18+ only. Certain countries only. API/RDT customers excluded. Min £10 exchange bet at odds 2.0 or greater within 14 days of acc reg. Free bet valid on exchange for 7 days. Stake not returned. Depositing directly via bank card. No cashout. New customers only. T&Cs Apply. See full Terms & Conditions
Since the brand’s launch back in 2000, the Betdaq name has been most commonly associated with its betting exchange. Given that the exchange is reportedly the second-biggest in the UK, handling some £75 million in bets every week, that’s hardly surprising! What you might not have known, however, is that Betdaq actually have an entire, fully-functional sportsbook in place too.
Given the incredible track record of the other side of their business, you’d certainly expect a good showing from the Betdaq sportsbook. Can it match the quality of the exchange, and stand out in the crowded modern sportsbook scene? That’s exactly what we’re about to find out, in our comprehensive review.
Betdaq should have been around long enough to know the value of having a competitive welcome offer in place. Even for a brand this experienced, this should still be a cornerstone of the entire offering.
There is indeed a Betdaq sign up offer in place, but it’s fair to say that it doesn’t exactly grab your attention! The promise of ‘Bet £10, Get £10’ is fair, but it’s hardly thrilling when so many other sportsbooks offer £20, even £30 in free bets for the same initial spend.
Before we write this promotion off too soon, though, let’s delve into the details. To kick things off, here’s a step-by-step guide on exactly how to use it:
It’s fair to say that welcome offers don’t get much more straightforward than this! Better still, while there are naturally a few terms and conditions in place, there’s really nothing there that should trip you up.
These are the main T’s & C’s to be aware of:
While this really isn’t the most exciting welcome offer in the world, we still like it. It certainly offers good value, effectively doubling your initial spending power if you deposit and bet the £20 minimum. Sure, there are a couple of restrictions – particularly that multiples don’t count towards your qualifying bet – but none of them are harsh enough to detract from the offer’s appeal.
Let’s take a closer look at the few Betdaq promotions which are in place.
As noted, Betday’s welcome offer – while solid – is hardly going to bowl anyone over with its brilliance. In these circumstances, you’d normally hope to find some enticing ongoing promotions to pick up the slack.
Unfortunately, Betdaq’s range of offers is quite limited. In fact, there are only two of them for the sportsbook, plus a couple more for the exchange. Admittedly the ones which are in place are pretty good, but we’d certainly prefer to see a little more variety added to the selection.
This is really a half-ongoing promotion, half-welcome offer, seeing as it’s only eligible for a short period after you sign up. It’s an intriguing deal either way, though, so we thought it was worth studying in more detail.
In short, this offer gives you 10% cashback on your entire net losses on the sportsbook, up to a hefty £1,000. There are a couple of catches, however, with the most obvious being that this only applies for the first seven days after registration. You must also have placed at least five bets in that period, and have lost £50 or more.
Those T’s & C’s obviously make this a pretty situational offer. If it can apply to your specific wagers, though, getting 10% of your losses returned to you – as cash – is nothing to sneeze at!
If you’ve got any experience whatsoever of betting on horse racing… you’ll probably have come across this offer before! If so, Betdaq’s version doesn’t differ much – at all – from the promotion type that you know and love.
As with other Best Odds Guaranteed deals, this one solves a classic horse racing conundrum. Rather than forcing you to stick with your original price on a runner, if the odds improve before the off, then you will automatically be given that superior starting price. If you take a horse at 5/1, for example, and its odds swell to 7/1 by the off, you will get that 7/1 price instead.
In terms of T’s & C’s, there’s not too much to hold you back here. Ante-Post bets are ineligible, as are deposits made using PayPal, Paysafe, Neteller or Skrill, but that’s about it!
The two promotions detailed above are the only ones eligible for the sportsbook, which is a pretty small selection in anyone’s book. There are a couple more for the exchange section, though, which are worth mentioning.
