Betting on badminton online in 2026 - what it costs, who offers it, where the value sits

Updated October 2026

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Online badminton betting in Great Britain sits in an odd corner of the market. The sport is run by an established world federation, draws the second-largest television audience of any racket game after tennis, and has been an Olympic discipline for three decades. The licensed bookmakers’ trade pages, by contrast, treat it as a fixture list rather than a category. There is no headline “Badminton” tab on most sportsbook lobbies, no dedicated markets page and no in-running product anywhere near the size of football’s. Which makes it worth spelling out, on this page, what a bettor actually finds when the search filter finally lands on a badminton match – what the markets look like, how the prices are built, and what the regulator’s frame does and does not cover.

Curated as of 27 October 2026 against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own published terms. A British punter who wants to bet on badminton in 2026 is operating inside one of the better-regulated sports-betting markets anywhere in the world.

The sport, the calendar and why it matters for a bettor

Badminton is governed by the Badminton World Federation (BWF), founded in 1934 as the International Badminton Federation and renamed in 2006. Five disciplines sit under that one umbrella: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. A match is the best of three games; each game is played to 21 points with rally-point scoring – the rally wins the point regardless of who served – and at 20-20 play continues until one side leads by two. At 29-29 the next point wins the game. The court itself is 13.4 metres long, 6.1 metres wide for doubles and 5.18 metres wide for singles; the net stands 1.55 metres high at the edges and 1.524 metres at the centre. None of which has anything to do with a betting slip, but it explains why a match is shorter than a tennis match and why in-running markets come and go quickly: a three-game men’s singles in elite play runs roughly forty to fifty-five minutes, a women’s singles a touch less, and a doubles match can finish in under thirty. A bettor who wants to trade a badminton match has less runway than for any other racket sport.

The tournament calendar gives the fixtures. Badminton has been an official Summer Olympic sport since 1992, with mixed doubles added four years later. The Thomas Cup (men’s team) and Uber Cup (women’s team) are held every two years; the Sudirman Cup, a mixed-team event begun in 1989, also runs on a two-year cycle. The BWF World Championships have been held since 1977 and the All England Open since 1900. Beyond these sit the BWF World Tour Super series (the year-long circuit that determines rankings), the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals, regional Opens and a dense calendar of national Opens in countries with strong domestic interest – China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Japan, Denmark, South Korea. For the British punter the busy weeks of the year run from late January (the Indonesia and Malaysia Opens) through to the season finale in December, with a quiet August because the Olympic or World Championships years break the rhythm.

Two consequences follow. First, the turnover at any one British bookmaker on a Thomas Cup match is small. A market that small carries a wider margin than a Premier League match, and that is where the page’s arithmetic, further down, lands. Second, the fixtures tend to group – two or three weeks of dense play, a fortnight gap, then another cluster – which matters for anyone placing offers whose clock starts ticking at qualifying bet and stops at free-bet expiry or wagering deadline. An offer taken during the All England Open is not the same offer taken during the August quiet.

What a British punter actually finds on the bookmaker’s page

Ten UK-licensed remote operators carry badminton as a betting category at the time this was written, and the table below lists them with the licence number and the terms a punter needs to check before staking. Brand names are capitalised; licence numbers are quoted from the Commission’s public register.

A few patterns are visible in the column on the right. Three of the ten – Sporting Index, Betmaster and VBet – treat badminton as a niche to be filled rather than a category to be designed for. Five more – BetVictor, BetMGM, Betboro, Betfred, William Hill and Sky Bet – list badminton inside a broad sportsbook and let the BWF feed populate it. Tote’s pitch is different again, built around pool products. No one of the ten runs a “Badminton” tab with a permanent markets page; the sport lives in a fixture feed whose depth tracks the BWF calendar. The practical consequence for a punter: rather than comparing ten pages on badminton specifically, the comparison becomes which bookmaker you already trust on football, tennis or horse racing and which of those has the cleanest badminton feed at the moment you want to bet.

Whose licence, whose site, whose complaint route

Every operator above holds a remote operating licence from the Gambling Commission, the non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and set up under the Gambling Act 2005. The Act covers Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales – and is enforced separately in Northern Ireland. The same Act, since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, requires an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain to hold a Commission licence wherever the operator itself is based; a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute. The Commission’s public register, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, is the whole test of who holds one; the licence numbers above come from that register. A punter who wants to confirm a brand can search the register directly before depositing.

