Compare Betting Sites in 2026 — What's Really Behind the Welcome Page

Updated October 2026

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This page is a working guide for someone choosing where to place a bet in Great Britain in 2026, written from the inside of the figures — license numbers, bonus terms, market margins — rather than from an advert. Current as of 27 October 2026; the Commission account numbers and the operators’ own published terms have been checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the operators’ UK sites.

The lead is short and unsentimental. A bookmaker taking bets from customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission licence wherever it sits, by sections 33 and 36 of the Gambling Act 2005 (as amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014). No Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence substitutes for one. There is no monopoly, no quota on the number of licenses and no single brand that is “the only” licensed one — the Commission’s public register is the whole test, and ten of the brands reviewed here sit on it; dozens more do. What changes between them is the offer, the menu, the margin and the join-up with safer-gambling tooling. That is the comparison this page actually conducts.

The Statute Behind the Licence Test

Two statutes do most of the work in the UK, and a third one is the rule the headlines have been chasing.

The Gambling Act 2005 licenses and regulates the commercial market. The Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 closed the offshore loophole: from that point on, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever the operator itself is based. The Act covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own older law and falls outside the 2005 Act, so a “GB-licensed” site is the right term when the licence is being checked; never the claim that a GB licence regulates Northern Ireland.

The Commission runs five licence categories relevant to a sports punter: remote general betting standard (real events), the same for virtual events, remote general betting limited, remote pool betting and remote betting intermediary (the betting-exchange licence). Each operator on the public register sits under one or more of those categories, with the operator’s trading name, the licensee and the domain. The register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number — searching the domain is the fastest sanity check, because licensed operators run on .com as well as .co.uk and the suffix proves nothing by itself.

The third statute is the cap on bonus wagering that came in on 19 January 2026: wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x. A £10 bonus that demanded 50x wagering used to mean £500 of bets; under the cap, no more than £100 of qualifying bets clears that bonus. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that ties two or more product types (betting and casino, betting and bingo, betting and lottery) into one bundle — are banned outright. How those rules map onto a free bet that has no wagering condition, and any maximum bonus value, are not settled in the public wording; the operators’ own terms pages should be read on those two points before any offer is claimed. There is no cap on the number of licensed operators, no state-set ceiling on stakes or losses, and the player pays no tax on winnings in Great Britain — General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits (currently 15%, with a 25% rate on remote betting from 1 April 2027).

Who Covers What, and Why the Regulator Matters

The Gambling Commission is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its remit is licensing, compliance and enforcement of the social responsibility code (the LCCP), which sets the player-protection duties that fall on every licensee. Advertising is not licensed by the Commission; it runs through the ASA under the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and the BCAP Code (broadcast). Two rules from those codes shape what an advert can look like: marketing must be socially responsible and not strongly appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role. The “under-25” rule governs who may *appear* in an advertisement, not who may bet.

Financial spread betting on shares, indices and similar products is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission — the same brand may hold both permissions, with each authority overseeing its side. Spreadex is one such operator: regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Commission for fixed-odds betting, and its site states that spread betting losses can exceed the deposit. The two permissions do not overlap; the FCA doesn’t enforce the social responsibility code, the Commission doesn’t enforce conduct-of-business rules on financial contracts.

Enforcement runs through disruption, not blocking. The Commission uses cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals and work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and has been given (or is about to receive) court-order DNS blocking powers — never write that ISP blocking is in operation. The aim is to make unlicensed brands unreachable, not to prosecute the punter: no offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site has been set out. What the punter loses when they bet on an unlicensed site is protection: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no cover under the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check.

Safeguards the Licensed Market Carries

Player protection is delivered through a small number of mandatory tools, each of them operated by an external body or constrained by a Commission rule.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme. Self-exclusion is a condition of every online licence since 31 March 2020. The periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a different service. Joining is free, and once registered no Commission-licensed brand will accept a bet from that customer for the chosen period.

A financial vulnerability check applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals go over £150 in a rolling 30 days. The check has applied since 28 February 2025 and is a public-record check — bankruptcy, county court judgments and the like — not an income check and not a credit reference check. A separate, heavier check (financial risk assessments, the “affordability checks” in the press) is announced in a staged plan of 7 July 2026; the start date has not been set, and these should be written about as “announced, staged, no start date”, never “in force”.