The first is another cashback deal, called ‘Daqback’. It’s certainly useful, despite the terrible name, refunding your commissions for your first month on the exchange up to £1,000. The other is actually a virtual sports offer. Stick down at least £10 on your first virtual sports bet, and this deal will net you a sweet £10 free bet, also to be used on virtual sports.
With some two decades of industry experience, you’d expect a sportsbook like Betdaq to have nailed their fundamentals by now. That wasn’t necessarily the case with their promotions, which – while the quality was fine – certainly lacked in quantity. Unfortunately, it’s really the same story here too.
The sports which are included have a fair amount of depth to them. In terms of sheer volume of markets, though, the selection at Betdaq is a little underwhelming, with only 17 real sports markets on offer (plus Politics and Special Bets). This lags far behind the 30 or so you’d expect to find not only from the biggest bookies… but from most sportsbooks nowadays.
With all that said, most of the most important markets are still covered. Crucially both football and horse racing are included, which are the two biggest betting sports by far. Backing these up are classic British markets like cricket, golf, rugby, darts, and Formula 1, and American leagues like the NFL and NBA are also represented.
There are definitely some notable absences, however. Boxing and MMA are two of the biggest, with less-heralded markets like speedway, Aussie Rules and volleyball also missing in action, and there are no ‘niche’ betting opportunities whatsoever to speak of.
As noted, while there’s not an enormous amount of breadth to Betdaq’s range of markets, the depth is normally fine. That’s certainly the case with their football markets, which provide excellent coverage of the beautiful game.
Naturally all of the top European leagues are available to bet on – including the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A – and international tournaments like the World Cup and Euros are also featured. Backing these up is a nice selection of less-prestigious markets, including both lower European leagues and top flights from around the world.
While you’re given plenty of choices in what you can wager on, Betdaq have limited your options in how you can wager on them. Here are a few examples of the bet types which are available:
While they’re certainly good options, Betdaq again – as with their range of sports markets – fail to provide quite a few bet types you’d really expect to find. Asian Handicaps, for example, were only available on 1st Half Betting in one Premier League game we looked at, and not available at all for some others. You can’t bet on a player to be carded, either, nor on the number of corners that will be taken.
Despite being the ‘original’ modern betting sport, horse racing is still an enormously popular market to this day. It’s excellent, therefore, to find that Betdaq have managed to provide so many ways to bet on the ‘sport of kings’.
Most importantly for British bettors, all UK and Irish races are available to bet on here. Both Win and Each Way markets are available, as are Top 2 and Top 3 Finish, and all races are covered by the aforementioned Best Odds Guaranteed offer. For a high risk/high reward wager, you can even place Ante-Post bets for events that are up to a year away! Elsewhere, races in both the USA and Australia are also supported.
Betdaq doesn’t necessarily have the largest selection of tennis markets around, but all the major bases are covered. Naturally this includes the four slams, which you can bet pre-match round-by-round, or bet long-term with some outright winner picks. In addition to all that, most of the significant ATP and WTA tour events are also featured.
As noted in our introduction to this section, Betdaq might not have the widest range of other sports markets, but most of the sports you’re likely to be betting on are covered. Most importantly, these do include cricket, golf, rugby, and Formula 1 plus a full suite of North American sports like American Football, basketball, and baseball. Betdaq also have a reasonable eSports selection, allowing you to bet on CS:GO, Dota 2, and League of Legends.
Technically, Betdaq do indeed support live betting. Functionally it’s not the most impressive implementation we’ve seen, as outlined in the ‘Betdaq Bookmaker Features’ section. It also disappoints, however, when it comes to market selection.
At the time of writing, literally the only live markets available in the entire in-play section were for football… and there weren’t even very many of those! We also checked the exchange, for comparison, and matters were only slightly better over there, with a few golf and tennis markets on offer.
In all, though, Betdaq put in a pretty poor display with regards to their live betting.
