Online tennis betting in Great Britain

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Current as of 27 October 2026 · verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the operators’ own terms.

Tennis is unusual among betting sports for one reason: a match ends when one player wins enough points, sets or games, and that certainty has shaped how the market is priced. Unlike football, where a draw sits on every coupon, a tennis match has only two outcomes from the first point, and the bookmaker’s margin sits in the spread between them rather than in a third column. The result is a sport with deep in-play liquidity, an early and complete match-winner market, and a long tail of proposition bets on serve percentages, tiebreaks and games won. This page walks through how that market is built, what it costs the bettor, and which licensed bookmakers in Great Britain actually carry it.

Staying in control of the stake

The first decision in tennis betting, before a wager is even placed, is who decides how much can be lost. In Great Britain, a customer at any bookmaker on the Gambling Commission’s public register can set a deposit limit through their account, and a customer who wants to stop altogether can register with GAMSTOP and be excluded from every licensed online operator for six months, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the chosen period the exclusion remains in force for a further seven years unless the customer actively asks GAMSTOP to remove it. There is no statutory cap on what a customer may stake, and there is no law that sets a loss ceiling; the limits are the customer’s own, agreed with the operator.

The bookmakers reviewed further down this page are all on the public register and all take part in GAMSTOP. They each offer deposit limits, timeouts and self-exclusion at the account level. Help is available outside the operators themselves: GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware funds treatment and education, and the NHS runs gambling clinics across the country. The Commission’s safer-gambling duties sit on top of those, and the licence conditions and codes of practice require each operator to monitor account activity, intervene where play looks harmful, and signpost the same support services.

The Commission’s financial vulnerability check is a public-record check, not an income or credit check. It applies when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, and it looks at things like bankruptcy and county court judgments. Announced separately, and still without a start date, are staged affordability checks. Each is the operator’s job, not the customer’s. From the punter’s side, the practical protection is straightforward: set a deposit limit before the first deposit, decide in advance how much of any winnings to withdraw, and stop. Tennis runs almost year-round and the temptation to chase a missed set is real.

Betting without going through an identity check

It is not possible at a bookmaker licensed by the Gambling Commission. Since 7 May 2019, name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can deposit or gamble, and a free bet or bonus does not lift that requirement. The verification is run against commercial and public databases; it is not a credit check. A punter who wants no identity check has to go to an operator outside the Commission’s reach, and that carries the consequences set out later in this page.

Crypto deposits are a separate question. The Commission does not publish a rule that bans or allows cryptocurrency at licensed operators, and no licensed brand in the comparison further down accepts bitcoin or ethereum as a published payment method. The offshore books that do run on a different house rule, with no GAMSTOP, no dispute-resolution route through an approved body, and no British consumer redress if funds are withheld. The Commission’s powers are enforcement: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and the ability to seek a court order for DNS blocking. None of that reaches a customer sitting in Great Britain with an account at an unlicensed bookmaker. The honest framing is that licensed means verification, limits, GAMSTOP, the bonus cap, and a real complaints route; unlicensed means none of those and the practical possibility of never seeing a withdrawal.

Bonuses and free bets on tennis

A “free bet” is a token the operator credits to an account and that can be staked but, with most offers, is not paid back with a win. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 returns £30 in cash, of which £20 is profit and the £10 stake is gone. That is the rule more often than not, and it is the one to assume unless the operator’s own terms say otherwise. A “risk-free” bet is usually the same thing described from the other side: a stake that loses is refunded as a free bet, not cash, and the free bet then carries its own conditions. A “boosted odds” offer is a single price raised above the market’s; a “price boost” is the same offer, with a maximum stake, on a chosen selection. An “accumulator insurance” refunds the stake as a free bet if one leg of an accumulator loses, and a “cashback” offer returns a percentage of net losses over a period, again typically as a free bet or bonus money with wagering attached.

What each costs the punter depends on the wagering requirement, the minimum odds and the time limit. A £10 bonus with a 10x wagering requirement means £100 of qualifying bets at the minimum price the offer names before any winnings become withdrawable. Since 19 January 2026 the Commission has capped wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x, so no licensed offer can require more than that. A bonus that comes as a free bet with no rollover is paid out as cash once the bet settles; a bonus that is a credit on the account and carries a 10x turnover is not. The two are not interchangeable. The size of the offer is the second thing to read past, because the wagering multiplier and the minimum price decide whether the offer is worth claiming or whether the time spent clearing it is better spent elsewhere.

