The Sky Betting and Gaming company is a British-based gambling company that is actually owned by The Stars Group, the same company that owns PokerStars, which you may be more familiar with than you are Sky Bet.
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Have you seen the Sky Bet ads on TV, with Jeff Stelling and co telling you to bet on football with them? Are you reading this Sky Bet review because you’re wondering whether you should sign up?
Well, DON’T DO IT!
Actually, I’m really glad you came here first, because it gives me the chance to save you making a big mistake.
Our Rating: (0.5 / 5)
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Don’t get me wrong. There was a time when Sky Bet used to be one of my favourite places to bet online. But that all seems a long time ago now.
These days, Sky Bet is no longer owned by Sky. Things have gone completely downhill since Sky sold out the brand, and these days it is, in my opinion, one of the worst online betting sites out there.
In this detailed Sky Bet App review, I’ll tell you all about what’s happened over the last few years. You’ll learn why I no longer trust them with my money, and why I wouldn’t install their mobile app if it was the last one on Earth.
Alternatives To Sky Bet
If you came here looking to download the Sky Bet app right now, hopefully the rating has put you off already. So here are some great alternative betting apps that you can trust. Try one of these instead.
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Overview & History
As I said earlier, when Sky Bet was originally owned by Sky PLC, everything was pretty good. It was a nice place to bet, had good offers, helpful service, and even a pretty decent app back in the day.But that was then and this is now. Unfortunately, they decided to put profit over their customers. In 2014, Sky decided to sell the majority stake in Sky Bet (which includes Sky Vegas and Sky Bingo) to a private venture capital group called CVC Capital Partners. This was good news for their shareholders, but bad news for their business partners, and most importantly, their millions of punters.
From that point on, Sky still had a minority share in the business, but they were no longer in control. CVC were making all the decisions, and typically venture capitalists only care about one thing – profit.
How Sky Bet Went Bad
Things didn’t change immediately, but over time punters, myself included, began to notice that things were changing. As someone who looks for value bets, I saw the odds getting progressively worse. Others noticed the standard of customer service going downhill. The Sky Bet app listings on Google Play and App Store started getting filled with tons of very positive reviews which were obviously fake.
In 2015 and then 2017, Sky Bet made moves to completely shaft the hundreds of marketing partners who they had made deals with to promote the brand.
In case you think this review is just sour grapes – it’s not. I dodged that particular bullet, and Mobile Betting Site has never carried any ads for Sky Bet. Others did however, and were cheated out of millions of pounds.
Then in 2018, Sky Bet were fined £1 Million by the UK Gambling Commission for failing to protect vulnerable customers. This included deliberately marketing to, and accepting bets from problem gamblers who’d self excluded.
The action against Sky Bet, which is listed on their UKGC license, states that (and I quote):
- 736 self-excluded customers were able to open and use duplicate accounts to gamble
- Around 50,000 self-excluded customers received marketing material by email, mobile text or a push notification within a mobile app
- 36,748 self-excluded customers did not have their account balance funds returned to them on account closure.
Not good at all, and that is a massive understatement.
Selling Out Again
A few weeks later, Sky Bet was sold again, this time to Stars Group. That’d be the same Stars Group that was fined $731 Million by the US Government for illegal activity including fraudulent payment processing.
Does that fill you full of confidence? Me neither.
So even though they’re still allowed to keep using the brand name, and even though you see the likes of Jeff Stelling advertising them, Sky now don’t own any stake in Sky Bet at all. Both they and CVC have made a nice fat profit from shafting their partners, marketing to vulnerable problem gamblers and then selling out to a company with a dubious history.
Now you know why I’m advising you not to join Sky Bet!
Is The Sky Bet App Any Good?
In the interests of fairness, it’s worth having a quick work about the Sky Bet app itself. If you look at the app in isolation, and ignore the fact that by using it you’re betting with a company that I believe cannot be trusted, then the answer is yes it’s OK. Although nowhere near as good as it used to be.
