Tennis betting odds — how prices are built and which bookmakers offer the best slate

Updated October 2026

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Tennis odds behave differently from the prices a football or racing punter sees. There is no draw in the match-winner market, sets introduce their own under/over lines, and individual games carry point-by-point markets that move the moment a serve is struck. A reader who approaches tennis with the instincts of a football coupon is missing the structure underneath. This page walks through how tennis betting prices are built, what markets licensed bookmakers in the UK actually offer, how the live game and in-play trading work, and which of the featured brands stand out for tennis specifically. The arithmetic at the heart of it — what a margin does to a price, what a free bet is worth on average, what a turnover requirement costs — is worked through explicitly because the marketing does not.

*Current as of 27 October 2026. Operator data verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register; offer mechanics verified against each operator’s own terms.*

Live tennis betting and how prices move mid-match

Tennis is the sport where in-play trading is most honest to the word. Points last seconds, breaks of serve flip momentum inside a service game, and the scoreboard ticks the price as well as the games. A bookmaker’s in-play console on a Grand Slam match will show three or four markets open at once: match winner, set winner, next game, and often game handicap or total games over/under on the set. Grand Slam tennis is also one of the few sports where bookmakers stream every match for funded accounts without an extra subscription. Stream coverage outside the Slams is patchier and varies sharply by brand — some cover all ATP and WTA main-tour matches, others show only the show courts. Checking the live schedule before the first set is the cheapest way to find out whether the screen you expect is the screen you get.

The other feature that defines tennis in-play is partial cash out. A punter who wants to lock in profit on an accumulator that depends on a Sinner–Alcaraz final does not have to wait for the trophy lift. Most of the featured brands let the customer close the leg early for a fraction of the full payout, and the fraction tracks the live price. Full cash out is also there. What is not standard is automatic cash out — a rule that closes the bet for the gambler when a threshold is hit, without the customer being in front of the screen. A small number of the brands on this page offer it; most do not, and the difference is more practical than it sounds when a five-set match runs to 11 p.m. and the punter has gone to bed.

A point worth stating clearly: in-play trading is restricted for customers who have placed a bet using a free bet token on the same match at the same brand. The restriction varies by operator; some merely delay settlement of the free bet until the in-play position closes, others refuse the in-play bet outright. The terms page on the specific match is the place that settles it.

The score moves the price — but not by as much as you think

Every point that does not change the scoreboard still nudges the in-play price, because the bookmaker is repricing the match outcome after every single point. The interesting feature is how little a single point moves the market when the server holds. On a flat first serve, the bookmaker’s model expects roughly the same outcome it expected before the point; the price change is mechanical and small. What actually moves the market is a break point. A break of serve compresses the model’s probability of an upcoming service hold, the next-game price shifts several ticks, and the set and match prices move with it. A punter who watches the live console rather than the TV is watching a model, not a match.

Streaming the live game

Live streaming is licensed in Great Britain through the operator’s own licence conditions; the customer does not need a separate broadcast licence. The brand decides which events to stream. Most brands stream every Grand Slam match, a lot stream the ATP and WTA Masters 1000 and the WTA 1000 events, and coverage drops sharply at Challenger and ITF level. The stream usually sits behind either a positive account balance or a bet placed on the match in the last 24 hours — a soft condition that excludes arbers but not ordinary punters. bet365 in this country is the brand most associated with tennis streaming depth, and the depth is the reason a stake on the Challenger-level match at that brand often beats the same bet elsewhere: the price is more competitive because the audience is larger.

Predictions, forecasts and the limits of tennis tipping

Tennis looks predictable because the rankings are public. They are not. The gap between the top seed on a hard court and the qualifier in round one is smaller than the gap between the top seed and the world number 60, and the qualifier has the surface and the draw. The “tennis betting tips” market is mostly an audience business — writers need a daily column, the column needs picks, the picks need to look reasoned — and the picks do not beat the closing price by more than chance. The honest framing is that model-based forecasts outperform pundit tips on a long enough horizon, and the bookmaker’s margin means a tip that beats the model by less than the margin still loses money.

What is useful is structural reading: a server’s hold percentage on the surface, the head-to-head on the surface rather than the career head-to-head, the number of break points saved and converted in the last ten matches on the surface. None of it predicts the next match in the sense a punter wants, and the closing line is sharp enough that the value is in finding a price the market has not caught up with — usually because the price was taken before the team news, or because the surface effect is being misread. The punter who bets on tennis with discipline is the one who takes the price he expected rather than chasing a drift he did not, and the one who walks away from a match the bookmaker has priced sharper than he can read.