The licensed category matters here. The brands in this comparison hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence – the category that allows bookmakers to offer markets on real sporting events – which is what covers badminton. Other categories exist: a pool-betting licence, for example, for horse-racing pool products; a betting intermediary licence, for betting exchanges; a virtual-events licence. None of the ten holds just a casino or virtual licence; all ten can take bets on badminton fixtures.

Financial spread betting – where the loss can exceed the stake – is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority rather than the Commission, and one of the ten (Sporting Index) runs a spread-betting product alongside its fixed-odds book. A punter who has not used a spread bet before should know that the liability runs in both directions: when the position goes wrong it goes wrong by more than the deposit. The FCA register is the equivalent of the Commission’s register for that part of the product.

What the regulator does and does not cover for a badminton punter

Age and identity. The minimum age for any gambling product in Great Britain is 18. Name, address and date of birth have to be verified before a customer can deposit or gamble with any licensed remote operator – in force since 7 May 2019 – including with a free bet or a bonus credited on registration. There is no anonymous betting at a licensed brand. Practical consequence: a new account takes minutes rather than seconds to open, and credit-card deposits have been barred for gambling since 14 April 2020 (LCCP condition 6.1.2), including credit-card-funded e-wallet top-ups.

Markets. There is no statutory list of permitted sports or markets. A licensed operator decides what to offer within its licence conditions and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. In-play betting is offered across the licensed sportsbook category and is governed by the same operator-level controls; there is no rule that says in-play is “unrestricted” and no rule that bans it. Esports and politics betting are similarly offered at operator discretion. Badminton markets, as a result, are a function of the licence and the BWF feed rather than of any rule book.

Player protection. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme; a GB-licensed online operator has been a mandatory member since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum expires the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service. A financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30 days (from 28 February 2025): it is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments and the like), not an income check. The more publicised “affordability checks” – financial risk assessments – were announced by the Commission in July 2026 in a staged plan with no start date, so write “announced, staged, no start date” rather than “in force”. Help lines: GamCare (National Gambling Helpline), GambleAware, NHS gambling clinics, Gamblers Anonymous. A badminton punter who wants a self-imposed ceiling can set deposit limits at any licensed site or self-exclude across the lot through GAMSTOP.

Bonuses. Promotion rules that came into force on 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x: a £10 bonus at 50x would require £500 of qualifying bets, and under the cap no more than £100 of wagering is needed. Mixed-product promotions – an offer requiring play on two or more of betting, casino, bingo or lottery – are banned. The cap and the marketing-side rules do not stop a sportsbook from offering enhanced odds, acca insurance or a free bet to a badminton punter; they shape how heavy a bonus can be.

Tax. The punter pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain (general information, not tax advice; a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser). General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax at 15% of gross profit, with a new remote rate of 25% applying from 1 April 2027; remote bets on UK horse racing, self-service betting terminal bets, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Whether operators pass the duty through into the odds has not been established; the punter side is what matters here, and the punter side owes nothing to HMRC on a winning badminton bet.

Offshore. The point of consumption rule means a GB-licensed bookmaker is the legal product. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence aimed at the operator, with the penalties set out in section 33 of the 2005 Act. No offence aimed at a customer who simply bets on an unlicensed site was found in the regulator’s published guidance. What is given up by betting offshore is the protection: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution service, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, not bound by the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check. Enforcement at the operator end is disruption – cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, registrar and payment-provider work – not blocking, though court-order DNS blocking powers are in the pipeline.

Offers, free bets and the cost of “free” at a badminton bookmaker

The headline “free bet” or “100% bonus” is the marketing offer that needs the closest reading at a badminton bookmaker, because the headline number rarely tells the punter what the offer costs to clear. A free bet whose stake is not paid back with the winnings is worth the free-bet amount multiplied by (odds minus 1) divided by the odds, then multiplied by the payout share of the market the bet is placed in. A £10 free bet at decimal odds 6.00 on a market with a 95% payout share returns about £7.92 on average – £10 multiplied by 5, divided by 6, multiplied by 0.95. That is the offer’s expected value, not the offer’s headline. Which is to say a “£30 free bet” attached to a £10 minimum deposit and a 5x turnover requirement can cost a punter £150 of qualifying bets at minimum price before any free-bet stake is placed; the dead heat on those qualifying bets, after the bookmaker’s margin, is what the offer pays for.