On-the-go betting should be a huge priority for all modern-day sportsbooks, and we’re pleased to say that – for Betdaq at least – that appears to be the case. In fact, their mobile offering is arguably just as good as their desktop one.
For starters, there are both Android and iOS apps available, with separate apps for the exchange and sportsbook sides of the business. While none of them enjoy very good reviews – on either Google Play or the App Store – we were actually pretty impressed during our testing on an iPhone.
Mostly, this was because of the excellent layout. All sports are accessible via a scrolling menu along the top of the screen, with another menu – along the bottom – letting you reach other important sections like In-Play and Cash Out. Everything worked smoothly for us too, with live markets actually loading quicker than on the desktop version.
If you don’t want to download an actual app, Betdaq have a mobile-specific version of their main site. This is also excellent, following a similar layout to the app, and – in our experience – proving just as speedy and reliable.
When it comes to special features, as in a few other areas we’ve looked at, Betdaq occupy an in-between space. They’re certainly superior to the many newer, smaller bookies which frequently pop up, but still can’t compete with the very top brands in the business. There’s still plenty here, though, to keep bettors happy.
The most obvious omission is live streaming, with there being no option to watch football, horse racing, or any other sport in progress. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s not even a visualisation tool – something which is almost always included with a modern sportsbook – although there are still live statistics.
Aside from that, Betdaq hits most of the major checkmarks. There’s an impressive range of virtual sports, as noted above, which are easy to both watch and bet on. You can also place in-play bets and cash out existing wagers, although – during our testing – the site seemed to be struggling to load live odds, and we found the actual placement of bets to be slow.
Elsewhere, we should mention that there’s also an entire Betdaq exchange in place too. This section is actually what made Betdaq famous to begin with, and – to this day – it remains one of the best betting exchanges around. There’s a sizable range of markets on which you can place back or lay bets with other users, and the exchange’s popularity ensures you should always have plenty of liquidity at hand. The Betdaq commission rate is also highly competitive, at just 2% on net profits.
As a pretty established brand, you’d hope – even expect – Betdaq to have a highly competitive range of banking options. The reality, unfortunately, is that they’re pretty lackluster!
Aside from using a debit card, you’re only given four choices here: PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, and bank transfer. Admittedly that covers most of the major bases, but you’d expect to see more eWallets supported by a site this big. Regardless, the minimum deposit amount is £10, no fees are incurred, and payments are processed instantly (although bank transfers may naturally be slowed down by your bank).
Exactly the same options are available to you when it comes to withdrawals, and you won’t pay any fees for them either. eWallet withdrawals take less than 24 hours to process, while other methods may take up to five business days.
Online betting overtook brick-and-mortar bookies for one main reason: convenience. As online bettors, one of the only things we really ask is that the experience of using a platform should be as straightforward as possible, and this absolutely applies to the registration processes too. We were pleased to find, therefore, that the process Betdaq have in place is very simple indeed.
You kick things off, as you might expect, by heading to Betdaq.com and clicking ‘Join Now’ in the top-right. This will present you with the first screen – ‘About You’ – on which you must enter a few personal details. Specifically, you’ll provide your name, date of birth, and email address. When you’ve done so, click ‘Next Step’. The second screen – ‘Contact Information’ – simply requires some further details: your address and telephone number. Once those are in place, hit ‘Next Step’ again.
The third and final stage – ‘Account’ – is where you set your account information. You’re asked to create a username and password here, and set a security question and preferred currency. Importantly, this is also the stage at which you can enter a promo code, including the one needed for the welcome offer.
With all that done, simply agree to the site’s main terms and conditions, and complete the registration process. You’ll be invited to decide your marketing preferences straight afterwards (don’t worry, opting out is nice and easy!), and set a deposit limit if you so choose, before being taken straight to the deposit screen to start funding your account.