Bankroll, staking and the discipline the marketing never mentions

Staking plans flatten variance, not edge. A flat stake of one per cent of bankroll per bet reduces the chance of ruin but does nothing to a model that loses; a Kelly fraction maximises growth on a true edge and is ruinous on a false one. The brand’s marketing suggests a “system” because systems are sellable; the system that wins in the long run is the one the punter can stop using, and the punter who stops using it is the one who has already realised the system was the marketing. Tennis-specific staking is no different: a smaller stake on a five-set match at the Slams because variance is higher, a smaller stake still on a Challenger match because the price is less sharp and the bookmaker has more edge, a routine review of settled bets at the end of the month to check that the staking plan has not drifted.

Tennis bet types and how the odds are set

Tennis odds are decimal by default at every featured brand, and the fractional form is offered beside them for those who want to read prices the old way. A price of 1.91 is the same as 10/11, 1.50 is the same as 1/2, 6.00 is the same as 5/1. Conversion is a ÷ b + 1: 5/1 becomes 5 ÷ 1 + 1 = 6.00; 11/4 becomes 11 ÷ 4 + 1 = 2.75. The decimal price already includes the stake, so the punter who backs Djokovic at 1.91 with £10 gets £100 × 1.91 = £19.10 back — stake and a £9.10 profit. The arithmetic is the same on every market the page lists.

Match winner

The simplest tennis market. Two runners, no draw, no dead heat at the match level. A best-of-three match has a winner in two or three sets; a best-of-five (men’s Grand Slam only) has a winner in three, four or five. The price reflects the bookmaker’s model probability plus the margin. For a match priced at 1.84, 1.95 the implied probabilities are 1 ÷ 1.84 = 54.3% and 1 ÷ 1.95 = 51.3% — a total of 105.6%, with the 5.6 percentage points above 100 being the bookmaker’s margin on that market. The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every unit bet on the match winner market. On a flat men’s match between two top-30 players on a neutral surface the margin is usually around 4.5–6%; on a heavy mismatch between a top seed and a wildcard it can widen to 7–9% because the bookmaker has thinner information; on a heavily watched match with sharp money it can be as tight as 2.5–3.5%.

Set betting

The punter names the exact score in sets: 2-0, 2-1, 0-2 or 1-2 in a best-of-three; 3-0, 3-1, 3-2 or the reverse in a best-of-five. The price of a 2-0 win for the favourite is shorter than the match-winner price because the outcome is more specific; the price of a 2-1 win is longer. Set betting is the market where the margin tends to widen — bookmakers price each scoreline independently and the overround is heavier because the bookmaker has fewer arbitrage constraints. The punter who shops set-betting prices across the featured brands and lays the same scoreline at an exchange can sometimes find a small edge, but the size of the edge shrinks every year as the exchanges get sharper.

Game handicap and total games

A game handicap gives one player a virtual start of ±2.5, ±3.5, ±4.5, ±5.5 or ±6.5 games; the punter backs the adjusted player to win more games than the opponent over the match. A total games market gives the punter a line — over or under, for example 21.5 games in a best-of-three — and the bet wins if the actual game count crosses it. These are the markets that move most sharply with the live score. A break of serve in the first game of a first-set tiebreak can shift the total games line by a full game within a single point. The margins on game handicap and total games are usually tighter than on match winner because the bookmaker is pricing the same number from a different angle and the markets cross-check each other.

Next game, next point and the micro-markets

A few brands offer a next-game winner market at point level — back the server to hold, back the returner to break. These markets are sharpest at the big brands with deeper in-play liquidity and loosest at the smaller ones. Most punters should not trade these markets because the margin and the speed combine to make the edge almost impossible to sustain, but they are worth knowing about because the prices often telegraph the bookmaker’s confidence on the match. A bookmaker offering 1.45 on the server to hold when the rest of the market is at 1.30 is telling you something about its model.

Outright winner

Tournament winner markets run from the draw publication. Outright prices carry the largest margin in tennis betting — typically 20–30% in the early days, narrowing to 10–15% by the quarter-finals as the field thins. The reason is the same as in any outright market: the overround on 64 or 128 runners is mathematically heavier than on two. The punter who wants outright value waits until the draw is out, knows which seedings carry the surface advantage, and compares the price to a model probability for each top-eight seed. Ante-post prices on Grand Slam favourites typically sit around 4.00–6.00 for the men’s top seed and 5.00–8.00 for the women’s, with the price shortening as the tournament approaches and the field thins.

