Golf is one of the most watched and wagered on sports in the world, with some 81.1% of the viewing audience betting regularly on tournaments and matchplay in the UK alone.
However, responsible betting requires you to identify the sport’s most competitive odds and markets, while you’ll also need to appraise each reputable golf betting site and their respective welcome offers (and similar promotions).
In this post, we’ll look at the best golf betting sites, while looking at what sets these entities apart and the most popular offer structures.
The Best Betting Sites for Golf
Let’s start by taking a closer look at the best golf betting sites, so that you can determine where you should stake your hard-earned bankroll. Here are eight of the marketing leading brands:
Paddy Power
PaddyPower is arguably the best golf betting site around, with its weekly free bet loyalty club and regular promotions for the biggest golf tournaments. The site also pays out multiple places on your each-way bets.
Betway
Betway is another leading golf betting brand, and one that boasts a broad range of markets and odds while also running extensive promotions across golf and other sporting disciplines.
Bet365
Often the first choice for punters who want to bet on golf, Bet365 offers exceptional in-play betting markets and a live golf tracker to help inform your real-time selections. It’s also running a generous €50 free bet offer for new customers.
Betfair
Betfair has one of the best golf betting websites, both from a design perspective and its ease of use. The operator also pledges to cash out selected bets in-play and when live betting, which offers a competitive advantage to all punters.
BoyleSports
This is one of the biggest betting brands in Ireland and Europe, while the operator offers broad coverage of major (and minor) tournaments and some of the most competitive ante-post and in-play golf betting odds.
Ladbrokes
UK giant Ladbrokes also offers excellent odds across all golf competitions, from individual matchplay to tournament winner bets. Bet boosts are also available, while you can request a price on any market even if it isn’t listed online.
888Sport
888Sport is renowned for offering daily enhanced odds across multiple sports, including golf. There’s also an advanced cash out feature, although some aspects of the site’s functionality could be improved.
BetVictor
BetVictor offers huge value to punters, both from the perspective of delivering live betting features and competitive odds promotions. It’s also currently offering a welcome offer in the form of €30 free bets, in exchange for a minimal €5 deposit.
What Makes a Good Golf Betting Site?
At King Creative Consultancy, we’ve conceived and constructed a number of comprehensive golf sites such as http://opengolfdag.nl and http://nationaalgolfcongres.nl.
We’ve also developed promotional content for various golfing brands, with video highlighting an upcoming European Golf Business Conference in Lisbon and the video here helping to market a service provider that delivers dynamic and intelligent pricing models for brands.
So, our experience blurs the boundaries between golf, web design and promotions, and we’re well-placed to judge what constitutes a good golf betting site. Here are some of the key components:
Design and Navigability
When you visit a golf betting site, the first thing you notice is its design quality and the ease with which it can be navigated. A good golf betting site should combine form and function in equal measure, with the intuitive use of colours, optimal loading times and a logical structure all incredibly important.
A Focus on the Welcome Offer
Golf betting sites use welcome offers to incentivise customers in a competitive market, so the headline bonus should be featured prominently and above the fold on the homepage. It should also be written concisely to highlight the main T&Cs as clearly as possible and provide transparency.
An Up-to-Date and Informative Blog
In addition to being facilitators of sports wagers, betting brands are also seen as key resources of information and insight by punters like yourself. So, you should look for operators with an engaging and informative blog resource that provides expert tips and strategy advice across a range of markets.
Golf Betting Sites Offers
While golf offers and welcome bonuses can take multiple forms, some remain more popular and widely available than others. Here’s four of the best to keep your eyes on:
Extra Places
Typically, golf betting sites pay out on five places as part of outright tournament betting markets (enabling you to profit when each-way selections feature in a tournament’s top five). However, brands such as PaddyPower often award additional places for selected major tournaments and each-way wagers, creating a potentially rewarding concession for punters.
First-Round Leatherboard Specials
The first-round leader describes the player who completes a tournament’s initial round in the fewest number of strokes. Often, sportsbooks look to leverage this by offering first-round leadership specials, allowing you to wager on which player will lead after the first round and by how many strokes from their rivals.
Enhanced Odds
In simple terms, enhanced odds promotions require the operator to deploy strategic price boosts across selected betting markets. These temporary create longer odds and more appealing prices for punters to exploit, creating a clear and obvious incentive for new and existing players. Just remember to act quickly, however, as enhanced odds offers aren’t usually available for long.
Free Bets
Free bets are the most common form of sportsbook and golf betting site welcome offer. These will award you complimentary wagers up to a specified value, while you’ll usually have to make a qualifying deposit and bet to become eligible. The good news is that this can unlock free bet matched betting strategies that minimise your risk of loss across selected matchplay markets.
The Best Golf Betting Markets
Last, but not least, we’re going to delve a little deeper into the most popular golf wagers and available betting markets. Here’s a glimpse at those that receive the most coverage at online sportsbooks:
The Win Bet
The most simplistic and popular form of wager, the win bet requires you to bet on who you think will prevail in a particular tournament or matchplay contest (or team in the case of tournaments such as the Ryder Cup)d. Outright betting of this type usually requires you to wager as early as possible, as this enables you to leverage the best and most competitive prices.
Each-Way Betting
We’ve already touched on each-way betting, which sees you place wagers that comprise two parts (namely a win bet and a place bet). If your selection wins, you’ll receive the full payout as determined by the odds, while a partial payment will be awarded if your chosen player ‘places’ and finishes in the top five.
Top Finishers
Next up is a similar market, through which you can bet on where one or more players will rank at the end of a specific golf tournament. Usually, you can wager on whether a player will finish in the top five, 10 or 20 depending on the tournament in question, while your selection must come within the necessary range for the bet to be successful.
The Best Player from a Region
Most major PGA tournaments see players compete from all over the world. So, rather than betting on who you think will win a tournament, who can wager on who will prevail as the best performer from a particular region (such as Europe or North America). Obviously, some regions will have more competitors than others, so the odds can vary wildly depending on your selection.