Unibet Bookmaker Review
Unibet Australia was discovered when Unibet the mother company bought out Australian Bookmaker Betchoice in 2012 which then gave them the rights to the Aussie betting markets. Join Unibet
The combined operation has nearly seven million customers spread around the world and is one of the most prominent of the online bookmakers.
Betchoice was founded in Sydney in 2001 by bookmakers Mark Morrissey and Colin Tidy. They applied for, and were granted, a Northern Territory gaming license in 2006.
Subsequent to the takeover in 2012, there is still a local element as all punter deposits go to Betchoice, and there is an administration office in NSW and a telephone call centre in Darwin.
They have established a solid reputation in Australia and are sanctioned betting partners of eight different sports leagues, including the AFL and Cricket Australia.
Unibet Website Wagering Platform
The main landing page (www.unibet.com.au) is clean and simple. The green and grey colour scheme is not the most attractive we have seen, and green is our favourite colour, we’ll have you know, but we have to say that we appreciate that there is no distracting auto-scroll nonsense going on, such as is found on the sites of some others.
There is a panel beneath the main header with a slideshow feature, but it remains static until the user clicks on < and > arrows on either side of the graphic. There are only three images here at the time of this review.
Three simple links in the top header were for Sports, Live Betting and Racing. For simplicity and intuitive navigation, this uncluttered layout is certainly worthy.
Unibet Mobile Platform
Unibet offers three different mobile wagering experiences. There are apps for Apple and Android. They make it as easy as possible to download the Android app, since Google does not permit gambling sites’ apps in the Play Store. They supply a link, along with instructions, at www.unibet.com.au/apps/betting. No such issues to hinder those who use the iOS for mobiles and tablets.
Unibet also offers a mobile version of the website that will provide a consistent interface across all devices, which has always been our preferred way to access bookmakers’ mobile sites.
Clients who use the mobile platforms also have the ability to stream live video of events.
We accessed the mobile site on an older Samsung phone and experienced zero issues with navigation. The site is well adapted to smaller screens. We were able to fill out a bet slip with an upcoming race, the Melbourne Cup and an NFL game in the U.S. without difficulty.
Unibet’s mobile site is not the best we have used, but it is sufficiently functional for all purposes.
Unibet Operation
From the website, we learned that Unibet offers five secure payment methods, PayPal, BPay, POLi, MasterCard and Visa. We have seen other bookmakers offer more, but these five should suffice for the vast majority of punters. As soon as one of these five payments sources approves a funding transaction, those funds will be immediately available for punting.
For purposes of withdrawing money, punters will need to provide Unibet with bank account information. From that point, a withdrawal request is completed by Electronic Funds Transfer.
We spent more time than we usually devote to looking at Unibet’s odds. WE found no discrepancies between Unibet and the other domestic bookmakers we consult on a regular basis. We were impressed by the depth of markets for sports and racing and astounded by the number of propositions available for politics, in particular, the 2016 U.S. Presidential election that was 17 days hence from when this review was being done.
Unibet offered not only odds on the two major political parties to win the election, but it was also possible to select each of the 50 United States and find odds depending upon how that state voters’ typically voted in elections past.
Unibet likes Hillary Clinton’s chances much better than they do for Winx to win the Cox Plate, if it is possible to conceive of such a situation.
When it comes to margin, Unibet was a bit higher than the other main domestic agencies. Some of the racing bet types and promotions they offer mitigate this somewhat, but it takes careful planning and attention to accomplish this end, and since our attention span is not exactly growing at the same pace as our age, we would prefer lower margins.
This is a non-issue for the occasional, recreational punter, but for someone who wants to make regularly weekly bets, such as on the various markets that would be available during the AFL season, a percentage point or two in margin could have an impact on the bottom line.
It takes only $10 to establish a membership with Unibet and we believe the minimum wager for online bets to be 10 cents. We would like to tell you that we found this information from Unibet’s Terms and Conditions, but our scrolling finger was not up to the task.
In that same regard, there are separate rules for different sports, which we would advise you to read carefully to determine maximum bets and winnings. In general, it seems that the maximum winnings for sports betting by one customer from any combination of bets is $200,000. Some sports have different limits ranging from $15,000 to $300,000.
There are similar labyrinthine rules for racing, but since we pose no threat to win anything even remotely close to Unibet’s limits, we do not have much anxiety in this regard.
Unibet has telephone service available for live betting and support issues seven days a week for 15 hours each day. Email support is also available.
Conclusion
We give Unibet two thumbs up for the whole package. No turnover on deposits and no dormant account fees make this bookmaker an excellent choice for the bulk of recreational punters. All the domestic bookmakers go to lengths to protect themselves from professional punters and Unibet is no exception, but then, professionals do not need our help in choosing a bookmaker, so no harm, no foul.
If someone were to place upon us, a limitation that we could have only one bookmaker, Unibet would most definitely be in the running.
One of the few negatives we observed, something only somewhat trivial, is that Unibet assigns a user ID to punters, rather than let punters select their own username. We at times struggle to remember these sorts of things, but we do suppose that we would appreciate this extra security if we should ever be hacked and find all those sites where we have used the same username jeopardized.