Set winner, first-set winner and the game-by-game markets

The first-set winner market is essentially the match-winner market with a single-set frame. The set winner market asks the punter to name the winner of any given set. Both are priced sharper than match winner because the bookmaker has more information on first-set patterns (server hold percentages, tiebreak frequency) and the field of bettors is more disciplined. The game-by-game markets — back the server, lay the server, back the next point winner — are the closest thing to financial trading that tennis offers and behave accordingly: the margin is narrow, the price moves second by second, and the punter pays the bookmaker’s edge on every click.

Tennis tournaments and the calendar that drives the market

The tennis calendar is fixed and well-published. The four Grand Slams are the Australian Open in January (hard court), Roland-Garros in late May and early June (red clay), Wimbledon in late June and early July (grass) and the US Open in late August and early September (hard court). 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 Masters 1000 events for men and the WTA 1000 events for women sit alongside the Slams; the ATP Finals and the WTA Finals close the season in November.

The surfaces and what they mean for the odds

Surface drives price more than any other variable in tennis. A hard court is the neutral baseline — the surface most top players grew up on, the surface with the most data and the sharpest prices. Clay slows the ball and rewards topspin and patience; grass rewards a big serve and a flat first strike. A player who is a top-eight seed on hard may be a top-twenty player on clay, and the bookmaker’s model usually captures that. The interesting price on the calendar is the one the bookmaker has not fully priced for the surface — the in-form qualifier on clay against a seed who has not played a tournament on the surface all year, the big server on a fast indoor hard court against a returner who has been on clay for three weeks.

Match format — best of three, best of five, the super tiebreak

Men play best of three at every tour-level event except the four Grand Slams, where they play best of five. Women play best of three everywhere. A deciding-set tiebreak at six games all is the standard, with the exception of the Australian Open, where a super tiebreak (first to ten, two clear) replaces the third set for men and the third set for women. The super tiebreak matters for the odds because it caps the length of the deciding set and pulls the total games line in: a best-of-five match with a super tiebreak in the fifth typically settles with fewer total games than the same match with a conventional fifth set, and the bookmaker’s total games line already reflects it.

The featured bookmakers for tennis betting

The ten brands below are GB-licensed bookmakers on the Gambling Commission’s public register, and each one is reviewed for tennis specifically — the depth of the tennis market, the in-play coverage, the streaming access, the welcome offer, and the small details that matter when a punter actually places a bet. The order below is not a ranking; the order is the order research lists them. A licence number is a permission to take bets, not a quality mark.

The two details the table cannot show are the depth of the tennis market at each brand and the price competitiveness on Grand Slam matches. London Bet carries tennis inside a broader sportsbook that is light on outright depth beyond the Slams. QuinnBet is sharp on the in-play markets it covers but is built around horse racing and football; tennis is present but the price depth and outright coverage are thinner than a specialist. Betfair runs both a Sportsbook and an Exchange, and the Exchange is where the price is set for the most-watched matches; the Sportsbook is the place to use a free bet or a Bet Builder. Star Sports is a phone-led bookmaker with a sportsbook that has grown around racing and football; tennis is covered for the Slams and the Masters 1000, less so elsewhere. BetUK, owned by LeoVegas, runs a sportsbook with football at its centre and a free-bet structure that mentions football specifically. BoyleSports is Irish-owned and Irish-led, with the UK sportsbook carrying tennis alongside a deep football menu. 888sport runs a full sportsbook with tennis across the Slams, the Masters and the WTA, plus Bet Builder and racing streams. Spreadex is the only brand on this list that combines fixed-odds and spread betting in one app, and the spread side carries a financial-conducts-authority regulatory line that does not apply to the other nine. DAZN Bet is the sportsbook arm of the DAZN streaming platform and runs on a smaller catalogue than the bigger brands; tennis is present but depth varies. NetBet runs Daily Boosts and Profit Boosts with a Bet Builder, and the tennis menu covers the main tour events.

Tennis specifically — what each brand does well

London Bet. A broad sportsbook for the casual tennis punter. The Slams and the Masters are priced; the Challenger and ITF calendar is thinner. The combination with the Pragmatic Play casino inside the same app makes it useful for the punter who wants casino and sport in one wallet.