While you don’t need to verify your identity when signing up for Betdaq, making a deposit, or placing wagers, you will need to do so before you can withdraw any money from your account. Obviously that’s a little annoying, but Betdaq are simply abiding by industry regulations, so it’s not their fault!
Fortunately, doing so could hardly be easier, with there really only being a couple of very straightforward steps involved. For starters, you should know that Betdaq will require two pieces of ID from you:
Once you’ve got photographs or scans of these ready, you must simply send them in an email to [email protected]. Be sure to include your name, account name, and so on, so they know who’s emailing them! If all goes well, you should receive a reply shortly confirming that your identity – and your account – have been verified.
We will point out here that, technically, Betdaq reserve the right to freeze your account if you haven’t provided ID within 72 hours of registering. This would be highly unusual, though, and unfreezing your account is as easy as sending them some valid ID, as detailed above.
Right up front, let’s make one thing clear: Betdaq is not the prettiest sportsbook you’ll find! In fact, considering what a successful brand it is, we’re a little surprised by how outdated the actual platform looks. While the graphics are okay, both the colour scheme and fonts are incredibly dull.
With all that said, you tend to forget about aesthetics pretty quickly when actually using a website, of course, and care far more about how it handles. In this respect, Betdaq is far more impressive. Its interface – while basic in appearance – is actually designed very intuitively, and betting veterans and newcomers alike should have no trouble getting to grips with it.
You can navigate between essentially every major section on the site via an all-powerful top menu. Not only does it provide options for Sportsbook, Exchange, Promotions, Trading Tools, and even Betdaq Tips, but you can also access your account management here too, and even switch your balance between using real money and free bets.
Actual betting markets are laid out neatly and clearly using dropdown menus to the left. Once a sub-category has been chosen, subsequently viewing its matchups, and the individual odds for those matchups, is also faultlessly straightforward.
The customer support you get from Betdaq isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn good. You can contact their team via email, phone, and – most importantly – live chat. At least one of those latter two options will be available from 08:00 – 22:00 each day except Sunday, when coverage is reduced by a couple of hours. That’s fine, but can’t quite match the 24/7 coverage which many modern bookies offer.
In addition to all that, there’s also a pretty good help centre in place. This has been subdivided into a number of different categories, there’s a search function which also aids navigation, and entries are kept short, sweet, and useful.
While it isn’t necessarily a household name, Betdaq actually has an impressive history. Founded in 2000, it’s been a particular competitor for Betfair – who also provide both a sportsbook and an exchange – throughout the latter’s history. Nowadays it has dozens of employees, most of whom work out of its headquarters in Gibraltar. While still its own entity, Betdaq was actually acquired by Ladbrokes back in 2013, with the two brands sharing markets and liquidity on their exchanges.
Elsewhere, Betdaq’s legitimacy is confirmed by its licenses with both the United Kingdom Gambling Commission and Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner.
When a betting company has been around for a long time, and when they’ve already been so successful with an exchange… it’s pretty unlikely their sportsbook is going to be poor! Betdaq’s certainly isn’t either, but it’s not perfect by any means.
Quite a few times during our testing for this review, we were surprised by absences which you simply wouldn’t expect from a brand this big. There are notable omissions in both betting markets, bet types, and payment methods, and there’s no live streaming whatsoever. There are other areas which could do with smaller improvement too, like adding more ongoing promotions, and generally improving the appearance of the platform.
With all that said, there’s still a whole lot to like here. The Betdaq mobile site and Betdaq app are particularly impressive, and should keep on-the-go bettors happy for a long time to come. The customer support is also excellent, the interface is highly intuitive, and – of course – you’ve got one of the best betting exchanges around to dabble in if you so choose.
Overall, while it can’t quite compete with the likes of William Hill, Bet365, and so on, this is still an extremely solid sportsbook. It’s certainly well worth completing the simple registration process, trying out the ‘Bet £20, Get £20’ welcome offer, and seeing what you think of the platform for yourself!