Bettica Bookmaker Review

Bettica Summary

Bettica Features

• 150% welcome bonus
• Brilliant for live betting
• Great American sports coverage

Design & Layout

On Bettica, the homepage is the bookmaker and so you are transported directly to a page that, for sports bettors, is very familiar. It has a pleasing design, which is based around a stylish black background on which they use predominantly light grey, white and red graphics. It looks good. They also utilise the traditional three-column layout.

One thing that strikes you, first of all, is the lack of ads. Traditionally, betting sites are adorned with colourful, brash, in-your-face, in-house ads, all of which take you with a single click to other areas of the site. Bettica bookmaker is able to resist this and instead all there is on the home page is a single ‘welcome bonus’ advert.

The left-hand sidebar is, as per usual, dedicated to the sports and leagues available to bet on, and Bettica gives it a nice twist by using the column to list both the sports and the leagues and competitions available in the same graphic. They cleverly use a small graphic for each sport that, when clicked on, automatically fills the right side of the column with an exhaustive list of the relevant leagues, tournaments and competitions. It works nicely, is well thought out, and offers a fast-track to the sporting event of your choice. We’ll get into the different sports available later in this review but it’s fair to say Bettica bookmaker (in terms of the number of sports) go for quality over quantity – and that’s fine – but what they do, they do very well, and the nice presentation and intuitiveness makes for a pleasant betting experience.

The clever use of the column as a two-way drill down to the competition/league of your choice, means once you’ve chosen your sport, you’re automatically directed to a submenu. For the big team sports – soccer, basketball, ice hockey etc – this menu will list the countries for which Bettica have markets, and then once clicked upon another sub-menu opens up, listing the league and cup competitions. For individual sports, like tennis, the list is made up of the different tournaments and events – Wimbledon, US Open, WTA tour etc – with the detail of the individual matches, and all the betting options available filling the main body of the page.

The left sidebar also has a very nice touch, in that a slide bar at the top of the column, allows the punter to easily sort the betting markets available between ‘today’, ‘3 hours’, ’24 hours’, ‘3 days’ and ‘All’.

The main body defaults to soccer – there are also tabs for tennis, basketball and ice hockey – and it’s headed by Live Betting, which, as it suggests, is a section that offers live odds on matches in progress. The main betting line offers the traditional win/draw/lost at full-time and half-time and over/under odds. On the extreme right of the line is a number preceded by a ‘+’ and this is where it gets juicy. The number not only refers to the number of additional markets but also opens up a quite brilliant in-house match tracker graphic. There are no live streams available on Bettica but this really is the next best thing. To use soccer as the example, a graphic of a football pitch is constantly updated with arrows and comments, giving the punter an up-to-date picture of precisely what is happening. Goals, shots on target, shots off target are also captured on a separate graph, which additionally indicates which team is in possession of the ball. Many betting sites now use match trackers of a similar ilk, but this is certainly one of the best.

Below the live matches is a section that contains a list of matches and events described as ‘Highlights’, which is, in fact, the top games that are due to take place within 24 hours. Again, the single betting line is expanded by hitting the digits showing how many other markets are available, but this time it opens up a selection of bet types, each containing numerous variations. Again, it works very nicely. The third section in the main body of the page lists ‘Last Minute’ offerings; games that are due to begin imminently.

The right-hand column is another that follows the norm, in that its main purpose is to be home to the betting slip. It’s non-fussy, no-nonsense, does the job perfectly and offers a tick box for the punter who wishes to accept higher odds. The column also includes three information type tabs: ‘Support’, ‘Results’ and ‘Statistics’, all of which give a one-click route to info that will enhance the betting experience.

Interestingly, and worthy of note, is that Bettica bookmaker do also offer some e-Sports to their punters but, oddly, these are not listed with the sports as is the norm for most bookmakers. Instead, they are tucked away at the foot of the site on a horizontal red strip near all the various T&Cs and legal stuff. They offer markets for Counter-Strike, Dota, League of Legends and Starcraft II.

Sports Markets & Odds

As mentioned above, Bettica bookmaker doesn’t attempt to cover the whole spectrum of sports that others do. Instead, they concentrate on 16 frontline sports, which include football, tennis, basketball, ice hockey, handball, American football, volleyball, golf, darts and rugby.