QuinnBet. Racing and football are the heart of the bookmaker, and the Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing from 10:00am is a clear policy. Tennis markets are present for the main events but the outright depth and the in-play console are not at the level of a specialist. The £150 cap on the BOG benefit per customer per race is a useful number to know.

Betfair. Two products in one app: the Sportsbook, where free bets and Bet Builder live, and the Exchange, where the sharpest tennis prices in the UK are set. The 90 Minute Payout market is football-specific but the streaming coverage spans UK and Irish racing and football. For a serious tennis punter the Exchange is the anchor.

Star Sports. A phone-led bookmaker whose customer service is the differentiator — 08000 521 321 reaches a trader directly during office hours, and the email line is published on the App Store listing. The sportsbook carries the Slams and the Masters 1000; the depth at Challenger level is light.

BetUK. A LeoVegas-owned sportsbook whose welcome offer is football-shaped (two of the four £10 free bets are football accas of four or more selections), so a tennis-only punter is using half the welcome. The seven-day window to use the free bets is short. Identity is verified before the first deposit under the GB rules and GAMSTOP is mandatory.

BoyleSports. An Irish bookmaker with a UK-facing sportsbook and a welcome offer that is identical in shape on both sides of the border (£20 free bets for a £10 stake for UK customers, €30 for €10 for Irish). Tennis sits inside a broader menu that is deep on football and racing. The UK-specific terms and the UK remote licence are what carry the GB-licensed status.

888sport. A long-running sportsbook with Bet Builder, Cash Out, BetFinder form tools and daily boosted odds. The tennis menu covers the main tour events; the live stream is on racing. The brand carries a casino alongside the sportsbook.

Spreadex. The only dual bookmaker on this list — fixed-odds and spread betting in one wallet, one app. The spread side is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for financial spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and the spread side states that losses can exceed the deposit. Tennis streams are inside the fixed-odds app. A punter who wants both products under one roof has one option on this page.

DAZN Bet. The sportsbook arm of the DAZN streaming platform, with a low deposit floor (£5 by most methods, £20 by PayPal) and no processing fees. Tennis is present but the menu depth varies by event. The connection to the DAZN streaming subscription is the practical angle.

NetBet. A sportsbook with Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers across the calendar, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds, and sports stats for the major leagues. Tennis is covered for the main events.

The verdict on the featured set

No single brand is the answer. A tennis punter who wants the sharpest in-play price takes the Exchange at Betfair; a tennis punter who wants a Bet Builder on a Grand Slam match takes the Sportsbook at Betfair, bet365-style alternates, or one of the Boosts brands; a tennis punter who wants both fixed-odds and spread under one roof takes Spreadex; a tennis punter who wants the broadest outright market on the Slams with the tightest margin looks at the specialists and shops the price. The featured set here is licensed, varied, and competitive on the major events, and the right answer is the brand that matches the punter’s pattern rather than the brand whose marketing is loudest.

How tennis betting works in Great Britain — the regulatory frame

Great Britain has no statutory list of permitted sports or markets. A bookmaker serving customers in England, Scotland or Wales needs a Gambling Commission licence, and the Commission’s public register is the whole test of who holds one. The register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and it lists the licence type, the licence holder, and the trading names the licence covers. The Commission does not list sports; it lists licence categories. The relevant category for a tennis bookmaker is remote general betting standard (real events). That licence covers pre-match and in-play betting on real sporting events, including tennis, and the licence holder can run as many trading names as the licence permits.

The framework underneath is the Gambling Act 2005, amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 so that the point of consumption — Great Britain — is the licensing trigger, not the operator’s home jurisdiction. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. Several brands can run under one licence — Paddy Power and Betfair under PPB Counterparty Services, for instance — and the trading-name list on the licence entry tells the punter which brands that licence covers. The punter who checks the licence before depositing is the punter who does not lose money to a brand that has no GB route for a complaint.

In-play tennis — what the rules allow

In-play betting on tennis is permitted at GB-licensed operators and the controls are the operator’s licence conditions and the customer-protection duties under the LCCP, not a statute that names tennis specifically. What the rules require is that the operator verify the outcome from an independent feed — an official data provider, not the operator’s own feed — and that the customer-protection conditions around the bet (deposit limits, timeouts, self-exclusion) continue to apply at full force during an in-play session. The “in-play is unrestricted” line in marketing is a sales line; the legal frame is that in-play is permitted subject to the operator’s licence conditions, and the punter should read the in-play terms on the specific match before staking.