Deposit limits have moved under RTS 12: operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, with the first changes in force since 31 October 2025 and a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026; whether that second phase is live is not settled in the public wording. There is no state-set deposit ceiling for betting — limits are the customer’s choice, and the operator can set its own minimum.

Help outside the operators themselves sits with GamCare (which runs the National Gambling Helpline), GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics and Gamblers Anonymous. A licensed operator’s safer-gambling page should link to all of those, and a serious brand makes the link prominent rather than bury it.

What an Offer Is Actually Worth

The phrase “free bet” sells the wrong idea on purpose, and a punter who joins a brand for the offer should know what’s being signed up to before they enter the bonus code screen.

The structure of the typical welcome package is stake-back-as-free-bet or matched-free-bet, paid in free-bet tokens rather than cash. Where the offer is “stake back if your first acca loses”, a losing accumulator of three or more legs at minimum odds (often 4/1 or greater) triggers a free bet of up to a stated ceiling (Hollywoodbets runs £30 on a £10+ first losing acca, settled within seven days, one free bet per customer). Where the offer is “stake £10, get £10 in free bets”, the bonus is paid in free-bet tokens and frequently split across a single and an acca (Bet Ahoy’s package is a £5 sports bet plus a £5 acca). Some offers pay half-back (Octobet’s sportsbook package is 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers). The two qualifiers every punter should look for are the minimum price on the qualifying bet and the cap on free-bet winnings.

The bonus wagering cap has flattened one corner of this market. A 10x wagering requirement on a £10 bonus means at most £100 of qualifying bets clears it; any operator still advertising a 50x clearing path is advertising something the rule now forbids. The cap covers wagering; it does not cover free bets with no rollover, and the upper money value of a bonus is not set — so a “100% bonus” headline is still legal, but the clearing path behind it is bounded for the first time.

The hidden cost of every welcome package is the wagering turnover. A free bet pays its winnings but not its stake back (Dabble’s terms say so in plain language: free bets expire in seven days and the stake is not returned); the “value” of a free bet is therefore *free-bet amount × (decimal odds − 1) ÷ decimal odds × payout share of the chosen market*. A £10 free bet on an evens market (decimal 2.00) at a 95% payout share is worth about £4.75 in expected cash; on a 4/1 market (decimal 5.00), the same token is worth about £30.40. The bigger the price on the chosen selection, the larger the free bet’s expected value — which is why the same £10 token is rarely redeemed on a heavy favourite. Octobet’s 50%-back-up-to-£50 is structured the same way: a £100 first bet at 4/1 that loses returns a £50 free-bet token, whose expected value is well under £50 if redeemed on a short-priced selection.

The wagering cap is the second mechanism. To clear a £10 bonus at 10x on singles of £10 each at minimum qualifying odds 4/5 (decimal 1.80), a punter needs ten qualifying bets totalling £100 of stake. At a market margin around 5%, the expected cost of that turnover is about £5 — already half the headline bonus — before any consideration of variance. Welcome bonuses are paid in marketing budget for a reason: the average punter loses more in the clearing than the headline pays out.

A related instrument is acca insurance: a refund on a near-miss accumulator, usually as a free bet. It carries the same free-bet token economics and the same 10x cap on any wagering it gates. Enhanced odds and price boosts change the price on a named selection rather than paying a free-bet token — the change in expected value is *boost price − true price × (1 − market margin)*, and on a heavily marketed “Super Boost” the boost can sit below what the existing market on the same selection already offers. The right comparison is against the price the operator already lists, not against the stake-back headline.

Cashback and “risk-free” offers sit beside the welcome bonus. A “risk-free” first bet is usually refunded as a free bet on a loss, with the same token economics rather than a cash refund. Cashback is a percentage of net losses over a window, capped and refunded as a free bet or as bonus credit subject to its own wagering. None of these should be read as a no-cost path; each has the same skeleton as the welcome bonus, with the cap and a wagering term attached.

Mobile, App and Browser

The shape of the GB market’s mobile side is settled: a native iOS app, a native Android app (typically via a download link rather than the Play Store for licensing reasons) and a responsive web app as the third option, with the browser product being the most consistent across operating systems.