Mixed-product promotions, an offer that demands a tennis bet to unlock free spins on a slot, are banned under the same set of rules. Each licensed bookmaker on the comparison further down describes its own offers, and the descriptions follow the operators’ own terms rather than promotional language. Where a brand publishes a “deposit bonus” of a fixed percentage, the headline figure is half the story: the rollover, the minimum odds and the deadline are the other half, and the page works through them in turn under each operator.

Tennis on a phone

A bookmaker’s app is no longer a thin version of the site. The Spreadex app, for example, runs fixed-odds and spread betting side by side, with one-click, auto and partial cash out, a Bet Builder that works across fixed odds or spreads, and live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing, greyhounds, tennis, NFL and selected football. The bet365 app, described in the App Store as the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK, layers Bet Builder+, Super Boosts, daily Bet Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and a full in-play product on top of its pre-match tennis menu. The NetBet app carries Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts, free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds and sports stats for the major leagues. The 10bet app covers football, tennis and horse racing, with cash out, a Bet Builder and live streaming. The Betfred app is published by Done Brothers (Cash Betting) Ltd and covers 21 sports alongside over 2,000 casino-style games.

A browser-based version of each bookmaker carries the same markets but loses the touch ergonomics, the biometric login and the push notifications that mark the start of a new set in-play. The decision between app and browser is less about which carries more markets and more about how a punter wants to be reached. Notifications on means a price change on a chosen match lands in the lock screen; notifications off means the punter opens the app when ready, and a six-game lead has either grown or gone. The bet365 app is the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, a relationship that has nothing to do with tennis but tells the reader something about the size of the operation behind the app store listing.

A few practical points across the comparison. The Ladbrokes Sports Betting App is published by Entain Operations Limited and is rated 4.66 from 101,255 ratings in the GB App Store, which is a large sample by App Store standards and a useful proxy for the number of active UK users. The Octobet app lists a sportsbook welcome offer of 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers. The Bar One Racing app is the rebranded version of the Irish independent bookmaker, with shops across Ireland and horse racing sponsorships at Dundalk, Fairyhouse, Navan, The Curragh, Curraheen Park and Cork — a heritage brand that is not horse-racing-only, despite the name. The Midnite site cites Gambling Commission licence 101839 and shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits.

Live tennis and cash out

A tennis match is one of the most traded live events in any bookmaker’s in-play product. The reason is structural: a set lasts roughly forty-five minutes, the points are short, and the score gives a continuous read on momentum. A break of serve in the first set of a Grand Slam match is a tradable event in itself; a tiebreak is a separate market. In-play tennis at a licensed bookmaker includes match winner, set winner, game winner within a set, next point, total games over or under a line, and any number of player-specific props, from aces to double faults. The bookmaker’s margin is higher in-play than pre-match in most cases, because the market is fast and the bookmaker is managing exposure in real time.

Cash out is the bookmaker’s offer to settle a bet before the match has finished, at a price set by the operator. A back bet on a player who has just broken serve in the first set can be cashed out at a profit; a back bet on a player serving for the match at 5-4 in the fifth can be cashed out before the opponent breaks back. The price is the bookmaker’s, and it is always worse than the true mid-market price would be, because the bookmaker is taking the other side of the trade. Spreadex runs one-click, auto and partial cash out; the partial version lets a punter take a profit on half the stake and leave the other half to ride. Auto cash out closes a bet at a price the punter sets in advance, useful in-play when the punter cannot watch the screen. Betfred, 10bet, NetBet, Ladbrokes and bet365 all carry cash out on tennis. Where a bookmaker does not, the only way to lock in a profit before the match ends is to lay the selection on a betting exchange, which is a different product and a different account.

Live streaming of tennis is the third leg. Spreadex streams tennis alongside UK and Irish horse racing, greyhounds, NFL and selected football. 10bet’s app lists live streaming in its feature set. bet365 streams the tournaments it holds rights to, which for tennis is a long list. A streamed match with cash out, in-play markets and a Bet Builder on the same screen is the modern tennis betting experience, and the difference between an app that offers all three and one that offers only a price feed is the difference between a product and a feed.