What the licence means in practice for the customer

A GB-licensed operator runs GAMSTOP at the point of account creation — every customer is checked against the national self-exclusion register before they can deposit. Identity is verified before the first deposit under the Commission’s rules in force since 7 May 2019, and the verification covers name, address and date of birth, with source-of-funds questions at higher spend under the money-laundering rules. There is no anonymous betting at a licensed site, and the punter who wants anonymity has to look at an unlicensed brand. The Commission’s vulnerability-check rule applies when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days; the check is a public-record check, not an income check. The announced financial risk assessments (the affordability checks of the press) are staged with no start date, and the punter who reads a brand’s marketing as if they are in force will be reading the wrong terms.

Safer gambling on tennis

Tennis is a high-frequency sport for betting — a Grand Slam fortnight can run three or four matches a day, and the in-play console tempts a click on every point. The frequency is the risk. A punter who would never dream of placing fifty bets on a football Saturday can place that many on a single day’s tennis without noticing, because each click looks like a small decision and the bookmaker is offering the next one immediately. The licensed brands run the standard safer-gambling tools: deposit limits, timeouts, reality checks, GAMSTOP self-exclusion, links to GamCare and the National Gambling Helpline, and links to NHS gambling clinics. The punter who needs the tools should set a deposit limit on the day the account is opened rather than waiting for a session that has already run too long. The punter who has self-excluded through GAMSTOP cannot open an account at any GB-licensed brand until the minimum period has elapsed and the seven-year tail has been served.

Where to get help

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment and education; the NHS runs gambling clinics in several regions; Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings. The contact details sit in the footer of every GB-licensed sportsbook, and the links are a condition of the licence, not a favour.

Crypto, anonymity and the GB-licensed frame

A GB-licensed tennis bookmaker does not accept cryptocurrency deposits and does not offer anonymous accounts. Identity is verified before the first deposit and source-of-funds questions are routine at higher spend; the money-laundering rules that sit behind the Gambling Commission’s licence conditions require it. A punter who wants to deposit in Bitcoin or to bet without identity verification is looking at an unlicensed brand, and an unlicensed brand sits outside the frame above — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and not bound by the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check. The licensed brand loses on anonymity and wins on protection; the unlicensed brand does the reverse. Neither is “the safe choice” by default, and the punter’s decision is which side of that trade matters more.

What the licence does not cover

The licence covers the operation. It does not cover the punter’s outcome, the punter’s stake, the punter’s tax position, or the punter’s choice of sport. Betting winnings in Great Britain are not taxed at the player level; the operator pays General Betting Duty on gross profits at 15% today, with a remote rate of 25% from 1 April 2027 alongside the existing rate. Whether the operator passes the duty on through the odds is not established, and a punter who reads “tax-free betting” as a price advantage is misreading the line.

Tennis bonuses and free bets — what they really cost

The headline offer on a GB-licensed sportsbook for a new customer usually takes one of three shapes: a fixed free-bet bundle on first deposit and first bet (BetUK’s four £10 free bets is the canonical example), a free-bet refund on a losing first bet, or a deposit match with a turnover requirement. Every shape carries a price the marketing does not name, and the price is built out of three parts: the wagering requirement (how many times the bonus base must be staked before withdrawal), the minimum price for a bet that counts toward clearing (most brands set this at 1.50, some at 2.00), and the deadline (how many days the customer has to clear it). The Commission’s promotion rules since 19 January 2026 cap the wagering requirement at 10x — a £10 bonus at 50x needs £500 of bets; under the cap no more than £100. Mixed-product promotions, an offer that requires betting on two or more product types to qualify, are banned.

The arithmetic of a free bet

A free bet whose stake is not paid back with a win is worth less than the face on the slip says. For a £10 free bet at decimal odds of 3.00 on a market with a 95% payout share, the value is £10 × (3.00 − 1) ÷ 3.00 × 0.95 = £6.33 on average. The stake is not returned on the wager; the value is the expected profit from a winning free bet, weighted by the market’s payout share. The £10 face is the marketing number; the £6.33 is the working number.

