bet365 or William Hill? Which bookmaker is best for you?

When it comes to battles of the bookmaker heavyweights you won’t find a more titanic matchup than William Hill versus bet365.

In one corner is William Hill, one of the oldest bookmakers in the UK and operator of a massive chain of high street betting shops along with one of the most popular betting websites on the web.

In the other corner is the upstart bet365 which has rocketed to prominence by focusing on online sports betting and providing its customers with great odds and unrivalled sports coverage.

While both these bookies are top quality, each has quirks and benefits which may make it more suitable for your specific sports betting requirements.

In this article we’ll explore the comparative strengths and weaknesses of these bookies, helping you determine which bookie best suits your requirements.

Overview

William Hill is one of the most recognizable betting brands in the United Kingdom. Approaching its 100th birthday, William Hill is also one of the oldest active bookmakers in the United Kingdom.

In contrast, bet365 is a product of the new millennium. Although the bet365 empire was built on the back of a network of underperforming betting shops, it made its name through online sports betting.

While bet365 no longer operates any betting shops, William Hill operates over 1400 betting shops. As such William Hill has bet365 beaten on brand visibility in high street.

However, bet65 has consciously chosen to focus on online sports betting and has pioneered and perfected a number of innovations in this space that has won it almost a 3rd of the UK’s market share.

Sports coverage

William Hill covers around 35 different sports on its website. This includes all sports likely to interest its audience in the UK, Ireland or Europe with all major sporting codes represented.

However, William Hill can’t compete with bet365 when it comes to the sheer number of markets offered, with bet365 covering around 45 different sporting codes.

This includes some very obscure sports, like bandy, floorball and kabaddi. 

bet365 is also ahead of William Hill when it comes to depth of coverage of each sport.

Looking at football, for example, William Hill covers around 50 different leagues, while bet365 covers over 20 in the UK alone. Internationally bet365 offers betting markets for well over 100 different football tournaments and leagues

However, it must be mentioned that William Hill is on par with bet365 when it comes to horse racing betting coverage. There is little to choose between the two in this department with both covering a similar selection of racecourses around the globe.

While bet365 takes this round with score of 10, William Hill by no means lets its customers down and gets a score of 9 for its sports coverage.

Verdict

bet365: 10 William Hill: 9

Available markets

The number of markets available from these two bookies is going to fluctuate wildly depending on the sport and event being covered.

On average you will find the most markets available for high profile events in popular sports like football and fewer in low profile events and/or fringe sports.

In the horseracing department the bookies are neck and neck, with several markets available for races in the UK and Ireland, with each bookie offering a couple of custom markets.

In football both bookies offer dozens of markets, with little to choose between the two except the types of special markets on offer.

Realistically you’re going to have a harder time finding difference in markets available from these two bookies than finding the market you’re looking for at either of them.

With this in mind, this round is a dead heat with both bookies scoring a 9.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Odds

If you’re serious about making a profit from sports betting it all boils down to odds. The higher the odds your bookie offers you, on average, the more you will make when your bets win.

The odds you get from your bookie will depend on the overround they charge on every betting market. This overround represents the bookies ‘cut’ of the market, and its impact is to slightly decrease the odds on offer across the market. This effectively guarantees the bookie a return from each market.

The higher the overround a bookie charges, the bigger the discrepancy between the true probability of your selection winning and the odds on offer.

To determine which of William Hill and bet365 offer the best odds, we looked at odds for a forthcoming round of Premier League matches and calculated the overround for each match, along with the average.

The overround calculated against William Hill’s matches was an average of 7.75% per match while bet365 had an overround of 5.72% per match.

This effectively means that William Hill cut its odds by an average of 7.75% per market, while bet365 cut their odds by 5.72%.

In sports betting a percent or two higher payout over the long term can make all the difference, so we need to hand this round squarely to bet365.

(Note that we do not score William Hill badly as their overround has proven to be significantly lower than some rivals, with Paddy Power amongst the competitors charging exorbitant overrounds.)

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 8

Betting apps

We use user reactions to judge how bookmakers perform when it comes to the quality of their betting apps.