Reading the tips and the systems

A “tip” in tennis is a prediction of an outcome, usually with a short written reason. A “system” is a set of rules for choosing which bets to place, often expressed as a rule about odds ranges, surface preference, head-to-head, or a combination. A “value bet” is a selection whose price is judged to be larger than the true probability of the outcome would justify. None of these terms has a fixed meaning in British law; they describe how tipsters and punters talk, not what the Gambling Commission licenses.

A punter who follows a tip is paying for one person’s view. A punter who follows a system is paying for a rule the tipster claims to apply consistently. Both are allowed; neither is regulated as financial advice. The Commission licenses the bookmaker, not the tipster, and the tipster is responsible for the content of what they publish under the ASA’s CAP Code. Where a tipster charges a subscription, the small print of that subscription is the contract, and a tipster who promises returns is making a promise the Commission does not enforce.

The tennis market itself is a hard one to beat because it is efficient. The four Grand Slams and the ATP and WTA tour events are priced by enough sharp money that the margin between the bookmaker’s line and the true probability is small. Outside those events — Challenger tournaments, ITF events, lower-tier WTA matches — the market is thinner, and the prices are more often stale. That is where a system based on form, surface, or fatigue can find a price the bookmaker has not yet updated. It is also where the bookmaker’s margin is widest, which cuts the other way. The honest summary is that a tip is one opinion, a system is a set of rules, and neither is a way to win consistently at a bookmaker who prices his book to keep a margin whatever the result.

The bet builder is the closest a bookmaker comes to letting the punter set the price. A bet builder on a tennis match combines markets from one event into a single bet: a player to win, over a certain number of games, with a certain number of aces. bet365’s Bet Builder+ does this both pre-match and in-play. NetBet’s Bet Builder updates the combined price as the selection changes. 10bet lists a Bet Builder in its app. Spreadex runs a Bet Builder that works across fixed odds or spread bets. The combined price is the bookmaker’s, and the bookmaker’s margin is compounded across each leg, so a four-leg bet builder is not four times the margin of a single bet; it is higher, sometimes substantially higher. That is the cost of building a bet from markets the bookmaker would not normally combine.

Markets and how they settle

The core market on a tennis match is the match winner, settled on the player who wins the required number of sets. Best-of-three sets is the women’s format everywhere; men play best-of-three at most tour events and best-of-five at the four Grand Slams. A set is usually won by the first player to reach six games with a margin of two; at 6-6 a tiebreak is played, first to seven points with a lead of two. A match tiebreak, sometimes called a super tiebreak, is sometimes played in place of a deciding set; that tiebreak is won by the first to ten points with a two-point lead. The four Grand Slams are the Australian Open (hard courts), French Open (red clay), Wimbledon (grass) and US Open (hard courts); the ITF is the highest governing body.

Match winner is the most efficient tennis market and the cheapest for the punter, because the bookmaker’s margin is thinnest there. Set winner and game winner within a set are also efficient. Proposition markets, like aces, double faults, or total games over a line, carry higher margins. The handicap market on a tennis match is a games handicap, framed in the same way as an Asian handicap in football: a player starts the match at +3.5 games or -3.5 games, and the bet settles on the result after the handicap is applied. A +3.5 handicap on a player who loses 6-4 6-4 7-5 wins, because +3.5 added to the player’s games total (4+4+5=13) gives 16.5, against the opponent’s 6+6+7=19. A -3.5 handicap on a player who wins 6-2 6-2 6-2 wins, because 6+6+6=18 minus 3.5 is 14.5, against the opponent’s 2+2+2=6. The handicap market is efficient on major events and less so lower down.