The cost of clearing a bonus

A bonus of £100 with a 5x wagering requirement at a £10 stake per bet and a minimum price of 1.50 needs a turnover of £100 × 5 = £500, or 50 bets at £10 each, with every bet priced at 1.50 or higher. On a market priced at 1.91, 1.91 (a margin of about 4.7%), the expected cost of the £500 of bets is £500 × 0.047 = £23.50 on average. The £100 bonus is worth £100 to the punter at the point of issue, and the £23.50 expected cost is the price of clearing it; a punter who walks away from the bonus before clearing keeps the £100 and saves the £23.50. The marketing never tells the punter that the expected cost from a flat-stake clearing plan usually wipes between 15% and 35% of a small bonus and a smaller share of a large one.

Mobile betting on tennis

The GB-licensed sportsbook is a mobile app as much as a website. The iOS and Android apps carry the full pre-match and in-play tennis menu, the bet builder, the live stream where the brand offers one, the cash-out console, and the safer-gambling tools. The browser version on a phone is functionally identical on most brands but is slower on the in-play console, and the punter who trades point-by-point markets does it through the app. Touch ID and Face ID sign-in is standard; deposit and withdrawal are inside the app, and the same deposit methods run on both surfaces.

App-specific notes for tennis

The bet builder is the place the app earns its keep for tennis. A punter who wants to combine match winner, total games over and first-set winner into one bet does it through the bet builder inside the app, and the price is dynamic — it changes as the legs settle. The punter who wants a streamed Grand Slam match with a bet builder and partial cash out has three or four brands on this list that deliver. The punter who wants only the price does not need an app at all and can use the browser version on a desktop.

A worked margin — what the price is built on

The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every unit bet on a market. The arithmetic is straightforward on a two-way market. Take the illustrative example of a match winner priced at 1.90, 1.90 (fractional 9/10 each side, evens-plus-a-touch on each runner). The implied probability of each side is 1 ÷ 1.90 = 52.63%, and the two probabilities sum to 105.26%. The 5.26 percentage points above 100 are the bookmaker’s margin; the payout share is 100 ÷ 105.26 = 95.00%, and the margin is 5.00%. On a market priced at 1.84, 1.95 the implied probabilities are 54.35% and 51.28% — a total of 105.63% — a payout share of 94.67%, and a margin of 5.33%.

The margin is not a fee the punter pays on top of the bet. The margin is built into the price. The £10 stake at 1.90 returns £19.00 to the punter if the bet wins, and the bookmaker’s 5% margin is the average amount the bookmaker keeps from a balanced book across both sides. The punter who backs the 1.90 shot at £10 is paying 5 pence of every pound staked on the market on average — the same as every other punter on the market — and the price he got is the only number that matters on the bet slip.

A punter who wants to see the margin on a real market takes the two prices the bookmaker is showing, divides 1 by each, sums, and subtracts from 100. The result is the margin in percentage points; the payout share is 100 minus the margin. A tight tennis match on a major brand sits around 4–6%; a Challenger match at a smaller brand can sit at 7–10%; an outright winner market with sixty-four runners is north of 20% on the first day and tightens as the field thins. The punter who compares margins across brands on the same match is doing the only piece of homework that the bookmaker cannot price back.

Frequently asked questions

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The margin is the percentage of every unit staked on a market that the bookmaker keeps as profit on average. On a two-way market priced at 1.90, 1.90 the implied probabilities are 52.63% each, summing to 105.26%; the 5.26 points above 100 are the margin and the payout share is about 95%. The same calculation works on any two-way market: divide 1 by each price, sum, and subtract from 100.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

A decimal price already includes the stake. Multiply the stake by the decimal odds to get the total return — stake plus profit. A £10 bet at 2.50 returns £25.00 (£10 stake plus £15 profit). On a combination bet the prices of the legs multiply into one price; a £10 double at 2.00 and 3.00 returns £10 × 6.00 = £60.00 if both legs win.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Every brand featured on this page is listed there against a remote general betting standard (real events) licence. The licence number and the licence holder name are the two fields to check; a brand with no entry on the register has no GB licence.

What is a set betting game?

The set betting market asks the punter to name the exact score in sets. In a best-of-three the outcomes are 2-0 or 2-1 each way; in a best-of-five (men’s Grand Slam only) the outcomes are 3-0, 3-1 or 3-2 each way. The price of a 2-0 win for the favourite is shorter than the match-winner price because the outcome is more specific.

What is a handicap game in tennis betting?

A game handicap gives one player a virtual start of ±2.5, ±3.5, ±4.5, ±5.5 or ±6.5 games across the match. The punter backs the adjusted player to win more games than the opponent. The line is in half-game steps to avoid a push, and the market sits between the match-winner market and the total-games market in both price and margin.

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