The most-downloaded sports-betting app in the UK — bet365’s own materials describe it that way, and the App Store rankings bear it out — runs Face ID login on supported devices and accepts debit card, PayPal and Apple Pay for funding. Bet Builder+ lets a punter combine markets from one event into a single bet, available pre-match and in-play; Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and daily Bet Boosts sit beside it. In-play betting and live streaming run across events worldwide, with Bet Track, Match Live and a Live Golf Tracker on top for following bets in play. The breadth of the in-play menu is the differentiator that the marketing rarely describes: the same brand may be running several thousand in-play markets on a Champions League evening and a couple of dozen on a Tuesday night in the Belarusian reserve league.

The smaller brands lean on differentiators rather than volume. Geoff Banks offers live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events, with the app published by GB Sports Advisors Ltd. Midnite surfaces in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits, and accepts Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Trustly. BoyleSports, Hollywoodbets and BetVictor each publish a GB App Store presence with their own welcome offer attached; the spread of payment options, the presence of racing streams and the integration with form tools (BetFinder on BetVictor and 888sport) are the visible points of variation.

Browser play is the fallback for punters who don’t install an app or are betting on a device they don’t own. Where the desktop site and the mobile site diverge — feature parity, login options, withdrawal methods — the brand’s own help pages are the right place to check, since App Store listings tend to be marketing-led and miss the differences.

Picks, Tips and the Forecast Trap

A second cluster of pages the search results return is comparisons that pair odds with predictions: who to back, what the smart money is on, what the model says. The honest reading of these is that they describe one reading of form and one model’s projection; they do not forecast outcomes.

The page a punter is reading describes how the odds are set, not which way the price should move. The bookmaker’s margin is built into every price, with favourites and outsiders facing different overrounds on the same market; the model projects on the basis of past results, current form and the published team news, and the operator’s price already contains a margin on top of its own projection. Comparing prices across operators is a comparison of overrounds and risk appetites, not a reading of who will win. A price boost that looks like 33/1 on a Premier League goalscorer is built on top of the operator’s own projected goal probability, with a margin the boost does not subtract.

The structure inside a tipster site is the same as the structure inside a sports-trading model: a probability assigned to each outcome, a price around that probability, and a margin between the price and a fair quote. The punter’s edge — when there is one — sits in finding prices that beat the model’s projection, not in finding better forecasts. The honest version of a tipster page says exactly that: the tip is a probability, the price is the bet, and the two are different things.

Two consequences follow for the punter who does compare odds anyway. The first is that short-term form swings can pull prices back to model before the closer, which is the basic case for Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing (BetVictor is one of the operators running it, alongside enhanced live race streaming and a BetFinder feature). The second is that late information — team news half an hour before kick-off — moves in-play prices faster than pre-match prices, which is the basic case for in-play rather than ante-post on punts where the team sheet matters. None of this beats the margin; all of it reduces the gap between the punter’s projection and the operator’s price.

Bet Types, Markets and Where the Margin Sits

The punter’s menu is wide, but the way the margin is hidden is consistent.

A single bet is the cleanest expression of the price: stake × decimal odds is the return, the profit is the return minus the stake, and the operator’s margin sits in the price rather than in a separate fee. A double, treble or accumulator multiplies the leg prices into one; the margin on the combined bet is the combined overround, which is why a 4/1 acca rarely pays what the leg prices would suggest on paper — each leg’s overround compounds. A Trixie (4 bets) is three doubles plus a treble, the Patent (7) three singles plus three doubles plus a treble, the Yankee (11) six doubles plus four trebles plus an accumulator, and the Lucky 15 four singles plus six doubles plus four trebles plus an accumulator. Each adds legs, and each adds an opportunity for the overround to compound. Total stake for a Lucky 15 at 25p a line is £3.75 — the unit stake multiplied by the number of lines, and the price of being wrong on three legs is the cost of the singles.

