It truly caught on around Europe in the seventeenth century, though it lost its lustre in England during the same period because of its association with gambling. It had a revival during the Victorian era, but that was also the same time as the game of tennis that we know today began to be codified. A game that was a cross between Real Tennis and the Spanish game pelota was first played on an Edgbaston croquet lawn around 1860. The men who came up with that game, a solicitor named Major Harry Gem and a Spanish merchant called Augurio Perera, moved to Leamington Spa and in 1874 joined forces with two doctors to form the world’s first tennis club.
The following year, 1875, Marylebone Cricket Club decided to write down the perceived rules of tennis for the first time. Known as the ‘Rules of Lawn Tennis’, they have been changed in minor ways ever since, mostly to adopt modern methods of scoring and so on, and were adopted by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club when it began the world’s first Lawn Tennis Championship in 1877. It soon took over from both croquet and badminton as the most popular game to be played by both men and women, in no small part due to the fact that the equipment required to play it was relatively easy to get hold of. The more that it was played, the more popular it became and the sport was first played in America in 1874.
Rules of Tennis and How To Play
There are two variations of tennis when you look at its most popular format: singles and doubles. The game is played on the same court regardless of the variation opted for, though different parts of the court come into play depending on whether you’re playing singles or doubles. In singles, the tram lines along either side of the court are out of bounds, with balls landing inside them being declared to be out of play. As you might have surmised from the names, singles tennis involves two players going up against each other, whilst doubles is a team game that sees two sets of two players play against each other.
The sport requires players to win a game by obtaining a four points, though the scoring system can appear confusing in that manner. When you win one point you go fifteen-love up, the second point taking you to thirty-love and the third point making the score forty-love. If you then win the fourth point without your opponent winning one then you take the game. You’re required to win six games in order to win a set and then win either three or five sets in order to win the match, depending on the rules of the tournament. To add confusion into the situation, you need to be two games clear in order to win a set, but if you’re not then the first two sets of it’s a three-set match or the first four sets if it’s a five-set one can go to what is known as a tie-break.
The confusion isn’t just around sets. If both players score level points and it ends up as what would essentially be forty-all, this is known as ‘Deuce’. When one player wins a point on Deuce then it becomes their advantage, but they still need to win another point to win the game. If they don’t then it goes back to Deuce and the two sides start again, with no limit on the number of times that the score can return to Deuce. A moment ago we mentioned that sets can go to tie-breaks if they’re level after twelve games. The only time that this isn’t the case is during the final set, at which point the competitors need to keep going until one of them ends up two games clear of the other, at which point they’ll have won the set.
In singles, one player serves first and continues to have the serve until the end of the match, at which point service switches to the other player. The service then moves back and forth between the players at the end of every game until the end of the match. In doubles things are slightly more complex, with servers alternating within each team as well as from one team to the other. For example, Player A from Team One will serve, then it will move to Player C from Team Two. After that it will move back to Team One but it will be Player B’s turn, then it will be that of Player D from Team Two. After all players have served, it returns to the first player. The game tends be played as men against men and women against women, with the exception to this being when teams of mixed doubles made up of one man and one woman go up against each other. As you might have guessed, it’s actually remarkably tricky to explain the rules of tennis in a short and concise manner!
Major Tennis Competitions
The worldwide appeal of tennis as a sport means that there are countless smaller competitions that occur throughout the year and in numerous different players around the world. Generally speaking, these are of little interest to the general public and are mainly for the various players to keep up their skills and earn some money on the tour. There are several different major tournaments that all work in various ways and a played on certain types of court. Here’s a look at each of them:
- The Australian Open – Played in Melbourne, Australia every January, the Australian Open is one of four of tennis’s Majors. It was first held back in 1905 and until 1987 it was played on a grass court. That switched to a hard surface in 1988. It wasn’t until 1923 that the International Lawn Tennis Federation decided to designate it as a Major, originally moving from city to city around Australia. It took up permanent residence at Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club in 1972, remaining there until it shifted to the Melbourne Park complex in the same year that it started to be played on a hard surface.
- The French Open – Known as Roland-Garros because it takes place at the Stade Roland-Garros every year, The French Open was founded in 1891. It has bounced from venue to venue around Paris over the years, settling in its current venue in 1928. It’s played on a clay surface, having been played on sand up until 1908. It tends to take place in late May and early June every year, being seen as the main tournament before Wimbledon. There is another warm-up to Wimbledon that takes place at Queens in between the French Open and the All-England event, but we’ll tell you more about that shortly.
- The Championships – Often referred to simply as ‘Wimbledon’, The Championships is the oldest and most prestigious event in tennis. It is the third Grand Slam of the season and the only one played on grass. Having been founded in 1877, the tournament used to begin in late June but has been pushed back to start in early July in recent years. Featuring men’s, women’s, mixed doubles and junior tennis, it is one of the busiest fortnights in the tennis calendar.
- The US Open – The final Grand Slam event is the United States Open Tennis Championships, better known as the US Open. It’s played on a hard court surface and was founded in 1881. It was contested on grass until it moved to a clay court for two years in 1975, being played on a hard court surface since 1978. That was also the year that the event found a permanent home at New York’s USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, which is often better-known as Flushing Meadows. The US Open is the only one of the four Grand Slam events that uses a tie-breaker to decide every single set, without the need for players to win by two clear games in the final set.
- The Queen’s Club Championships – Although this isn’t a major, it is nevertheless seen as an important event because it’s the main grass-court competition ahead of Wimbledon. Given the fact that none of the other Majors take place on grass, this is the first opportunity for players to get on the surface and find their rhythm. It first took place in 1890 and, as the event’s title suggests, is played at London’s The Queen’s Club. It is part of the Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and has had a number of different sponsors over the years.
- The Davis Cup – Run by the International Tennis Federation, the Davis Cup was started in 1900 as a tournament between men’s teams from Great Britain and the US. More nations joined over the years and by 2016 it had expanded to include teams from more than one hundred and thirty-five countries.
- The Fed Cup – Also run by the International Tennis Federation, the Fed Cup is the equivalent to the Davis Cup but is for female tennis players. Though it was founded in 1963, the idea for an international female team tennis tournament was first mooted by Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman in 1919. The idea was rejected, so she started an alternative tournament called the Wightman Cup in 1923, which involved female players from Great Britain and the US and ran until 1989.
Facts & Figures
| Competition | Most Successful Male (Singles) | Most Successful Female (Singles) |
|---|---|---|
| The Australian Open | Roy Emerson / Novak Djokovic / Roger Federer | Margaret Court |
| The French Open | Rafael Nadal | Chris Evert |
| The Championships, Wimbledon | Roger Federer | Martina Navratilova |
| The US Open | Richard Sears / Bill Larned / Bill Tilden | Molla Bjurstedt Mallory |
| The Queen’s Club Championships | Andy Murray | Charlotte Cooper Sterry |
| The Davis Cup | United States | N/A |
| The Fed Cup | N/A | United States |
It’s tricky to speak specifically about the must successful players of tournaments because of the likes of doubles and mixed doubles play. Regardless, here’s a look at the best players in the male and female singles game for each of the Majors plus Queens. The table also contains the most successful nation in both the Davis and Fed Cups.
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