The accumulator, called an acca in British usage, multiplies the odds of each leg into a single price. A four-fold acca at decimal odds of 1.80, 2.20, 1.50 and 3.00 has a combined price of 1.80 × 2.20 × 1.50 × 3.00 = 17.82. A £10 stake returns £178.20 if all four legs win, of which £168.20 is profit. Each leg must win for the accumulator to pay; one loss and the stake is gone. The acca insurance offers on the comparison further down refund the stake as a free bet if one leg loses; they do not pay out the accumulator. Trixie (4 bets), Patent (7), Yankee (11), Lucky 15, Super Yankee or Canadian (26), Heinz (57) and Goliath (247) are named combination bets where the total stake is the unit stake multiplied by the number of bets. A £1 Lucky 15 is a £15 stake across 15 bets, four singles, six doubles, four trebles and one four-fold accumulator.

The tennis calendar

Wimbledon 2026 was played from 29 June to 12 July 2026, with Jannik Sinner beating Alexander Zverev in the men’s final and Linda Noskova beating Karolina Muchova in the women’s final. The men’s tournament at the four Grand Slams is best-of-five sets; the women’s is best-of-three everywhere. Hard courts dominate the calendar: the Australian Open in January, the US Open in late August and early September, and a long tail of ATP and WTA events in between. The clay season runs from April through early June, with the French Open as its peak. The grass season is short, with a handful of events in June and July leading into Wimbledon. The indoor hard court season closes the year in November.

The bookmaker’s tennis menu follows the calendar. In the week of a Grand Slam, the match-winner market on the early rounds is priced a week in advance, the in-play market on each match opens with the first point, and the proposition markets on total games, aces and tiebreaks are populated as the draw is known. In the week of a Challenger event, the market is thinner and the prices are slower to update, which is the structural reason a system can sometimes find an edge in those events.

The 10 bookmakers reviewed

The list below is not a ranking and not a recommendation. Each is a brand on the Gambling Commission’s public register, holding a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, with a UK-facing site. The order is the order of the comparison table that follows, which is itself a way to read the licences, not a verdict.

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence. The account numbers in the table are the register’s own references. Brands that share a licence holder — Ladbrokes and Coral under LC International, for example — are not independent operators for the purpose of this comparison; the table lists each brand on its own trading site.

Bet600

Tyche Tech Limited holds the licence and the brand is built around horse racing, with Best Odds Guaranteed on the starting price. The Best Odds Guaranteed rule is a horse-racing rule rather than a tennis one, but it tells the reader what kind of bookmaker the brand is. The tennis menu at Bet600 carries the standard match-winner market on ATP, WTA and Grand Slam events, with the in-play product on the main tour matches. Bet600 is a choice for the racing fan who wants to cross into tennis, but the focus is clearly on the track.

Spreadex

Spreadex Limited holds a Gambling Commission remote licence for fixed-odds betting and is separately regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting. The combination of fixed-odds and spread betting in one app is the brand’s distinctive feature, and a punter who uses both is the natural customer. The risk disclosure is part of the spread-betting side: losses on a spread bet can exceed the original deposit, which is the FCA’s rule and is not the case for fixed-odds tennis betting, where the maximum loss is the stake. The tennis offering is full, with one-click, auto and partial cash out, a Bet Builder that works across fixed odds or spread bets, and live streaming of tennis alongside the racing product. Spreadex is the natural home for a punter who wants to combine fixed-odds and spread-betting markets within a single, FCA-regulated account.

NetBet

Netbet Enterprises Limited holds the licence, and the brand’s app carries Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts, free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds, and sports stats for the major leagues. The “instant dynamic odds” line means the Bet Builder’s combined price updates as the selection changes, which is a small but useful feature for in-play building. The tennis menu is broad, with the main ATP, WTA and Grand Slam events priced in the days leading up to each match, and a long tail of proposition markets on the showpiece matches. NetBet is a logical choice for the regular user of boosted odds and price-updated bet builders.

Betfred

Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited holds the licence, and the Betfred app is published by Done Brothers (Cash Betting) Ltd. The 21-sport coverage is the brand’s pitch, alongside over 2,000 casino-style games in the same app. The tennis product is full and is one of the larger shop-based brands in the UK, with a long history of high-street betting that now lives inside an app. Betfred’s app represents a traditional high-street brand adapting well to the digital age, offering a mix of sportsbook and casino that few competitors match.

