Popular Sports at UK Betting Sites
Greyhounds Betting Offers
The UK is one of only seven countries that still runs commercial greyhound racing events, and many of the world’s most significant races take place here. These include the English and Scottish Greyhound Derbies and the East Anglian Derby; Australia’s Melbourne and Sandown Cups complete the sport’s most prestigious events. If you’re looking to place bets on any of these events, you’ll find no shortage of betting deals at the top bookmakers.
Since greyhound racing is a similar sporting spectacle to horse racing, there’s much crossover between the two when it comes to betting offers. This means best odds guaranteed and money back if your greyhound loses are two regularly offered bonuses in this sport, alongside the typical free bet offers you’re likely to receive as a new customer at your bookie of choice.
Tennis Betting Offers
From Vancouver to Vienna, tennis takes place more or less all year round, making it one of the world’s most popular sports to bet on. Excitement swells around the sport’s Grand Slam events — the US Open, the French Open, the Australian Open, and Wimbledon — and you’ll find plenty of betting deals in the build-up to these tournaments.
If you’re picking an outright winner of a major tournament, one bonus you might see is your money back as a free bet if a certain player wins, or certain players targeted with enhanced odds. In his heyday, bookies tended to nominate Andy Murray as this player in the men’s draw, but it could be any of the remaining superstars.
There are loads of free bet deals to be claimed on the tennis for new betting customers. As Nadal and Djokovic begin their decline — presuming of course that they will at some point decline — tennis free bets could become very useful, since the power vacuum left behind by these greats could make the rest of the field increasingly unpredictable.
Bookmakers like to prioritise tennis matches on their live streaming services, which means you may also encounter mobile-specific betting offers on this sport. These offers can come in many different forms, but will only be redeemable for those betting on a mobile device.
American Sports Betting Offers
If you’ve got a penchant for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, or any other American sports, you won’t have any trouble finding betting offers on these leagues from UK bookmakers. Each one consists of a regular season and a postseason; the former is the league competition, while the latter refers to the playoff period. You’ll see betting deals like enhanced odds and acca boosts flood the market during the postseason, as bookies look to capitalise on the tension.
American sports-specific free bet deals are available to those first signing up to a new betting site, as are risk-free bets — a popular form of betting bonus at US sportsbooks. Basketball in particular is favoured by many betting sites for live streaming, so you might be offered mobile-specific promotions here if you’re wagering on your mobile device.
One betting deal we particularly like comes from Bet365 in the form of early payouts. With this promo, the bookie agrees to pay out your winnings on the basketball if the team you’ve backed leads by 20 points at any time in the match, regardless of the final result. This means that even if your team suffers a capitulation in the final quarter, the money is already back in your betting account.
Football Betting Offers
Below are some of the biggest football competitions in the world and the kinds of bets you might be interested in making.
English Premier League
Regarded by many as the best league in the world, the English Premier League is the home of institutions like Manchester United and Liverpool, and several founders of the football league, including Everton, Aston Villa, and Wolves. The Premier League is made up of 20 teams, with every team playing each other home and away over the course of a 38-match season.
At the end of the season — which typically runs from August to May — the three bottom teams are relegated to the Championship, English football’s second division. The top seven teams will all qualify to compete for European honours in the following season: the Champions League for positions first to fourth, the Europa League for teams finishing fifth and sixth, and the recently introduced Europa Conference League for the team that finishes seventh.
If you think Jamie Vardy’s got one more golden boot left in him, or that Newcastle will break into the top six, these are the kinds of wagers you can place at the beginning of or during the season. And on matchdays, expect to see free bets, acca boosts, money back offers, enhanced odds, and much more.
UEFA Champions League
Formerly known as the European Cup, the Champions League is the premier cup competition in Europe. Only the best teams across the continent qualify, with four clubs submitted from each of Europe’s top leagues: the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, and the Bundesliga. France’s Ligue 1 and Portugal’s Primeira Liga both supply three teams, and the remaining spaces are filled by clubs that have performed well in their domestic leagues.
Once the qualifying rounds are completed in August, 32 teams will be drawn into eight groups of four. The group stage takes place between September and December, with each team playing the others in their group twice, before the top two teams qualify for the knockout stages. After a midseason hiatus, the knockout rounds begin in February, culminating in the final at the end of the season. Barring the final, all knockout games take place over two legs, and since 2021, the away goals rule has been removed.
Will Manchester City finally break their Champions League duck? Will Benzema and Lewandowski continue their domination over the goalscoring charts? Have your say at all of the best gambling sites.
UEFA Europa League
Just as domestic leagues have second tiers, so too do European club competitions. The Europa League, formerly the UEFA Cup, is a slightly weaker competition than the Champions League, but it’s still an incredibly difficult trophy to win.
The format is largely the same as the Champions League, beginning with eight groups of four, but there are some key differences. At the end of the Champions League group stage, the eight teams that finish third in their respective groups all drop into the Europa League knockout draw — these teams will be drawn against the eight teams that finished second in their Europa League groups. Meanwhile, the first-placed teams automatically progress to the last 16.
West Ham and Rangers both enjoyed great success in recent Europa League campaigns; can they continue their impressive European form?
The Euros
Every four years — global pandemics permitting — Europe’s best footballing nations compete for the European Championships during the season’s summer break. 24 teams qualify for the finals, cut down from 55 countries that take part in qualification.
The group stage consists of six groups of four, with the top two qualifying for the knockout rounds. To make up the remaining numbers, the four best-performing third-placed countries in their respective groups will also progress to the next round. After this, ties are played over one leg, finishing with a final in July.
England were heartbreakingly close to winning their first ever Euros in 2020’s rearranged tournament. Can they find the resolve to go one better than their shootout defeat to Italy? Or will we see the resurgence of the competition’s most successful teams, Germany and Spain, both with three wins?
The World Cup
The football sphere also enjoys its most prestigious competition, the World Cup, every four years. The World Cup is typically another summer tournament, although 2022’s edition is taking place in November and December in Qatar.
32 teams take part in the finals following a two-year qualification campaign. There are eight groups of four, two qualifying teams in each, and a knockout phase that follows. Brazil is the world’s most successful side with five World Cup wins, but France took the title in 2018 and is widely regarded as the best team, with superstars like Kylian Mbappe in the ranks. Fancy Messi to finally get his hands on the trophy with Argentina before he retires? Surely it’s worth a punt…