SkyBet throws their hat into the ring for ‘minimum bet’ guarantee on horses

Sky Bet have joined the likes of BetVictor, Betfair Sportsbook and William Hill in offering through their online services, a minimum bet guarantee on horse racing.

Sky bet is one of the biggest online operators in the country and also boasts one of the biggest turnovers in horse racing betting in the UK.

They are offering at least a partial ‘minimum bet’ guarantee to their customers as they announced this week that they will lay any horse to lose at least £500 in a Class One or Class Two race from 10 o’clock on the morning of the race.

So it is a similar offering to what the other online operators have recently put into place. Customers at Sky Bet, even those who before have been subject to restrictions, will be able to place win single bets to win up to £500, or a maximum of £500 at even money, or £50 at 10-1.

This new guarantee covers the win part of each-way bets and it won’t stretch out to multiple either. Check out Sky Bet’s website for full details. There will be further limitations placed on the number of races that it gets applied to each day, for example, the day after the new guarantee was announced, three races on a day’s card at Goodwood took coverage. The coverage does apply to cases of Class Two or higher at the moment.

A lot of these forward moves have come about after complaints from customers (not just at Sky Bet but all online operators) about having their accounts restricted in recent years. Things like the pattern of betting, for example beating the starting price of selections, have led to restrictions on accounts.

Bookmakers tend to not close accounts but instead lower the amount of stake that can be played down to pennies on racing or any other sport where a punter could hope to beat the market.

A spokesman for website Justice For Punters has welcomed the moves by Sky Bet and other operators to lifting restrictions, made a nod towards the Gambling Commission needing to do more for the protection of punters, by ensuring there are similar rules across sports at all online operators.

“Bookies are slowly waking up to the unfairness and bad publicity that surrounds banning every savvy punter,” Chappell said. “Crucially, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Gambling Commission haven’t, thus punters will have to wait a long time for truly fair trading, despite a few bookies making limited progress.”