GSM Gold Bookmaker Review

GSM Gold Summary

GSM Gold Features

• A well designed and intuitive sports betting site
• A massive variety of bets and betting markets
• Efficient customer services team
• Good soccer and tennis betting

Bonuses? Promotions? Hhmm

Let’s not beat around the bush – the header tells the whole story. There are no bonuses or promotions -as tends to be the case with sites from the Blue Bird N.V group – or at least there weren’t any at the time of this review. We contacted their customer services team who said there will likely be some in the future – some already exist for the casino and poker rooms – but as things stand we were left disappointed and unable to report even a single bonus. Maybe there will be some good ones further down the line but, for now, there is nothing to report.

A Familiar Look, but Still a Good One

We were, of course, disappointed at the lack of financial incentives but a close look at GSM Gold revealed a site that has much going for it. It looks good but, better still, behind those striking looks is some impressive functionality that offers the punter a pleasing betting experience.

The site’s homepage sets the tone nicely and comprises of two quite striking full-page ads that rotate. These are changed periodically but at the time of the review, one related to their tennis betting, the other their online casino. As well as looking impressive, they achieve their objectives of luring you into the site to take a closer look.

It’s the sports betting we’re particularly interested in, and so a click on the ‘Sports’ header takes us through to something that, for regular betting customers, has a very familiar look. They have gone for the traditional three-column set-up and have designed something that follows the eye-catching style of the home page – and it works well.

As expected, the left sidebar is used to list all of the betting sports on offer, with the numbers of events available indicated on each line. The precise number and variety of sports is something we’ll look at later in this review, but it’s a nicely designed column which defaults to a sport-by-sport listing and then drills down to another one or two levels, depending on the sport.

If we use soccer as the obvious example, one click on the icon opens a list – still within the sidebar – which is predominantly based on countries and continents, but also includes special bets along with options for international teams, international football and specific competitions like, for example, the new UEFA Nations League. Ignoring the national teams and international competitions for now, if you click on a country (or continent) you open a sub-menu that lists all of the leagues available in that category. Some will offer another sub-menu and only when you’ve drilled down to the base level of that country does it fill the main body of the page with the betting data.

We’ll examine in detail what betting information they provide, but first of all it’s worth highlighting a very clever way of narrowing down the date of the match you wish to bet on. At the top of the left sidebar is a gauge that allows you to choose the day of the week and also, if betting on same-day events, whether the start time is within one, three, six, nine or twelve hours.

Once a league and a date/time has been selected, a single click opens up the main body of the page with all the betting information you would expect from a quality sports betting site, for either the games on that day or, if there are none, the next batch of matches. It’s presented in the form of a list with fixtures detailed on a line-by-line basis.

Each fixture is offered in a single line with some standard information and bets – date of fixture, three-way bet, double chance, draw no bet and over/under 2.5 goals – with a number at the end of the line which, if clicked on, lists all of the different bets and markets available for that fixture – and there are loads. The odds are presented in decimal form and on the same line is a stats icon, which takes the customer to a page (provided by Sportradar) where there are statistics galore relating to that specific fixture.

For live games, they offer a single line of odds with no stats, graphics or live streams to support the in-game action – something of a rarity these days on sports betting sites. While it’s probably a bit much to expect a live stream, most sports betting sites will fill this void with a match tracker of some description. GSM Gold have nothing of this ilk. So, while it’s not a major issue, for those whose go-to form of betting is a live game it will be a disappointment.

The main body of the page automatically defaults to a listing of upcoming football fixtures, with what they class as the big game of the day being represented at the top with a colourful graphic accompanied by an array of data and stats.

The right-hand column follows the traditional norm, with the betting slip at the top, which is followed by a listing of ‘Latest Results’, showing the final scores and starting prices of games that have most recently concluded.

All in all, it’s a layout and a design that we like and, crucially, it’s intuitive and is supported by some top-notch functionality.

