TopBet is a bookmaker with a major South African presence and an amazing mobile app.
It offers live sports betting and great bonuses.
Its advantages and disadvantages are compared in this review so you can decide if it's the right choice for you and your family.
Here's some background information about the company:
- Topbet is a company that provides betting on live, upcoming or ongoing sports events. They also offer gambling on other types of events, such as politics, Olympics etc.
It has offices in South Africa, India, Indonesia and Italy.
Topbet South Africa was founded in 2010 by Jason Penfold who became the CEO of the company.
He was previously an employee of BetStars, an online sportsbook which was acquired by Betfair plc in 2008.
Betstars was among the first online bookmakers to offer live betting odds to everyone around the world instead of just people living in Europe and other countries with high populations.
The betting service provided by Topbet is exactly the same as on BetStars so it has great advantages for sports bettors.
Topbet had two big advantages over its competitors:
- Most popular sportsbook on South African market since 2010
- Most sports odds website on South African market since 2012
Its disadvantages are : Limited sports lines offered to some countries, at least until now. Live betting limits, some of which are very low, which are the main reason of the low number of bets placed on some events at Topbet. They have some other disadvantages but not important for this review.
Topbet is a professional bookmaker at a gambling market that is very saturated by several brokers.
The company managed to survive the fierce competition in South Africa for years by offering great advantages to its customers.
In this review we'll see : The advantages of using Topbet Mobile App, bonuses, live sports betting and other options.
Then we'll compare this bookmaker with its main competitors: BetStars and Unibet .
Finally we'll answer the question: Is it really the best bookie in South Africa?
Advantages of Topbet: Quick Payouts
TopBet offers very quick payments, the fastest ever reported on the South African market.
Their average payment time is very short. The fastest ever was 1 hour, the longest was 5 days.
TopBet payout system is based on "put funds to hold" system. This mean that you can deposit 100% of your winnings into the Topbet account but only use a small amount of this money for placing bets that are very low compared to your total balance at Topbet. For example you have 1000$ at Topbet, but only use 1000$ to place high value bets.
If you're lucky, this 1000$ will cover all your losses and will be left with 100$. So if for example there's a draw in the game you've bet on, everything will be paid back. In other words Topbet will deduct all possible betting losses from your balance only .
If you have 1000$ at Topbet and place 10 bets with 1000$ each, you can win 9 of them and lose one. In this case Topbet will deduct 90% of the losses, in other words 900$, from your balance , leaving a remaining amount of 100$.
This system is very advantageous for bettors because they don't have to wait long before getting their money back.
There are some bookmakers that have payout times ranging from 1 to 14 days. The latter are the most terrible because some bettors have to wait for more than a week before getting their winnings.
Topbet also offers fast withdrawals, with an average payout time of 2 days.
This short waiting time is very good for people who want to get their winnings as fast as possible.
However, Topbet has bad withdrawal limits, which will be discussed later in the article.
This is one of the main disadvantages of Topbet but can be avoided by using banks or other deposit methods that require less identification information . This will be discussed later on this post.
TopBet is one of the biggest bookmakers on South African market, if not still the biggest in 2016.
Its winning percentage is very high, so are the number of bets placed at the bookmaker.
Here are some facts about their client base:
Total client base 27.5 million
Service offered in South-Africa: Their website and app.
Topbet is pretty powerful on the market, but it still has to fight with competition from other bookmakers such as Unibet , BetStars and many others.
Topbet is also a leader in terms of mobile app usage among sportsbettors in South Africa. According to an annual survey by the Mobile Entertainment Marketing Association (MEMA) , Topbet was chosen as Best Android App of 2016 and 2017 .
TopBet was rated as very good on both Android and iOS devices. A total of 97 % of respondents said they were satisfied with their Topbet mobile app.
This is a huge advantage compared to Unibet and BetStars because these companies have bigger problems with their apps on mobiles .
TopBet offers several bonuses that are very different from each other . If you're a new customer, you will receive a first time deposit bonus of 200%.
This means that if you deposit 100$, Topbet will offer 300$ to be used for placing bets.
As an existing customer, Topbet doesn't offer any bonuses , which is very bad . But they offer reload bonuses instead.
A reload bonus is basically a percentage of your previous deposit that you get in free money to be used to place bets.
For example, if you deposited 50$ in the past week and now 50$ again, Topbet will pay you 10% of the old deposit , in other words 5$, added to your new deposit, which is 55$. So you can use 60$ to place bets instead of just 55$. This means that every time you reload money into Topbet account , you get free betting funds.
The maximum amount for a reload bonus is 100%, so if you deposited 300$, Topbet will add an additional 300$, making it 600$.
The only problem with reload bonuses is that they're quite low . It's unlikely that you can win enough to be profitable.
TopBet also offers deposits and withdrawals bonuses , but they're not as good as the reload bonuses.
For example, if you deposit 30$ or more , you will receive a 0.5% deposit bonus for your betting account . If you withdraw 20$, you will receive a 1% withdrawal bonus.
If Topbet doesn't offer any bonuses at all, it will be perfectly fine because the bookmaker has the best odds comparing to its competitors.
However, Topbet offers great reload bonuses. They are easy to win and will make your money grow faster without any extra effort on your part.
Let's see how it works:
"First time deposit bonus" : (200%)
For example, if you deposit 100$ , TopBet will pay 200$ to be used for placing bets, which is 200% of the deposit amount .So in this case 100$ will be able to place bets.
If you deposit 500$, TopBet will pay 500$ that will be added to your account , which means that 500$ can place bets . It's like doubling your betting power by getting double the betting funds .