William Hill

• Apple App Store: 4,7 stars 141,000+ ratings
• Google Play: 4.3 stars 207,000 + ratings

bet365

• Apple App Store: 4,7 stars 247,000+ ratings
• Google Play: 4.5 stars 6,400 + ratings

The results speak for themselves. William Hill and bet365 offer comparable quality apps on iOS, while bet365 has an edge when it comes to Android devices.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 8

Offers & Promotions

Once upon a time Paddy Power was the leader in the betting specials race. That was before they were overtaken by their rivals and users cottoned on to the fact that Paddy appeared to be making their money back by charging higher overrounds on popular betting markets.

Both bet365 and William Hill now offer a selection of long running betting specials, which include ongoing football, racing and accumulator specials.

While both bookies chop and change their specials on a frequent basis (you can check William Hill’s latest offers here and do the same for bet365 here), there really isn’t much to choose between the two.

bet365 tends to offer slightly more value on football betting while William Hill has an edge when it comes to racing and accumulator bets.

Both offer great value overall, so we’ll award another tie for this round of the bet365 vs William Hill comparison with both bookies scoring a 9.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Payment methods

Payment methods is something of a dry topic, but let’s face it: you don’t want to have to struggle to deposit funds into your betting account or face unnecessary delays or fees in the process.

William Hill makes it very easy to load up your betting account. Over 20 payment options are available, including all the big vendors like Maestro, Mastercard, VISA, Skrill, PayPal and Neteller.

The majority of depositing options clear instantly with William Hill, with the exception of payments by cheque, electronic bank transfer or Western Union.

You can quickly find out what deposit options are available, and what fees apply to each, here.

bet365 offers fewer deposit options to its users, once again including all major card payment options, including VISA, Mastercard, Electron and Maestro. Google and Apple Pay are also offered. However, bet365 has fewer e-wallet payment options, with PayPal the only major provider accepted in the UK.

Verdict

bet365: 7 WH: 9

License & Security

Both William Hill and bet365 are registered with regulatory bodies.

William Hill’s UK operations are regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority while global operations are regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner.

Meanwhile, bet365 is regulated by the British Gambling Commission.

There’s really not much to choose between the two bookies in this department. bet365 arguably deserves some credit for headquartering itself, and paying tax, in the UK. However, William Hill has more than enough regulatory oversight to keep their activities fair and in line with gambling legislation.

Verdict

bet365: 10 WH: 10

Live betting

William Hill and bet365 are both big on in-play betting.

However, bet365 has been a major pioneer in this area and is hard to beat. On the day of testing bet365 was offering live markets on 17 different sports, excluding virtual sports.

By comparison, William Hill was offering in-play markets on 8 events. bet365 also offered greater market depth in each sport it was covering.

Which is not to say William Hill offers a poor live betting experience. It is simply that bet365 is hard to beat when it comes to live betting and scores a perfect 10 to William Hill’s respectable 8.

Verdict

bet365: 10 WH: 8

Special Features

William Hill and bet365 both have budgets big enough to push innovation on their betting platforms.

William Hill has had some success in this department, particularly with William Hill TV – one of the most popular bookie streaming services around. Hills also offers its #yourodds custom odds service and gives its users access to new tools and features on a regular basis.

bet365 tends to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to special features. It’s biggest value-add is without a doubt the bet365 live streaming service, which allows qualifying customers to watch a large selection of sports events for free from their betting account.

Apart from this bet365 also offers some innovative live betting features, like the match tracker window available on its live betting markets which tracks progression of matches virtually, in real time, including visualizations of plays in the match being bet on.

Again, there’s is little to choose between these two bookies and we rate them both a solid 9 in the special features department.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Usability

William Hill has not refreshed its website in several years, and users will feel the pain when browsing the William Hill betting markets.

Finding the sports event you want to bet on at William Hill can be a real challenge. And the fact that pages sometimes fail to load and have to be refreshed to view markets doesn’t help.

However, it does do something right. As mentioned already, information on deposit methods and other topics is easily available on William Hill and it is super-easy to find information on specials and promotions.

bet365’s website layout hasn’t changed much over the years, and the site is perfectly serviceable. Finding markets is intuitive and straightforward.