The latest versions of both the Sky Bet Android app and it’s iOS counterpart were installed and tested by our team in 2021 and they worked OK. There was no particular performance degradation, and in general they were fairly easy to use.
I am very suspicious about some of the reviews of the Sky Bet app on Google Play and App Store. I’ve been doing this a while, and I’m able to spot a fake review fairly easily.
I’m not saying all their reviews are definitely fake, because I obviously can’t prove that. But when an app gets a bunch of 5* reviews all at once from users that had never previously posted anything, it does raise suspicions.
I’ll leave you to make up your own mind on that. But as for me, my very low Sky Bet review rating is based more upon them as a company than the quality of the app itself.
Conclusion: Is Sky Bet A Scam?
I’m certainly not telling you that Sky Bet is a scam, so any lawyers reading this, you can put your pens down and shove your threatening letters where they belong. What I am doing is giving you factual evidence, linked with appropriate citations, which shows you what has happened to the brand between 2014 and today.
My personal opinion, which I am allowed to share, is that in 2021 Sky Bet is a brand which I do not trust, and never will do again. This is down to my own experience betting with them, as much as the other factors described above.
Our Rating: (0.5 / 5)
My advice is do not bet here. There are plenty of better alternatives, so choose one of them instead.
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Last Updated on February 21, 2021
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PokerStars is all in on sports betting.
The online site’s parent company announced Saturday that it has agreed to acquire Sky Betting & Gaming from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and the British media company Sky in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.7 billion. The merger will result in the “world’s largest publicly listed online gaming company”, according to the Stars Group, formerly known as Amaya Gaming Group.
Amaya bought PokerStars in 2014 for $4.9 billion.
“The acquisition of SBG is a landmark moment in the Stars Group’s history,” company CEO Rafi Ashkenazi said in a statement. “SBG operates one of the world’s fastest growing sportsbooks and is one of the U.K.’s leading gaming providers. SBG’s premier sports betting product is the ideal complement to our industry-leading poker platform. The ability to offer two low-cost acquisition channels of this magnitude provides the Stars Group with great growth potential.”
Ashkenazi added that the Stars Group will become 'the world’s favorite iGaming destination” under the deal. The company said it identified cost synergies of at least $70 million per year.
Despite its strong global presence, PokerStars is licensed in just one U.S. jurisdiction for online betting (New Jersey), and the platform is currently shut out of online poker liquidity sharing with Nevada because it doesn’t have interactive gaming approval from Las Vegas casino regulators. In 2015, PokerStars launched an offshoot offering called BetStars, a sports betting product that could soon find a place in the U.S. if the Supreme Court this year overturns a federal law banning sports betting outside of Nevada. Acquiring SBG bolsters PokerStars’ fledgling sports betting business. In 2016, Amaya’s deal to merge with William Hill, another sports betting juggernaut, fell through.
SBG is currently home to the United Kingdom’s largest active online player base, according to the Stars Group. The U.K. is the world’s largest regulated online gambling market.
The Stars Group will soon rely on poker less than ever before. According to the news release, poker could eventually represent about a third of the company’s gambling winnings going forward thanks to the acquisition of SBG. PokerStars had revenue of $877 million in 2017 from real-money poker games, a small increase over 2016. The poker revenue was 67 percent of the group’s total gambling winnings last year, down from roughly 73 percent in 2016.
The company’s emerging online sportsbook offerings saw its active user base grow by 27 in the fourth quarter of 2017. The SBG deal is expected to continue the growth.
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The news release also said that Stars has obtained “fully committed” debt financing of about $7 billion. About $3.6 billion of the purchase price will come in the form of cash, with the rest coming from newly-issued shares. Some of the financing will go towards paying off SBG’s debt.
The Stars Group ended 2017 with about $283 million in operational cash on its balance sheet.
The group’s board of directors unanimously approved the transaction. The company anticipates the transaction closing in the third quarter of 2018.