A 100% matched offer is the other common shape. The wagering requirement is the multiple, the basis is the offer (or the offer plus the deposit), and the market margin is what the qualifying bets lose. A £25 deposit matched at 100% with a 5x turnover requirement on bonus-and-deposit terms means £250 of qualifying bets before a withdrawal; on bonus-only terms it means £125. A minimum odds threshold on the qualifying bet – 3/5 (1.60), or 1/2 (1.50), or evens (2.00) – is the most common restriction and the one most often missed. A bet placed below the threshold does not count.

The same goes for acca insurance. Bookmakers offer to refund stakes (usually as free bets, not cash) if one leg of a four-fold or five-fold loses. The refund is the punter’s safety net; the bookmaker’s margin on the legs is the cost; the wagering requirement on the refund is the trap. The refund is rarely cash, the refund is rarely withdrawable, and the refund usually has its own expiry. A punter who plans an acca around a badminton match should look at the offer’s terms before staking, not after.

The check-list below is what a badminton punter reads in the offer’s small print before claiming anything. The list is in the order the punter actually reads it.

• The bonus basis. Whether the wagering requirement applies to bonus only or to bonus plus deposit; what the multiple is.
• The minimum price. The minimum decimal odds the qualifying bet has to be at to count.
• The market exclusion. Whether the offer is for singles, multiples or both; whether virtual sports and eSports are excluded.
• The expiry. The deadline after which the free bet or the bonus expires; the deadline for the qualifying bets.
• The wagering on winnings. Whether the free-bet stake is returned with the winnings or not.
• The cap. Any cap on free-bet winnings, on bonus conversion or on the maximum bet size during the clearing period.

For a specific guide to how a bonus converts into the punter’s pocket, the arithmetic of an offer’s expected cost is given in the section on margins below.

Live badminton betting and what cash out actually delivers

Badminton is a short-format sport – a three-game men’s singles lasts forty to fifty-five minutes, a doubles match under half an hour – which makes it a natural fit for in-play betting: the trade windows are short but the games come thick, particularly during tournament clusters. Most of the brands reviewed run an in-play product that surfaces badminton fixtures when the BWF feed is active; live score and point-by-point feeds are the norm; live video on badminton is rare at the British bookmaker end. A punter expecting to watch the match in the betting app while trading it will not find a video stream and should adjust the plan accordingly.

In-play markets on badminton are usually the match winner, the game winner, the next-game winner, the next-point winner and a handful of handicaps and totals (over/under on total points, on points in game two, and so on). The menu is narrow against football or tennis, and the liquidity at most British bookmakers is thinner than for the bigger sports, which is why margins on badminton in-play markets tend to be wider.

Cash out is a separate product. Most of the ten offer auto or partial cash out on football and the larger sports; its coverage of badminton depends on the live feed and is rarely advertised in advance. A cash-out price is the bookmaker’s own estimate of what the bet is worth at that point, not the market’s; the price carries the bookmaker’s in-running margin and may sit wider than the equivalent pre-match price. A punter who uses cash out on a badminton match should know that the price is a closed quote – take it or leave it – and that the bookmaker’s margin is already in it.

The live betting product is best used, on this sport, as a tie-breaker rather than a strategy. A match that is going long, a third game that has gone past 10-10, a doubles pair whose second-set rhythm has just broken – those are situations where a small in-play position has more edge than a pre-match bet would have had. Most days it is better to take the pre-match price.

Predictions, form and the limits of a badminton betting tip

There is no “best badminton prediction site” in the way there is for football. The market is too small for the tipster industry to have built a beachhead on. What there is, instead, is form data – the BWF rankings, the head-to-head record, the season record on a particular surface (where the term applies), the recent injury list and the tournament-specific form – which any punter can pull from the BWF website and a handful of stat feeds. A model built from those inputs performs better than a tip written by a journalist; how much better is a matter for the punter’s own back-testing.

Two constraints bound any badminton model. The first is the sample size. The men’s top ten play roughly twenty to twenty-five tournaments a year, with a small number of head-to-heads each season. A model that needs fifty matches between two players will struggle to find them. The second is the data lag. Pulling serving patterns, shot placement, rally length and the other granular feeds requires either a paid stats provider or a manual log; the BWF publishes shot-by-shot data for selected events but not for the full year. A punter with a personal log of ten tournaments will know things the model does not; a punter who has watched ten tournaments on television will think he knows things the model does not, but the gap is smaller than it feels.

