Best bookmaker for mobile apps

Leading tipster site Betting Expert compares bookmakers’ mobile offerings, exploring how user-friendly their betting apps are across iOS and Android devices. 

Mobile betting has invigorated the world of bookmakers in recent years. A huge number of punters now place their bets using their mobile device.

Most bookmakers in the UK offer a dedicated betting app, with customers able to access their full betting account without the need to visit a high street bookie or being chained to their desktop.

For this bookmaker comparison we looked at what makes the best mobile betting apps, based on data we gathered between May 5 and May 27.

What we looked for
We compared a variety of the best mobile betting apps, testing them in a range of categories.

In particular, we examined how user-friendly each betting app was on both iOS and Android devices. We’ve analysed the offerings from 25 of the top UK bookmakers, as shown below.

• Sky Bet
• Betfair
• Paddy Power
• Betway
• William Hill
• bet365
• Ladbrokes
• BetVictor
• LeoVegas
• Betfred
• Matchbook
• Coral
• Betsafe
• BoyleSports
• Marathonbet
• Sportingbet
• 888Sport
• Unibet
• ComeOn
• Genting Bet
• Netbet
• Titanbet
• Energy Bet
• Winner Sports
• Bet At Home

What did we actually test for our best mobile betting app review? The criteria we analysed consisted of the following:

• App Store rating
• Notifications
• Location message
• Number of reviews
• Size of app
• Number of languages
• Number of updates (iOS only)
• Ranking in sports category in App Store (iOS only)

We chose these categories because each of these aspects is important in the overall user experience. We also looked at customer reviews to provide a well-rounded report.

Top bookmakers: best mobile betting app
After researching our chosen bookmakers and gathering all the relevant information, we were able to develop a list of the bookmakers that offer the best mobile betting app experience.

Our top five bookmakers were as follows:

• Sky Bet
• Paddy Power
• Betfair
• Betway
• Ladbrokes

Sky Bet
Coming out as our overall number 1 pick, Sky Bet impressed us with its general app experience. It seems we’re not the only ones who admire the Sky Bet mobile experience, with customer ratings on both iOS and Android devices extremely high.

Sky Bet ranked in overall third place in the sport category for Apple users, the highest of the bookmakers we researched for this article.

There’s only one language available using the Sky Bet app, but this is the only category where this operator scored significantly lower than its competitors.

Paddy Power
Paddy Power is one of the most well-known bookmakers around. From its irreverent humour in its advertisements to its unique bonus opportunities, Paddy Power isn’t shy when it comes to breaking the mould.

As you can see from our results, Paddy Power offers an excellent mobile experience too, coming up just behind Sky Bet in second place.

Betfair
It was a tight race between Paddy Power and Betfair for second place. Last year’s joint winner Betfair found itself dropping to third place this time around, so what’s gone wrong?

Betfair still offers an excellent sports betting mobile app experience, scoring highly in overall user reviews. However, there have been four updates of the app in the last six months and this may have led to problems for some users. Overall it does still score highly in user reviews.

Betfair also offers its app in more languages than most other mobile betting apps we analysed, with 12 available on the iOS app and six for Android users to choose from.

Betway
Just shy of our top three was Betway. While to some it may be a surprise to see Betway challenging some of the more established operators, to us it isn’t. From our previous bookmaker comparisons, we’ve seen that Betway has performed well across numerous categories, putting some of the big names in the business to shame.

So, what makes Betway score so highly in our mobile betting app review? It may be one of the smallest apps we’ve researched, but this app still offers plenty of functionality. In particular, the iOS version of its app scores incredibly highly.

Ladbrokes
Making up our top five is the long-established Ladbrokes. One of the most famous bookmakers on UK soil and beyond, Ladbrokes offers one of the best mobile betting apps around.

Ladbrokes came in a respectable 12th place in the sports betting category on iOS, and its overall user rating among both Android and iOS users was also impressive.

Best bookmaker apps for iOS
As well as providing a general overview to the best mobile betting apps, we’ve separated iOS and Android as some mobile apps work better on a particular operating system.

There are a few reasons for this. It appears that iOS apps are easier to develop, and with Apple’s focus on intuitive design and interaction, they tend to provide a more user-friendly experience. This can make a betting app work much more seamlessly on an iOS device than on an Android offering.

Android apps are much more complicated to develop, with the need to create an application that can work on a multitude of devices. IOS apps only need to focus on building an app that works on an Apple device.

Below, we’ve listed our top five iOS mobile betting apps.

• Betway
• Betfair
• Sky Bet
• Paddy Power
• Bet365

While Betway takes the crown for best iOS mobile device, as can be seen in the table below, it doesn’t make our top five for Android? Why not? It seems that the focus for Betway is on developing a fully functional app with a great design and ease of use, which is much easier to achieve on Apple devices.

Best bookmaker apps for Android
The list below displays our top five mobile betting apps for Android devices.

• Sky Bet
• William Hill
• Paddy Power
• Ladbrokes
• Betfair

Sky Bet tops our Android table, and it performed well in our iOS tests too. One of the most popular online bookmakers in the UK today, it’s important Sky Bet caters to as many customers as possible, which it achieves by offering two separate fully functional apps – one for iOS and one for Android.

Conclusion
Our overall aim for this bookmaker comparison was to examine the ease of use of each mobile app.

Interestingly, it appeared obvious that in general, users are looking for similar criteria. All bookmakers that scored highly in our comparison also scored highly in the user review categories.

There were exceptions to this, though. The mobile betting apps offered by Sportingbet and LeoVegas, for example, scored highly in the user review category despite not making our top five.

We also noted that the apps that are updated frequently tended to score highest in our bookmaker comparison. Regular updates show that the operator in question is always trying to provide a better mobile experience.

The size of the app also played a big part in the overall user experience. It’s frustrating to punters when they attempt to download an app but its size requires them to remove or delete other applications they have on their device. Generally speaking, the best mobile betting apps tend to be reasonably small and streamlined as much as possible to make it easier for users to download.

We’ve also found that while Sky Bet reigned supreme overall, it was Betway which scored highest in our iOS-specific research. Betway may not be the first bookmaker punters think of when looking to download a betting app, but coming top of our iOS list and fourth overall means it should be considered as serious competition to some of the more famous names.

About bettingexpert.com
Providing expert tips and in depth betting theory, bettingexpert.com is the world’s biggest social network of sports betting tipsters. Its global community of experts compete for prizes by sharing their strongest tips on upcoming matches across 25 different sports to help millions of sports bettors place knowledge-supported bets, with the best odds available from a variety of bookmakers. Betting Expert is owned by Better Collective, the leading developer of educational platforms within the igaming industry.