Bar One Racing

Bar-One Racing Limited holds the licence, and the brand is an Irish independent bookmaker that has rebranded as BAR 1 Betting. The shops are across Ireland, and the horse racing sponsorships at Dundalk, Fairyhouse, Navan, The Curragh, Curraheen Park and Cork are a heritage. The UK site is the remote channel for that business, and the tennis menu is a smaller one than the racing product. Bar One Racing is a choice for the punter who values an independent Irish bookmaker with a racing-led focus.

Ladbrokes

LC International Limited holds the licence, and the app is published by Entain Operations Limited, the listed parent of Ladbrokes, Coral and a number of other UK-facing brands. The 4.66 rating from 101,255 App Store reviews is the largest sample in the comparison, and a proxy for the size of the user base. The tennis product is one of the deepest on the UK market, with the full ATP, WTA and Grand Slam calendar priced early, an in-play product on the showpiece matches, and a Bet Builder that combines markets from a single event. Ladbrokes is a choice for a punter who values a deep-market product and the stability of a large, listed group.

Smarkets

Smarkets (Malta) Limited holds a remote betting intermediary licence, the licence type that covers betting exchanges. The brand is an exchange rather than a traditional bookmaker: a punter backs a selection at one price and another punter lays the same selection at another, with Smarkets taking a commission on net winnings. The deposit and withdrawal terms are quick: open bank transfers are instant from £10 up to £10,000, withdrawals are processed within 6 hours from £10 up to £100,000, and UK debit card deposits are instant from £10 up to £15,000. The tennis market on an exchange is shaped by other punters rather than by a bookmaker’s trading desk, and the margin sits in the spread between the best back and the best lay price. Smarkets is for the punter who prefers the transparency of an exchange model over a traditional bookmaker’s margin.

Copybet

Copybet UK Limited holds the licence, and the brand’s pitch is Best Odds Guaranteed all day, every day, on all UK and Irish racing, with first-past-the-post payment even if the winner is later disqualified. The “first past the post” rule is a horse-racing rule rather than a tennis one, but it is a strong signal of the brand’s racing heritage. The tennis menu is on the smaller side compared to Ladbrokes or bet365, and Copybet is for the punter who prioritizes the best-odds-guaranteed racing offers and uses the tennis menu as a secondary market.

10bet

Blue Star Planet Limited holds the licence, and the brand covers football, tennis and horse racing, with cash out, a Bet Builder and live streaming. The feature set is a clean one: a full in-play product, a Bet Builder on the main matches, and live streaming on the events the brand holds rights to. 10bet is worth considering for a punter who values a clean interface and focused live-streaming coverage on specific matches.

Octobet

Octopus Game Limited holds the licence, and the brand’s sportsbook welcome offer is 50% back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers. The “50% back as a free bet” is a refund-style offer, where a stake that loses on the first bet is refunded as a free bet up to £50. The tennis menu is on the smaller side compared to the larger UK brands, and Octobet is a fit for the punter who is looking for a welcome offer and is comfortable with a smaller bookmaker’s range.

What the bookmaker keeps of every unit

The bookmaker’s margin is the share of every pound staked that the bookmaker expects to keep, on average, over a large number of bets at the same price. It is built into the odds and is the reason a fair two-way market, where each outcome is priced at 2.00, does not exist. The arithmetic is straightforward: a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90, the example the calculation here is built around, has a payout share of 1 ÷ (1 ÷ 1.90 + 1 ÷ 1.90) = 1 ÷ 1.0526 = 0.95, and a margin of 1 − 0.95 = 0.05, or 5%. That is the price of a market where each outcome is priced at 1.90, and it is the floor of what a punter should expect to lose over the long run at those odds, before any account-level offers, free bets or price boosts are taken into account.

A match-winner market on a major tennis event typically prices at a margin of around 4-6% on each side, with the most efficient events closer to 4% and the long-tail Challenger and ITF events closer to 8% or more. Proposition markets, like total games or aces, often sit at 6-8%. In-play markets run higher, sometimes 7-10%, because the bookmaker is managing exposure in real time. The punter’s task is to find the thinnest margin the market offers, which on a major tennis event is the match-winner market, and to compare the same selection across more than one bookmaker before placing the bet. The offer on the account — a price boost, a free bet, a Best Odds Guaranteed rule — is a second layer on top, and it can either reduce the effective margin or leave it unchanged, depending on the offer’s terms.

