Sportsbet.com.au Racebook Review
SportsBet.com.au is one of the oldest bookmakers in Australia. The site is licensed in Australia's Northern Territory by the Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC) and has operated in Australia for more than 14 years.
Matthew Tripp is currently the Chief Executive of Sportsbet.com.au. Matthew is the son of Alan Tripp, who at one time was reportedly Australia's largest bookmaker. Both Mathew and Alan have a long and reputable history in bookmaking, not only in Australia but also overseas.
If you're into Australian and international horse, harness and greyhound racing, then Sportsbet.com.au is the place to be. City Best, Country Best, Fixed Odds, Top Fluc, SP, Quinellas and Trifectas are available. More importantly, bets can be placed for as little as $1, excellent for beginners who want to get the hang of online betting before wagering bigger bankrolls.
We found it easy to make deposits and withdrawals at Sportsbet.com.au. They offer various deposit options including credit card, BPay, money order, check or direct deposit. We found that Sportsbet.com.au does not charge any credit card handling fees or deposit or withdrawal fees no matter what the method. More importantly, the site is a Verisign Secure site, and that made us feel more comfortable in making online transactions.
We like the simplicity of the layout of Sportsbet.com.au. The racing / sport navigation is easily accessible on the left column, while images for various promotions are clearly displayed on the right column. Various features are cleanly laid out in the middle column right below the login panel. In just one page, you'll be able to get a glance of everything the site has to offer. There's no need to jump from one page to another, and that can save you a lot of time especially when you're just looking for bets that may interest you.
We also like the innovative promotions at Sportsbet.com.au, one of which is Country Best, the best dividend of the Vic and NSW TABs for Win, Place and Each-Way wagers. You won't have to go to Vic or NSW TABs to see which offers the best dividend. Sportsbet.com.au does it for you which is very convenient.
We also found the Super Saturday promotion very interesting. Sportsbet.com.au chooses a particular Saturday and then loads that day with exciting promos. At the time of this writing, Super Saturday offered free bets, refunds, doubled refer a friend bonus and the happy hour.
Free bets, refunds and refer-a-friend bonuses are available in almost every race book. But this is the first time we've heard of the Happy Hour! For one hour (from 1pm to 2pm AEDST at the time of this writing) punters get 20% of their winnings added to their first 10 racing bets of up to $500 each. Winning bets are calculated after 6pm AEDST and 20% of the winnings are added as a separate transaction and credited to a punter's account as 'Happy Hour Bonus'. Isn't that cool?
We also liked the live racing audio which made us feel like we're right there at the track. Meanwhile the comprehensive results search offered a quick reference for looking up race results. The search can be sorted yesterday, today or by date.
However we found two things lacking at Sportsbet.com.au - the race form and options to select and preview multiple races.
For us, a racing form is a valuable guide in placing bets. And not having a racing form made it a bit hard for us to select which horses / jockeys to bet on.
And the lack of options to select and preview multiple races caused us to click the back button on our browsers more often than we liked. The process can slow you down especially if you're just looking around for interesting bets. As a consolation, there's a dropdown menu that allows you to jump from one race to another. But nothing beats seeing all the races you want in one neat page.
Overall, we found betting at Sportsbet.com.au very exciting. The promotions are very innovative and it's easy, safe and secure to transact with them online. If you're on the look out for a race book based down under, then Sportsbet.com.au should be one of your top destinations.