This works nicely in their favour though because it means the 16 sports are covered in real detail and within this select number of sports, some obscure leagues and competitions are covered. With soccer, for example, they cover the biggest and best football leagues and tournaments in the world – UEFA Champions League, English Premier League, Spanish Primera Division, German Bundesliga, Turkish Süper Lig, French Ligue 1, Italian Serie A etc – but so many others. In fact, at the time of this review, they covered well over 60, ranging from the aforementioned big boys down to obscure leagues in Eastern Europe and Central America.

Bettica bookmaker also goes big on the top American Sports by covering the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL, and offer great coverage of the world’s top tennis events – (WTA, ATP, ITF, Davis Cup etc.  Other sports they cover in some depth are basketball (Euroleague, ACB, BBL etc), ice hockey (KHL, DEL etc) and cricket (IPL, HBL etc).

Within these sports, they claim to offer their punters up to 10,000 live matches every month.

In terms of offering value odds, Bettica bookmaker is – it has to be said – at the less generous end of the spectrum. With the industry standard being generally recognised as odds compiled between 105% and 106%, the fact they mostly hovered around the 114% mark needs little explanation. But, with a bit of research, we did find the odd market at 108%, so there are some examples of them creeping down towards what’s considered the norm. To be fair, new sites with set-up cost to recover, tend to initially compile odds in this way, so the 114% should not be regarded too harshly at this stage.

Bonuses

This is where Bettica bookmaker excels. There aren’t many betting sites that offer bonuses of up to 150%, but they do! First up is the 150% welcome bonus, which the new punter gets on his/her first deposit from € 10 up to a maximum of € 70. For big-hitters, they offer a 100% welcome bonus, which the bettor receives on their first deposit, from € 100 up to a maximum of € 150. Unsurprisingly, there are a few hoops to jump through in order to qualify but nothing out of the ordinary and nothing insurmountable, and ultimately, the rollover requirement of 3x your deposit and bonus compares favourably with most betting sites.

Responsible Gambling

Bettica bookmaker takes this seriously and devotes a page to it at the foot of the site. They acknowledge that gambling can become a problem and how important it is that gambling remains fun. They then go on to describe the dangers and how being a regular bettor can soon turn to addiction if the various warning signs are not heeded. Additionally, they offer an ‘Eight gambling screen’, which is a list of eight questions which, if answered honestly, can reveal if a bettor has an addiction. This is followed by some contact details for those who consider they require help and assistance.

Customer Services

Unlike most betting sites, Bettica bookmaker doesn’t offer a 24/7 live chat service. Instead, they offer an email address (support@bettica.be) to which all queries can be addressed. We tried it and, being honest, we still await a reply as this review is being written, so they do fall a little short in this area. Also, there is a link for some FAQs, which unfortunately doesn’t actually lead to any.

Mobile & Tablet

As you would expect, Bettica is a mobile-optimized site and if you prefer betting on the go – either on a smartphone or a tablet – you will find an excellent configuration that displays all the same information as the desktop site. It works nicely for both iOS and Android and offers a good betting experience in terms of navigation, responsiveness and intuitiveness. There are no apps available but given that the mobile optimization works very nicely this in not a major problem.

Pay-Outs

Cash-out is an automated process on Bettica bookmaker and so in the normal scheme of things this is generally expected to be at the acceptable end of the scale – pay-outs generally processed within 24 hours. At the time of this review, there were no online negative reviews regarding Bettica – always a good sign.

Final Verdict

All in all, Bettica bookmaker is well worth a look. It isn’t flashy or garish but it’s well designed, neat and, most important of all, it delivers an excellent betting experience for the punter. There is little information available on the software used to support this bookmaker, but from our experience, it’s robust and fairly slick, so there are no negative performance issues to report.

The variation in odds was a bit confusing but, as we discovered, there are bets that are compiled to well below their go-to percentage of 114%. There is value to be had but needs a little bit of research. The number of sports is relatively limited compared to some sites, but the ones they cover are covered well and in some considerable depth. The one big negative we found was the difficulty in getting a response from their customer services team. Whilst this is generally not a problem, there needs to be a better way of dealing with queries.