The combined price of an accumulator compounds the margin across each leg. A two-leg acca at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90 has a combined price of 3.61, but the fair combined price, where each leg is priced at 2.00, would be 4.00; the difference is the compounded margin, and the punter pays it. A four-leg acca at 1.80, 2.20, 1.50 and 3.00 has a combined price of 17.82 and a fair combined price of 16.00 — wait, that is the other way: a fair combined price for those four decimal prices, where each outcome of each leg is equally likely, is the product of each fair price. The 1.80 price implies a 55.6% chance (1 ÷ 1.80), the 2.20 implies 45.5%, the 1.50 implies 66.7%, and the 3.00 implies 33.3%. The product of those probabilities is 4.5%, which is the fair chance of the accumulator landing, and the fair combined price is 1 ÷ 0.045 = 22.22. The 17.82 offered is 80.2% of that, which is the compounded margin across the four legs. The reader does not need to redo the arithmetic, but the headline is the right one: a longer accumulator is not a fairer price, it is a worse one.

How tennis betting sits inside the law

The Gambling Commission is the regulator, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it licenses the whole commercial market under the Gambling Act 2005. The Act covers Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is outside the Act and has its own older law, so a GB licence is not a Northern Ireland licence. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based; a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. The Commission’s public register is the whole test of who holds a licence, and a punter can search it by business name, trading name, domain or account number.

Betting and casino are separate permits. The remote general betting standard (real events) licence covers real-world sports betting, including tennis, and is the licence type held by every operator on the comparison further down. The remote general betting standard (virtual events) licence covers computer-generated events. The remote betting intermediary licence covers betting exchanges, which is the licence type Smarkets holds. The remote pool betting licence covers pool betting on horse or dog racing. A bookmaker that holds a remote general betting standard (real events) licence is licensed to take tennis bets, and the licence categories on the register are the register’s own reference.

No statutory list of permitted sports or markets exists. A bookmaker holds a licence for a category and offers markets under its own rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP). In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers, and the controls are the operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties; it is not legally unrestricted, but the legal conclusion is the operator’s, not the punter’s. The minimum age is 18, and identity is verified before the first deposit or bet, including with a free bet or bonus. Credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by that ban.

A punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain. The General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%, and from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25% applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Spread betting has its own rates, 3% financial and 10% other. Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established, and the player is not charged duty.

Frequently asked questions

How is a bet on tennis actually placed?

Open an account at a bookmaker licensed by the Gambling Commission, verify name, address and date of birth, deposit by debit card or bank transfer (credit cards are banned), find the tennis menu, choose a match, choose a market, enter a stake, and confirm the bet on the slip. The bet is recorded against the account and settles when the match is over and the result is confirmed. The bookmaker’s own terms are the contract.

What does a tennis match look like for betting purposes?

Best-of-three sets is the women’s format everywhere; men play best-of-three at most tour events and best-of-five at the four Grand Slams. A set is usually won by the first player to reach six games with a margin of two; at 6-6 a tiebreak is played, first to seven points with a lead of two. A match tiebreak, sometimes called a super tiebreak, is sometimes played in place of a deciding set; that tiebreak is won by the first to ten points with a two-point lead.

Where does a bookmaker’s licence get checked?

The Gambling Commission’s public register. It is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence. The account numbers on the comparison table further up are the register’s own references and can be entered directly.

What does a winning bet pay back?

A winning bet returns the stake plus the winnings, where the winnings are the stake multiplied by the decimal odds minus one. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 3.00 returns £30, of which £20 is profit and £10 is the stake back. In fractional odds, 2/1, the same bet returns £30 from a £10 stake, of which £20 is profit. The conversion from fractional a/b to decimal is a ÷ b + 1, so 2/1 becomes 3.00, 5/1 becomes 6.00, and 11/4 becomes 3.75.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how is it read in the odds?

The margin is the share of every pound staked that the bookmaker expects to keep, on average, at the quoted prices. A two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90 has a payout share of 95% and a margin of 5%, meaning the punter loses 5p on every pound staked over the long run at those prices. The same calculation applied to any set of decimal odds gives the margin of that market, and the bookmaker’s margin is the difference between the implied probabilities of the outcomes and 100%.

Content created by the «UK betting» team