Each-way betting is two bets of equal stake: one on the win, one on the place. The stake doubles; the place terms vary by race and operator. Best Odds Guaranteed pays the bigger of the SP (starting price) and the price taken at the time of the bet on UK and Irish horse racing, and a Rule 4 deduction adjusts the price when a runner is withdrawn. Cash out closes a bet before it settles: the offer reflects the live price the operator would give at that moment, with the operator’s margin as much a part of that offer as it is of the original price. Bet builders and same-game multis combine markets from one event — and the operator’s margin on the combined bet is, again, hidden, with the headline “build your bet” framing rarely printing it.

The margin itself can be measured. For a two-way market with decimal odds *o₁* and *o₂*, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/*o₁* + 1/*o₂*); the margin is 1 − payout share. Take the even-money two-way example below.

At decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 on a two-way market, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) ≈ 0.95, so the market margin sits around 5%. The exact value tracks *both* prices, not the average: a book running 1.85 / 1.95 carries roughly the same 5.1% margin as 1.90 / 1.90, even though one side looks closer to evens. The band — for a typical two-way market with both sides around 1.90 — runs roughly 4.5% to 5.5%, holding the calculation method and the round-half-up odd constant. A 5% margin means the operator keeps about 5p of every pound staked across the market in the long run; the punter loses 5p of every pound staked on average before any skill is applied. A market with a tighter margin (Premier League match odds on a competitive fixture) sits closer to 2-3%; a market with a wider margin (a small-league outright, a novelty prop) sits in double digits. The price comparison that costs the punter the least is a comparison on the market where the margin has actually been measured.

The same calculation works for three-way markets (1X2) by extending the sum in the denominator to cover all three outcomes. The order of the prices matters only in what the readout shows, not in what the margin is. For a market with many outcomes (a dozen-runner horse race), the calculation is identical — more outcomes, larger denominator, smaller individual payout share, a margin that compounds from the rounding on each price.

Sports, Tournaments and Where Coverage Is Genuinely Different

A useful comparison of bookmakers separates the menu in two layers: the headline sports, and the depth of the menu inside each one.

Football is the loudest menu on every GB-licensed site — Premier League, Champions League (bet365 is the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, and that commercial tie frames the offering), the EFL, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A and the Scottish Premiership sit on every book. Tennis, golf, cricket and rugby league round out the headline four alongside football, and the racing sports (horse and greyhound) draw their own menu with Best Odds Guaranteed, ante-post, place terms and Rule 4 deductions. American leagues (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL) are on every book but at varying depths of market and live coverage; Australian rules, cycling, darts and snooker are widespread on mid-sized books and patchy on the smallest.

The differences show up at the league level. A book with a strong cricket menu runs a deep Indian Premier League with player props and in-play lines; a book with a thin cricket menu lists the match winner and not much else. A book with a strong racing menu offers enhanced place terms, extra places and live streams; a book with a thin racing menu offers match odds and SP. Some brands lean into niche sports (Ultimate Frisbee, futsal, eSports) and offer coverage the mainstream books do not; others leave those to specialist operators. There is no “complete” book and no “thin” book by structure — every review is a comparison of menus in two or three headline sports against the punter’s actual betting list.

In-play coverage is a separate dimension. Bet365 streams thousands of in-play events, with Bet Builder+, Super Boosts and the in-play cash-out option layered on top. BoyleSports, BetVictor and 888sport each run their own in-play product with racing streams and form tools. Smaller books run fewer in-play events and fewer live markets per event. A punter betting on a Tuesday-night Belarusian reserve league will end up at the brand with the deepest menu in that league — there is no shortcut.

What the Operator Set Looks Like in 2026

The punter’s shortlist in Great Britain is set by the Commission’s register, not by an editor’s pick. The ten brands below are reviewed on their published UK terms — licences, offers, in-play product, safer-gambling tooling — and the figure that ties them all together is a current Commission account number that resolves against the public register. Every brand runs a remote general betting (real events) licence unless noted, and every brand is part of GAMSTOP.

888sport — the best all-round menu

888sport runs the broadest product mix in the set, with pre-match and in-play betting, Cash Out, Bet Builder, racing streams, the BetFinder form tool, a live bet feed and daily boosted odds through the same account. Best fit for a punter who puts down a few bets a week across several sports and wants the same product on desktop and mobile.