However, there are some problems. Finding betting specials is much harder than it needs to be, and the website failed to load markets at all depending on what browser we were using.

It’s surprising that the thing these two betting giants both lose points on is their website usability. bet365 scores a relatively humble 8 in this department, while William Hill is a point behind on 7.

Verdict

bet365: 8 WH: 7

Customer Service

Both William Hill and Paddy Power offer live chat services, which in theory means that both are able to deliver responsive, accessible support to their customers.

So, we’ll need to use real customer feedback to dig beneath the surface and cue us in on which bookie treats their customers the best.

On TrustpPilot William Hill scores a less-than-stellar 1.5 stars out of 5 from its 5,000 + reviews with 30% of reviewers giving it a rating of 4 stars or above.

bet365 is down in the doldrums with William Hill, scoring 1.3 stars out of 5 from 3800 + reviews, with just 9% of reviewers rating bet365 4 stars or above.

Bear in mind that these ratings reflect the fact that users of sites like TrustPilot are more likely to leave negative reviews. You will be hard-pressed to find online bookmakers who score positively on review sites. It was also notable that the majority of the complaints centred around casino games.

That said, William Hill is the winner in the customer service department based on their TrustPilot score and higher percentage of positive reviews.

Verdict

bet365: 6 WH: 7

Casino

William Hill’s casino runs on Playtech software, a 3rd party casino developer that services a number of online betting operations in the United Kingdom.

Playtech is popular for a reason. The software runs smoothly, graphics are attractive, and it generates large jackpot pools by linking the player pools of major bookmakers together.

bet365 uses a combination of its own proprietary casino software with games provided by 3rd party developers, which include Playtech, IGT and others.

The net result is that bet365 also offers a slick, graphically attractive casino experience, while users still benefit from the shared jackpot pools which come with the 3rd party game providers.

This leaves both bookies scoring a 9 in the casino department.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Poker

bet365 and William Hill are both on the iPoker network, one of the largest poker networks in the world, operated by Playtech.

This means there is nothing to separate William Hill and Paddy Power when it comes to online poker, apart from slightly different skins for the poker experience.

Both will provide poker players with access to a large pool of poker players, a wide selection of games and bigger prizes.

bet365 and William Hill tie again with 9 points each.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Bingo

bet365 and William Hill both use 3rd party software providers for their bingo channels.

William Hill sticks with Playtech, the source of its other gaming channel software, providing its bingo players with all the benefits that come with tapping into Playtech’s large network of bingo websites.

bet365, meanwhile, makes use of Pragmatic Play bingo software. This software is used by a large number of dedicated bingo sites, including BOGOF bingo, Bingo Diamond, Bingostars and more.

Once again there is little to choose between the software of the bingo providers operating at this level. Both provide access to large player networks and shared prize pools and you’re unlikely to run into issues with the software on offer from either.

William Hill and bet365 finish neck and neck in the bingo stakes with a 9.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Vegas/Games

Vegas/Games channels are just another route bookies use to channel their users into their casino operations, with the same software on offer with a modified selection of games.

As such, the Vegas/Games scores for bet365 and William Hill will reflect the scores allocated to the two bookies in the casino section of this article.

Which means both bet365 and William Hill score a 9 for their Vegas/Games offerings.

Verdict

bet365: 9 WH: 9

Overall winner

This is a very tight contest, and as one would expect from two of the most popular bookmakers in the world. Ultimately bet365 edged it with 132 points accumulated compared to 129 for William Hill.

While 3 points is a tiny difference, bet365 emerged as the leader in the part of the comparison most likely to impact your betting in the long term, offering higher odds in the popular Premier League match betting markets we analysed.

William Hill proved itself to be strongest in the customer service and in ease of placing a deposit, which both make a significant difference to the overall user experience if you’re most focused on having a smooth ride when you place bets on sports.

As the scores suggest these are both excellent bookies with little to separate them, but if we were forced to sign up to just one of these bookies, bet365 would be our pick.

Verdict

bet365: 132 WH: 129