The honest framing, on a page like this, is that no model produces winning predictions at scale on badminton – or on any sport, with the usual caveat that any bettor who claims one does should be asked for the audit trail. What a punter can do is sharpen the bet: tighter match selection, taking only pre-match prices on the best-supported markets, declining the live markets the bookmaker has priced the loosest, and writing off the rounds where the form gaps are widest. Bankroll discipline – a stake sized as a percentage of the betting fund, not a flat amount per match – is the single habit that separates a punter who lasts the season from one who doesn’t. The habit is not specific to badminton; it is what the form model is for.

Markets, odds formats and how a badminton price is built

The standard badminton markets at a British bookmaker are these. Match winner: the most liquid, with two runners and a margin that tracks the form gap. Game winner: per-game pricing on a match, useful when one player is strong across formats but the game-by-game shape is uneven. Handicap: a games handicap (for example, +1.5 games) used to balance a heavy favourite, or a points handicap (-2.5 or +2.5 points) inside a single game. Totals: over/under on total points across a match or across a single game. Set betting: the scoreline (2-0, 2-1) which is the equivalent of a correct-score bet. Accumulators: the same match-winner legs rolled into an acca, often with insurance as a marketing offer. Outright: the tournament winner, the BWF World Tour Finals winner, the Thomas Cup, the Olympic gold medalist.

Fractional odds are the British convention. 5/1 (five-to-one) means a winning £1 stake returns £5 of profit plus the £1 stake; decimal odds, the same bet, are 6.00 (£1 returns £6, of which £5 is profit). 11/4 reads as 3.75 in decimal (eleven divided by four, plus one). Evens is 1/1 in fractional or 2.00 in decimal – the bet returns the stake and a stake-sized profit. “Odds-on” is the British term for a price shorter than evens: 4/6 (1.67) or 1/2 (1.50). The conversion is the same in every case: decimal = (a / b) + 1. The British punter who shops between fractional and decimal should know both; some bookmakers default to fractional, some to decimal, and the bonus terms often quote the minimum price in one or the other.

The bet types that multiply the legs are called accumulators (“accas” in the trade). A single is one selection; a double is two; a treble is three; a four-fold is four. Past four the named bets are: Trixie (4 bets), Patent (7), Yankee (11), Lucky 15, Super Yankee or Canadian (26), Heinz (57), Goliath (247). A Lucky 15 is fifteen bets on four selections – four singles, six doubles, four trebles and one four-fold – so the unit stake of £1 turns into a total stake of £15. The return on a winning accumulator is the stake multiplied by the multiplied decimal odds of the legs (a treble of three 2.00 legs returns the stake multiplied by 8, so a £1 treble returns £8). Each-way bets are double-staked – the win half and the place half at the place terms.

How the margin sits inside a badminton price. The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every unit bet on a market. The arithmetic is straightforward for a two-way market. Take decimal odds of 1.90 against 1.90 on a match-winner market: the implied probabilities sum to 1 / 1.90 plus 1 / 1.90, which is 0.5263 plus 0.5263, or 1.0526. That sum is the overround. The payout share – what is returned to bettors on average out of every £1 wagered on the market – is the inverse of the overround: 1 / 1.0526, or about 95.0%. The margin is 100% minus the payout share: about 5.0%. Which says that at a 1.90 / 1.90 market the bookmaker keeps roughly 5p of every £1 staked across the market on average, and pays back 95p to bettors collectively. A market priced at 1.80 / 1.80 sums to 1.1111, has a payout share of 90.0% and a margin of 10.0% – a heavier take. A market priced at 1.95 / 1.95 sums to 1.0256, has a payout share of 97.5% and a margin of about 2.5% – a lighter take, and the kind of margin that tends to sit on a deep, well-traded market rather than a niche one. The same calculation on badminton: the dense markets around a Thomas Cup tie carry a margin closer to the 5.0% example above; the thin markets on an early-round doubles match in a quieter BWF Open carry a margin closer to the 10.0% figure. The punter’s reading of a price, before staking, is whether the margin inside it leaves value after the form model has done its work.

A worked example. A punter places a £10 single at decimal odds of 3.75 on a men’s singles match winner. The return on a win is the stake multiplied by the odds: £10 × 3.75 = £37.50. The profit is £27.50. If the punter places the same bet as one leg of a four-fold with the other legs at 1.80, 2.10 and 2.50, the multiplied price is 3.75 × 1.80 × 2.10 × 2.50 = 35.4375. A £1 stake returns £35.44 on a win; a £10 stake returns £354.38. The punter only collects if all four legs win. The same effect on a Trixie (four bets across three selections) is what makes the named bets attractive – the punter pays for a partial payout – and is what makes them expensive when the legs do not all come in.