Geoff Banks — ante-post with a smaller menu

Geoff Banks (GB Sports Advisors Limited) keeps the menu slimmer but leans on ante-post pricing on future events and live in-play on the events it does cover. This provides a specialized alternative to the broad, weekly schedules of major bookmakers.

BoyleSports — racing-leaning free bet

BoyleSports runs a UK sports welcome of £20 in free bets on a £10 qualifying bet, and the brand is best known for its racing and greyhound book. This welcome serves as a strong entry point for punters who focus their betting on racing and greyhound markets.

Hollywoodbets — accumulator-led welcome

Hollywoodbets’ UK sports welcome is stake back as a free bet of up to £30 on a first losing accumulator (3+ legs, 4/1+), settled within seven days and one per customer. The offer provides a safety net specifically for accumulator bettors, incentivizing multi-leg play over singles.

Dabble — short-form welcome with a tight expiry

Dabble pays £10 in free bets on a £10 first deposit, with minimum odds, a 7-day free-bet expiry and the stake not returned. Success here depends on quick action; the restrictive expiry window requires the user to place their qualifying bet within seven days.

Matchbook — the betting exchange

Matchbook sits under a remote betting intermediary licence at the same licensee (Triplebet Limited) as the Betdaq brand — accounts do not transfer between them. For those looking to act as an exchange user rather than a traditional punter, Matchbook offers a back-and-lay structure distinct from the bookmaker model.

Spreadex — fixed-odds and financial spread betting

Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for financial spread betting and by the Commission for fixed-odds betting, with the firm’s own page saying that spread betting losses can exceed the deposit. Best fit for a punter with a financial-markets book — FTSE, FX, indices — alongside the fixed-odds sports offer. Read the spread-betting risk note on the firm’s own page before staking.

BetVictor — racing and form-tools

BetVictor runs Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, enhanced live race streaming, a BetFinder feature and Smart Stats. Best fit for a racing-led punter — the form tools and the BOG policy are the differentiators on the same brand page.

Octobet — back-half free bet with a casino rider

Octobet’s sportsbook welcome is 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers. The offer requires balancing sports and casino use, as the bonus is strictly segmented by product type.

Bet Ahoy — split-token welcome

Bet Ahoy pays £10 in free bets (£5 sports bet + £5 acca) on a £10 qualifying bet. Best fit for a punter planning to split the first day’s stake between a single and an acca; the tokens are issued as two separate free bets rather than one, and the stake is not returned on either.

Where the Comparison Lands on Cost

The headline price is rarely the cost. The price the punter pays is the market margin plus the difference between the headline bonus and the value it pays out, plus the cost of any wagering needed to clear the bonus.

The welcome headline — “100% bonus”, “£30 free bets”, “stake back” — names the maximum payout, not what the offer is worth. A £10 free bet redeemed on a heavily-fancied single (say 1/3 decimal 1.33) pays around £2.20 of expected value at a 95% payout share; redeemed on an outsider at 4/1 (decimal 5.00), the same token is worth around £30.40 in expected value. The £10 headline is the upper bound, not the average. The 10x wagering cap on bonuses has flattened the worst clearing paths, but the best free-bet redemption is still on price, not on the package.

The expected cost over £100 of qualifying turnover at a 5% market margin is around £5 before any consideration of variance — and the punter who clears the bonus at a higher margin because they’re chasing shorter prices on heavy favourites pays more of that £5 than the punter who clears it on tighter markets. The market margin is the figure the punter should be measuring, and the brand’s offer is the marketing budget that the margin funds.

That is the trade-off this page is built around: the brands reviewed sit on the public register; the offers they publish are bounded by the 19 January 2026 cap; the market margin is the figure that decides whether a punter wins in the long run. The punter who reads a price rather than reads a headline is the punter whose betting book survives the marketing cycle.

