Sportsbook Guardian

Skybet came to prominence in the 2000’s, having previously been known as Surrey bookmakers up to that time.

Their new website is super smart, and in looks stakes it cosmetically has the beating of the majority of other bookmakers reviewed on the Sportsbook Guardian website. Of course looks aren’t everything and I will delve deep in the course of this review!

Their Sportsbook borrows the distinctive colour scheme and styling of the leading broadcaster in UK sports. The fact that Skybet is a part of the Skybet brand is emphasised by the name, logo, and other tie ins such as Ms Alex Hammond (the face of Sky racing) offering a daily horse tip on the website.

To begin this review I first had an excuse to contact customer services, as I knew I had previously had an old account with Skybet from half a dozen years ago, but couldn’t manage to login using my usual mixture of usernames and passwords. I didn’t want to engage in bonus abuse by setting up another a/c. Skybet have a very good frequently asked questions section, as well as 24/7 livechat and telephone support. Feeling old fashioned I picked up the telephone and had a chat with a very efficient chap on their helpline.

Their C/S team all appear to have English as their primary language, judging from the accent of the man who so capably helped me, I would hazard a guess the majority are based in their Leeds office.

It turned out that my account was frozen as a dormant account, this was swiftly reactivated, and the man at the other end of the telephone enquired whether I was primarily interested in poker, casino, or sports. When I told him I mainly punt on racing he kindly credited me with the £10 free bet that is reserved for new accounts.

So to begin with I topped up the account with some more ammunition, as I wanted to get stuck into some for more than the free tenner! I found the payments system very intuitive and easy to use with a modern interface system. My personal punting is normally funded by bank cards, and one negative is that their range of eWallets is rather limited as some bettors may wish to have a selection beyond Neteller and Skrill.

The range of sports that Skybet offer is very diverse and would be jaw dropping to any 1990’s gambler used to the range of markets bookmakers used to offer back in the pre internet days when Skybet were known as Surrey! As an indication of depth of markets they have betting on basketball across five different countries!

Horse racing gamblers are well catered for and are accommodated with best odds guarantee, which means that Skybet will pay out at SP if it is bigger than the price that was taken.

Their range of football markets is as comprehensive as those offered by Bet365 and Sportingbet. At the time of this review they were offering 16 betting markets on Chelsea vs Wigan reserves as well as an exotic range of foreign leagues from Japan to Russia.

For leading English Premiership games their 1X2 betting is typically priced to a very competitive 106%, in context the standard book over-round percentage in the late 1990’s was 112%, truly punters have never had it so good! In terms of supporting football markets they currently have a range of 61, which is around average in the context of where Skybet stand against the leading online sportsbook’s reviewed by us.

No modern review is complete without analysing the mobile betting product, and I was very impressed by Sky bet’s iPhone app, which visually and from a user experience was both top of the tree.

In conclusion I think the betting account portfolio of any modern punter absolutely must include Skybet, they are fully licensed and secure, visually stunning, very competitive with pricing and offer a killer no deposit sign up bonus.