No Shortage of Choice – Plenty of Depth and Detail

GSM Gold manage to offer their customers a good range of sports while resisting the ‘going for broke’ approach of some who try and cover every single sport ever known to man. We consider this approach to be a sensible one as by concentrating on a select group of sports it enables them to offer a wider variety and a greater depth of bets. In total, at the time of the review, they were offering 17 sports:

Within those selected sports they go big and offer their customers some really excellent in-depth betting coverage, encompassing all the big events and competitions you would expect, but also many fixtures from lower-level competitions that most fans will have not heard of until they pop up as a betting option. To use football as the obvious example again, they cover all the well-known leagues – UEFA Champions League, English Premier League, Spanish Primera Division, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1, Italian Serie A etc – but also many of the lesser known leagues in, for example, Faroe Islands, Belarus, Ecuador and Algeria.

They also cover in depth the big American Sports – the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL – and provide some excellent coverage of the world’s top tennis competitions –  the US Open, Wimbledon, French Open, WTA tour, Davis Cup etc – with some in-depth coverage of basketball and ice hockey that goes beyond the famous American leagues and, interestingly, they offer their customers loads of handball betting.

While we were unimpressed with the lack of bonuses and promotions offered by GSM Gold, the pendulum swung dramatically back into positive territory when we looked at the value of the odds they offered! With the industry standard being generally recognised as odds compiled between 105% and 106%, the fact they compile theirs to around the 104% mark is very good indeed and puts them up there with the best on offer on the web.

Smart Phone Welded to Your Hand? No Problem with GSM Gold

As you would expect, GSM Gold is a fully optimized mobile site and so if you prefer to bet on the go – either on your smartphone or perhaps a tablet or phablet – you will find an excellent configuration that displays the same information as the desktop site, which translates perfectly to English (and we assume the other languages available). It works equally well for both iOS and Android and offers a good betting experience in terms of navigation and responsiveness. There are no apps available at the present time but given that the mobile optimization works nicely this is not a major problem. They also can be accessed via Facebook and Twitter.

Depositing? Withdrawing? – Not a Problem

Cash-out is an automated process on GSM Gold, so, in the normal scheme of things, they operate at the acceptable end of the scale – pay-outs generally being processed within 24 hours. At the time of this review, there were no negative comments to be found online regarding GSM Gold – always a good sign.

As a general rule, GSM Gold state that ‘without documentation you can deposit €500 a day’.

Euro-Friendly and for All

The site is aimed initially at the Spanish market and so defaults to Spanish, but has a ‘toggle’ for English, Italian, Turkish, Macedonian Greek, and Romanian. It uses Euro as its base currency and, of course, defaults to Euro when funds are deposited through PayPal.

Better still, there are no restricted countries, and their customer services team confirmed that if you can access the site and provide all of the information required to set up an account then you can bet on the site, and that includes punters from the US and UK.

Safe, Secure And, Better Still, Responsible

A good gauge of a site’s reliability and security is a quick online search, and so we are happy to report that we found absolutely no negativity at all when we did just that. We felt throughout the review that GSM Gold was a site to be trusted.

We’re also delighted to report that our dealings with their customer services team were exemplary. We contacted them through the live chat facility and found all of our queries answered efficiently, succinctly and speedily. There is also an email address (info@bluebird-nv.com) where customers can send any questions, queries or information pertaining to their application.

And, unlike some of their competitors, GSM Gold do take their responsible gambling duties seriously and devote a whole section at the foot of the site to that very subject. They state how they want their customers to have fun with their betting but within certain safe parameters and urge punters never to stretch themselves beyond their means.

They encourage the use of self-imposed gambling limits, which they – through their customer services team – are happy to help enforce, and ask that anyone who believes they could be showing signs of problem gambling to contact them at the earliest possible opportunity

Our Verdict

There is no disguising our disappointment over the lack of bonuses and promotions on offer on GSM Gold, but equally there’s no disguising the excellent value available here courtesy of them compiling their odds to around 104%! It’s hard to overestimate quite how impressive those odds are in terms of tilting the table towards the punter and, in truth, only their fellow Blue Bird NV sites come close to offering anything similar.

Also, the site itself is a really good one, with a pleasing design and functionality that is both intuitive and swift. Perhaps the lack of a live match tracker for those who enjoy live betting is something Blue Bird NV can think about for future upgrades, but overall the plusses comfortably outweighed the negatives.

A good site but the lack of a welcome bonus means we recommend you sign up to one of our top-rated sites by clicking below.