Off the Beaten Track — What the Other Brands Are

The ten above are the bracket this review sits inside. Other GB-licensed brands — BetMGM UK (published by LeoVegas Gaming, Commission account 39198), Lottoland UK (casino and lottery betting alongside sports, Commission-licensed for Great Britain), London Bet (Thistle Bet Limited), Copybet (Commission account 53774, Copybet UK Limited), 10bet (10bet Limited, Commission licence 43173), Betmaster (BM Solutions GB Ltd, Commission account 65699), Kwiff (Spryme Ltd, Commission-licensed), BetWright (licensed in the UK, 18+), Fitzwilliam Sports (instant deposits, fast withdrawals, timeouts, deposit limits), Midnite (Commission licence 101839, accepts Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Trustly), Silkbet (Commission account 101183, active since 7 May 2026) — sit on the same register under their own licences. They are not the shortlist this page ranks; the Commission’s public register is the full list and is the right place to verify any other brand’s status before staking.

Some names turn up in the comparison space without a published licence text. Greenlight Bet currently shows a “Launching Soon” placeholder, with no offers, payment methods or licence text on the published page — the right reading is “not yet operating”, not “unlicensed”. The block is included so the brand’s status on the register is clearer than its marketing page is.

FAQ

Where to compare online betting odds?

The punter who reads several bookmakers on the same fixture will see two different prices on the favourite, the underdog and the draw. The smaller difference is on the favourite — where books agree most closely — and the larger difference is on the outsider and the draw. The https://www.racingpost.com/ and major price-comparison sites line the books up on a single event and let you pick the best line, but the figure underneath the comparison is the margin, and two books running the same price on the same outcome carry different margins because of how their other outcomes are priced. The right place to compare odds is the brand’s own pre-match page on a couple of books, side by side, with the margin worked out from the prices on all outcomes of a single market rather than the price on the favourite alone.

How are odds compared?

Odds are compared by converting every price to the same format (decimal is the easiest: 5/1 = 6.00, evens = 2.00, 4/5 = 1.80). The headline price is the favourite’s price or the home win, but the comparison that matters is the margin: payout share = 1 ÷ (1/*o₁* + … + 1/*oₙ*) over every outcome of one market, and margin = 1 − payout share. For an even-money two-way at 1.90 / 1.90, the payout share is 0.95 and the margin is 5%. Two books at the same headline price carry different margins because the other outcomes are priced differently, and the brand with the lower margin is the cheaper book on the same event.

How are betting site features compared?

The features that change a bookmaker’s offer the most are the licence (mandatory for a GB operator), the welcome offer (bounded by the 19 January 2026 cap), the in-play product (volume and depth), the racing product (BOG, streams, form tools), the safer-gambling tooling (deposit limits, timeouts, GAMSTOP linkage) and the payment methods (no credit cards on licensed sites). Each is described in the operator’s own terms and on the Commission’s public register. The right comparison is feature by feature on the same set of brands — the table above is one such comparison — and the figure that ties the comparison together is the licence account number, which resolves against the register.

How is a Gambling Commission licence checked?

A licence is checked by searching the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The register shows the licence category (remote general betting standard, real events; remote betting intermediary; and so on), the account number, the licensee name and the trading name. Every operator reviewed above has a current licence and an account number that resolves against the register; every other GB-licensed operator does, too — there is no shortlist that the Commission publishes. The right reading of a Commission-licensed brand is “verified to the public register on the date of the check”, not “the only licensed brand” — the register lists far more than ten operators.

How is a return worked out from the stake and the odds?

Return on a winning single is *stake × decimal odds*. Profit is *stake × (decimal odds − 1)*. An accumulator multiplies the leg prices into one combined price, and the return is *stake × combined decimal odds*. A free bet pays its winnings but not its stake back: a £10 free bet on a single at 5.00 pays £40 of winnings, with no £10 returned. The return figure is the metric for a winning bet, and the *expected* return over many bets — the average across outcomes of one market — is *stake × payout share*, where payout share is the line that adds up to 100% across every outcome of one market.

What is the bookmaker’s margin, and how is it read off the odds?

The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every pound staked, on average, before any consideration of skill. Payout share = 1 ÷ (1/*o₁* + … + 1/*oₙ*) over every outcome of one market. Margin = 1 − payout share. A book pricing 1.90 / 1.90 on a two-way market runs about a 5% margin — meaning it keeps 5p of every £1 staked across both outcomes in the long run. A book pricing 1.80 / 2.00 carries about a 5.3% margin; a book pricing 1.95 / 1.85 carries about 5.1%. The headline price is the favourite’s price; the margin is the figure underneath every price on the market.

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