Ladbrokes Now In Australia
Ladbrokes is the most recent to seek admittance into the southern hemisphere, following the lead of William Hill and Paddy Power.
Upcoming legislation that will impose a significant ding to the revenue of Great Britain based bookmakers is causing, whilst not a total exodus, an expansion to pastures that charge lower grazing fees, along with having greener grass. Those greener pastures are here in Australia.
They have succeeded in gaining a foothold in Australia by purchasing a controlling interest in Bookmaker.com and the resulting merger would appear to benefit Ladbrokes from the perspective of bypassing the need to initiate a licensing application procedure.
Bookmaker.com has added some serious credibility in terms of financial backing, and punters by giving them an additional choice of agencies in the fiercely competitive arena of online bookmaking.
Ladbrokes, very briefly, because we come here to review Ladbrokes, not to recount their history, got started in Great Britain in 1886 and has been based in London since 1902. They were initially exclusive to the aristocracy and upper classes, with good reason since that would have been where wagering money was present.
They had some hard times following The War to End All Wars and the one that followed, The War to End All Wars Ending All Wars, to the extent that the firm was sold in 1956 for around 100,000 pounds.
Modern times have found them on firmer ground, with around 2,400 betting storefronts scattered throughout Great Britain and Ireland, 13,000 employees and 2013 reported revenues well in excess of one billion pounds.
Ladbrokes Australia
The operation varies a bit from the other jurisdictions where it operates, choosing to focus on sports, racing, and a few novelty markets, leaving the gaming operations out of the mix.
There are a few other stipulations which are clearly and simply explained on a section of the website that is easy to find.
The minimum deposit is $10 and up into your betting account.
Accounts can be funded with Visa and MasterCard, sorry, no American Express or Discover, along with POLi and NetTeller. Ladbrokes is thankfully devoid of transaction fees on deposits and withdrawals.
There is a potential dormant account fee of $25 for punters who have not made a wager for over six months; again, a scenario that does not seem to be necessary for any reason.
There is also a service charge incurred by anyone who deposits money and then tries to withdraw it without making any wagers.
The minimum online wager is $0.50; $20 for telephone wagering, higher than some of the other bookmakers and a consideration due to the Australian requirement of all live betting being arranged by telephone.
Withdrawals are best accomplished through the use of the Ladbrokes Visa card, which can be used at any ATM machine in Australia to withdraw cash. It can even be used for purchases just like any other Visa Card.
It is linked directly to the wagering account and once the initial steps to set up and activate the card have been accomplished, it is possible to withdraw dividends within seconds of final settlement.
The number of available markets is in the thousands. The Australia branch of Ladbrokes leans towards sports and racing, focusing on markets where skill and luck combined provide a reasonable probability of success, as opposed to markets where luck is the only element involved.
For racing punters, there are 11 bet types for Win bets alone. Place bets offer five different bet types. There are 10 exotics. All the different types are not available for every race and some that otherwise would be are not applicable when a race does not have a minimum number of runners for one reason or another.
Sports punters will find the focus on Australian codes, but that does not mean that there are not plenty of international markets. All the major sports are covered in depth and even many others, such as surfing, snooker and darts will offer opportunities from time to time.
Ladbrokes Margins and Odds
The story here with Ladbrokes is that they price their markets to be competitive with any other bookmaker. There are simply too many choices for punters to do consider doing otherwise. Their margins rank them slightly below the average, which is good, because lower margins are better for the punter.
Ladbrokes averages 4.8 percent across all markets, slightly better than the 5.1 percent average of all other bookmakers. Of course, margins for popular events can go considerably lower whilst the niche markets could range a bit higher.
Promotions
Clicking on the Promotions tab that is displayed near the top of most Ladbrokes web pages directs punters to a page. Log in to view promotions.
There will be others dedicated to a major event as well, but one of the nicest things about the Ladbrokes wagering platform is that any event for which there is a promotion of one kind or another will be so noted on the betting slip.
Ladbrokes has one of the cleanest and most intuitive wagering platforms in an industry where all the bookmakers expend great efforts to make their platforms as easy as possible to navigate.
There are also mobile applications for Apple and Android powered devices. It would be next to impossible to find any quibbles with Ladbrokes in this regard and they do deserve praise for the decision to not include distracting animated graphics all over the place.
Conclusion
Yes, odds and margins shoppers might find a better deal on occasion if willing to do the legwork, but that could also be said of other bookmakers checking to see if a better deal could be had at Ladbrokes compared to their regular agency.
Even novice punters will be filling out bet slips in minutes of logging into their accounts and the veterans will find enough markets, great odds and promotions to facilitate some complicated strategies.
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