How the bookmakers compare as badminton platforms

The ten licensed operators share a GB licence and a regulatory frame. They differ on the badminton feed, the live-betting product, the bonus shape and the banking side. What follows is what sets each apart for a punter interested specifically in badminton. Treat the order as the order of the table above; the verdict at the end of each block is the operator’s specific case in this comparison.

BetVictor

BetVictor carries badminton inside its mainstream sports lobby alongside tennis, table tennis and the other racket categories – a placement that suits a punter who wants to find the sport without a separate navigation path. The site cites Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, enhanced live race streaming, a BetFinder feature for racing and Smart Stats; those are not badminton features, but the underlying trading-and-pricing technology is what makes the badminton feed feel solid. The brand’s pitch to a punter is breadth and an established GB presence rather than a badminton-specific angle. For a badminton bettor the brand fits as a secondary bookmaker: a serious feed on the bigger tournaments, paired with another brand for the smaller ones.

Sporting Index

Sporting Index runs a spread-betting product alongside its fixed-odds book, with in-play, Bet Builder (football), auto cash-out and Multi-Markets. The spread product suits a punt with a view on totals – the total number of points in a game, the margin of victory, the number of games in a match – and the fixed-odds product covers the standard markets. The catch is that spread losses can exceed the deposit; the FCA-regulated half of the product is not a fixed-odds book and a punter who has not run a spread position before should size small. A badminton bettor will find its niche in the spread markets on totals and handicaps; for fixed-odds match betting, the brand is a standard choice that offers consistent market coverage.

Tote

Tote is best known as a pool-betting operator, and its badminton offering tracks whatever the BWF feed carries during a tournament. The pool format is the differentiator: instead of a fixed-odds price, the pool distributes the stake pool minus a take to the winners, with the dividend declared after the race or match. For a badminton punter that means a different kind of bet – one whose dividend is unknown until the pool closes – and a different reading of value. The brand suits the punter who already plays pools on horse racing and wants to extend the habit to badminton; it is not where a new punter builds a badminton book from.

BetMGM

BetMGM’s UK sportsbook sits inside a LeoVegas Gaming PLC licence, with the BetMGM brand hosting the full general sports catalogue. The brand’s welcome offer is a £10-or-more deposit and a first sports bet within seven days triggering four £10 free bets – two football accas of four-plus selections and two sports multiples of two-plus – all valid for seven days, with minimum odds and an opt-in. The structure is light, the deadline is short and the free-bet stake is not paid back. The brand’s appeal lies in its mainstream presence and offer familiarity, though badminton is a background interest here rather than a core focus.

Betboro

Betboro is operated by a Curaçao-headed business with the GB licence held through Webmedia Development N.V. The site’s sports welcome offer is a 100% matched free bet of up to £25 on the first qualifying wager, requiring a debit card deposit of at least £10 and a first bet of £5 to £25 with at least three selections each at 3/5 (1.60) or higher. The shape – a small percentage match at a low minimum price – is light by industry standards. It sits in the middle of the pack; expectations for both the offer shape and the feed depth should be moderate compared to the wider market.

Betmaster

The Betmaster app is published by BM Solutions GB Ltd and covers football, cricket, horse racing, NFL and eSports – League of Legends and Dota 2 in particular – rather than the racket category as a focus. Badminton is on the feed but the brand’s priority is elsewhere. This operator is better suited for a punter who primarily uses it for horse racing or eSports, with badminton serving as a minor secondary category.

Betfred

Betfred is one of the largest UK retail bookmakers, with a sportsbook covering twenty-one sports and a casino-style games catalogue of over two thousand titles. The brand’s badminton offering sits inside that broad catalogue, available on the strength of the schedule and the BWF feed. Its strength is its retail-to-online reach and brand recognition, but the badminton coverage remains a minor part of the overall catalogue.

William Hill

William Hill offers Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 a.m. on the day of the race, on singles and multiples but not ante-post, tote or pari-mutuel bets – a feature that does not touch badminton but signals the kind of trading discipline that runs across the brand. Depth of bookmaking is the primary draw, with a solid badminton feed during major BWF tournaments and a thinner offering in the off-season.

