The Premier League is one of the most bet on leagues in South Africa and around the world, and every sports betting site in SA has it on offer for punters. Considering how competitive the local sports betting market is you’d think that you’d find the same odds on offer across the board, however, this isn’t quite the case. We took a look at the 2 different popular Premier League markets at what we consider as a few of the top betting sites in South Africa, to see how they compare on odds and margin, and the results might surprise you.
The Betting Markets
To make a fair comparison we chose one of the biggest matches on an upcoming Premier League card, Liverpool v Arsenal. The betting markets we selected to compare were; match winner (win/draw/win) and over/under 2.5 goals, two very popular betting markets. The odds mentioned below were all pulled from the various sites at the same time on a Thursday evening, all with their own different software market feeds.
We also included the margins for each bookmaker in the comparison. The margin is the amount that a bookmaker makes from the market, and the lower the margin the better it is for the customer.
Betting Odds and Margins Compared
Odds wise Hollywoodbets and Betway offered the best price on a Liverpool win, while Gbets had the top price for an Arsenal win. For the draw Sunbet, Sportingbet and Gbets offered the best odds. The best price on over 2.5 goals was at Gbets and Palacebet, while the Under 2.5 market saw Sunbet offering the best price. Interestingly enough Gbets had a very low margin on the WDW market at 3.10%, while Palacebet offered the best margin on goals.
The Odds are very competitive
It’s hard to make a case for one bookmaker having the best odds or margin when generally the odds on offer are very competitive. The days of 10-15% margins are mostly long gone (some smaller South African bookies are still guilty of this though) and it’s good see large betting sites like Hollywoodbets and Betway being fairly consistent with their margin on soccer.
Another positive was seeing that sites like Gbets and Palacebet offered very competitive odds, in Palacebet’s case both the markets had a margin under 5%, while Gbets managed the lowest margin of the lot at 3.10% on the WDW.
Another lesson we can take from the above is that it is always important to hunt around for the best odds. While the margins might be competitive you do find that the odds vary quite a bit, and as punters we’re always after the best odds for the market we are betting on.