It is a good time to be alive if you are into betting websites. In the late 90’s and prior to that, if you wanted to place a bet on a website you had to go to a brick and mortar betting location. Back then there wasn’t any concept similar with the betting platforms that we have today. Beside the flexibility, there was another big issue: competitions stats. Yes, there were some sorts of match statistics available in the store, but they were written on paper and as many of you know, the numbers cannot updated automatically on this circumstance. Also you might say that in some betting shops there were screens available with statistics, but there was a big change that your match wasn’t there at all.
A few years went by and the internet appeared and after that online betting platforms, that represent a huge step up for the entire industry. No only if offered the user the possibility to bet from anywhere in the word, with just a mobile phone with internet connection, but most importantly it offers a stream of precise data regarding past matched and current matches. Thus making it way easier to place a winning bet with just a few clicks. Plus a way safer environment for your finances, thanks to encryption. All fine and dandy, but something is missing thought, right?
Yes! The experience of witnessing you favorite athlete or team scoring live. This is the only thing that set back online betting for a while. Sure, you count have the match on TV when you browse the betting platform, but this is not an efficient method to do so. Until some smart computer engineer found a way to implement sports live streaming on betting platforms completing the user experience.
One of those websites that has live streaming available is Betfair. Betfair as you may already know, is a popular betting website that was launched back in the year 2000. This is making it one of the oldest online betting platforms that exists today. On the website, Sports Live streaming was introduced a few years back with the purpose of improving the overall betting process and also to compensate for the fact that not everybody can be present at a certain event. But how is it? Let’s get to the interesting part that all of you awaited. We explored the website, especially the sports live streaming and wrote down a few opinions regarding it. In this article you will read our general experience with live streaming and the conclusion at the end.
So…should you watch live streaming events on Betfair? Let’s find out
What sports are available on BETFAIR Live Streaming?
Let’s start the review by mentioning the sports available for live streaming. As on any other betting platform, the sports are not that numerous due to limitations, but the main categories are present.
On BETFAIR you can find:
- Football
- Tennis
- Horse Racing
- Greyhound Racing
- Volleyball
- Snooker
- Darts
- Cricket
- Ice Hockey
- Rugby
- Bawls
- Handball
Although the somewhat limited variety of sports available, compared to the pre-match section, we must say the sports selection is decent compared to other Live Streaming categories that are available on other websites. Also another important mention should be made here: the number of competitions and sports available on a daily basis can vary.
How is the Live Streaming Experience?
Here comes the confusing part. Betfair does not promote its Live Streaming service on the main page. So if you are new to the site or don’t know where to look, you won’t find it. Also the Live Streaming is hosted on a different domain. We don’t know the reason why BETFAIR took this approach, in our opinion causes confusion and fragmentation of the experience, but at least it does that is intended to. To access the Sports Live streaming click on the Exchange and then in the bottom of the left side menu you will find an option called Sport on TV (here is the TV guide with all the competitions) A popup will appear, then if you found some competition you want to watch, click on it and a new popup appears with you live stream.
We know, it’s really confusing! To simply thing you can also go directly to livevideo.betfair.com. In terms of the betting experience, things are not that different. If there is a competition that interests you, when you click on the Bet Now button you will be redirected the main site to select an odd and place a bet. Again, we don’t know why they took this approach but at least it works great. The statistics are available on the main site, also the selection of odds, which is pretty large if you were asking (because we are in the Betting Exchange). And the submission of the bet found in the slip, it’s just a matter of one click.
Is Live Streaming free on BETFAIR?
Yes, live streaming is free, but you need a valid account with some founds in it. In some cases live streaming won’t work if you don’t have a deposit made (5€ or more).
Can I watch the stream on mobile?
If you have a smartphone with Android, iOS or Windows, you can watch the streams directly in the browser. The experience is not different by much compared to the Desktop counterpart, it’s just a smaller interface. But it works pretty well and we didn’t encounter any problems with it.
Should you watch live streams on BETFAIR?
We must admit that the overall experience was confusing for us at first, but after a few minutes we got used to it. The major downside in our opinion is the fact that they did not include the live stream right next the odds and stats, but we think this is because they didn’t want the player to be distracted from the game (we guess so). Overall the streaming service worked great on Opera, Chrome, Safari on our laptops and we could enjoy it also on our phone without any issues. In conclusion, we encourage you to give the website a try and see if you like the live streaming experience.
You can share with us your opinion in the comments section below!