VBet

VBet’s sports welcome offer is a £10 free bet when a new verified customer stakes £10 or more on a first-ever bet that loses – a refund-style offer rather than a matched bonus, with the refund coming as a free bet whose stake is not paid back. For a badminton punter the appeal is the modest shape of the offer, the £10 entry point and the focus on a single loss-recovery bet. VBet’s badminton feed sits in the lower-priority part of its sports menu, broader during BWF events and narrower at quieter times.

Sky Bet

Sky Bet’s free bets expire thirty days after crediting, can be used only on singles or each-way markets rather than multiples, exclude virtuals, are non-withdrawable and do not return the stake with winnings. That is the standard Sky Bet offer shape and it sets the tone for the brand’s badminton product. The feed is broad on major BWF events and tighter off-tournament. For a badminton punter the brand suits the punter who wants a long shelf-life on the free bet rather than the punter who wants acca insurance on a running tournament.

A punter’s working method

For a punter new to badminton betting, three habits carry further than any single tip. The first is to pick a bookmaker for the feed, not the offer. A bookmaker with a BWF feed that prices matches within a minute of the line-up is more useful than one with a £100 free bet and a feed that prices the same match an hour late. The second is to set the bankroll discipline in writing before the first bet: a percentage stake, a stop-loss for the session and a stop-loss for the week. The third is to use one offer at a time; the offers stack in the marketing but the wagering requirements do not, and the punter who tries to clear two at once clears neither.

For a punter who already plays tennis or football at a licensed bookmaker and wants badminton as an extension, the route is shorter. Open the existing account’s badminton lobby during a BWF event; check the margins on the match winner and the totals; and start with a stake small enough that a bad read does not derail the week’s bankroll. The rest follows from the form model and the calendar.

Frequently asked questions

How is a bet on badminton placed from start to finish?

A registered punter opens the badminton lobby – usually reached through the bookmaker’s main sports menu and the racket or “more sports” filter – and selects a fixture. The betslip opens on the right of the page; the punter enters the stake, checks the odds and confirms the bet. Money is debited from the cash balance; winnings, on a successful bet, are credited back. In-play bets are placed the same way, with the odds refreshing as the match progresses. The first deposit, though, requires identity verification first – a name, address and date of birth check, with a credit check at higher spend as part of the financial vulnerability rules.

How is it checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Searching by the brand’s name (or by the company name on the brand’s terms page) returns the licence record, the categories the licence covers, the licence holder and the trading names authorised. A licence number of the shape shown in the table above is the format the register uses; the brands listed in this page sit on the register with the numbers given. The register is the whole test – if the brand is there with a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, the brand can take bets on badminton from customers in Great Britain.

What does a winning bet return?

The return is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 single at decimal odds of 3.75 returns £37.50 on a win, of which £27.50 is profit; the same £10 at odds of 1.50 returns £15, of which £5 is profit. On a combination bet – a double, a treble, an acca – the return is the stake multiplied by the multiplied price of the legs. A £5 treble at 2.00, 2.00 and 2.00 returns £40 on a win (£5 multiplied by 8), of which £35 is profit. The bet only collects if every leg wins.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how is it visible in the odds?

The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every unit bet on a market, on average. The arithmetic on a two-way market uses the sum of the implied probabilities of the prices: 1 / odds a plus 1 / odds b. A market at 1.90 / 1.90 sums to about 1.0526; the inverse – 1 / 1.0526, or about 95.0% – is the payout share, and the margin is 100% minus that, or 5.0%. The margin is what makes the two prices add up to more than 1.00 in implied probability: the extra is the bookmaker’s take, paid for by the bettor on average across every bet on the market. A 1.80 / 1.80 market carries a margin of about 10.0%; a 1.95 / 1.95 market carries about 2.5%. Badminton markets at busy BWF events tend to sit closer to the 5.0% example; thin markets on early-round matches in quiet Opens carry wider margins.

How do fractional odds such as 5/1 convert to decimal odds such as 6.00?

The conversion is the same for every British price: decimal = (a / b) + 1. For 5/1: 5 divided by 1, plus 1 = 6.00. For 11/4: 11 divided by 4 (2.75), plus 1 = 3.75. For evens, or 1/1: 1 divided by 1, plus 1 = 2.00. “Odds-on” prices – 4/6, 1/2 – convert to prices shorter than 2.00 in decimal (1.67 and 1.50 respectively). Some bookmakers show fractional by default, some show decimal; switching is usually a settings choice in the account. The decimal price is the one used in the betslip arithmetic and in the margin calculation above, so the punter who reads in fractional should know the decimal equivalent of any price they consider staking on.

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