At SBK, we believe in offering our customers the absolute best value with complete transparency. Our Best Price feature is designed to show you exactly how our odds stack up against seven of the leading providers in the market, helping you make informed betting decisions and understand the importance of price in betting.
This article provides a detailed breakdown of how we collect and present our price comparison data.
For the purpose of our Best Price feature, we conduct comparisons with the following providers:
- SkyBet
- Ladbrokes
- Unibet
- Coral
- Betway
- BetVictor
- Paddy Power
- William Hill
We have chosen these companies on the basis that they are among the most popular brands in the United Kingdom by revenue and user numbers and provide a sports betting product that is comparable to our own. We will consistently look to add more providers where possible.
The Best Price green arrows (chevrons) indicate when we have the best, or joint best odds compared to the other providers. These arrows will not appear if:
- Our odds are worse than the other providers
- Our comparison data is not up to date
Best Price Feature: How It Works
Price Comparison Banners
After you place a bet, you'll see an informative banner that will highlight whether you had the best price, joint best price, or whether you could have gotten a better price elsewhere. In all cases you can click to see a more detailed breakdown of all the prices we collected and compared against for this bet.
Price Comparison Screen
On all banners, you can:
- Click the "Price Comparison" button
- View a comprehensive breakdown of returns across the different providers
- Understand the exact monetary differences across the different providers
Our Data Collection Methodology
Data Collection Process
We base our comparisons on third party data collected from providers' websites and apps at a specific date and time.
Our price comparison feature is:
- Powered by proprietary software which collects odds data from multiple sources as frequently as possible
- Compares SBK's prices against the leading providers highlighted at the beginning of the article
- The data is refreshed every 30 seconds
- Performs a final check at the time of your bet placement for maximum accuracy
Data Sources
We gather odds information through a variety of sources to provide you with the most accurate comparison possible. We use:
- Third party odds data feeds
- Specialized odds comparison sites
- Periodic direct reviews of publicly available information on provider websites to validate automated data collection
We want to provide the most relevant and helpful comparisons to users so we look at the largest operators in each country in which we operate in terms of online search volume, number of customers and market share. We only include a provider on our comparison table if the relevant odds data is available to us. Since we’re not a price comparison website, we don’t receive any commission for featuring providers on our comparison tables, so our ability to show a comparison is dependent on the availability of the relevant data for these providers.
Please keep in mind that the information shown in our comparison table is for informational purposes only and we encourage you to do your own research.
Understanding Our Price Comparison
Data collection and Comparison
We systematically compare our odds against the odds of the other leading providers, ensuring a comprehensive market view.
Due to the range of data sources we use, our price comparison data is accurate within a 30 seconds window, reflecting the dynamic nature of betting markets. As a result, the information you see on the comparison table may differ from the information you see on the provider's website or when initiating a bet as a customer.
We take extra steps of precaution to ensure data accuracy – such as discarding prices that are older than 15 minutes – but we cannot ensure up-to-the-second accuracy of the data on the comparison table, so we always recommend you confirm with other providers before placing a bet.
Example
A user places a bet on SBK for outcome X. Once the user places the bet, we check the price comparison data for all providers listed above for the same outcome.
If any of the competitor prices have changed in the 30 seconds prior to our bet placement check, the price comparison data in the table has the potential to be outdated.
If we didn’t receive an update within the last 15 minutes for any of the providers, we do not use that source in the price comparison screen. If we didn’t receive a price update from all providers, we do not show the price comparison banner at all.
From our internal analysis, most of the prices that we discard are still correct. We take this extra step of precaution to discard prices without updates in order to maximize data accuracy at the cost of showing the favourable price comparison banner less often.
Exclusion Criteria
To maintain fairness and accuracy, our comparison:
- Our price comparison feature excludes all promotional offers, such as boosts or insurance offers for both SBK and the other providers.
Viewing Recommendations
For the most accurate comparison:
- Use decimal odds format
- Review the price comparison screen after placing a bet
Limitations and Transparency
We acknowledge the inherent challenges in real-time odds comparison:
- Betting odds change rapidly
- Data availability varies across providers
Current Feature Limitations
The Best Price feature does not currently support:
- Any in-play bets
- Bet builders and derivative bets
- Full cover bets
- Each-way bets
Where data is missing for a provider, we display an “information not available” message to maintain transparency.
Technical Considerations
Our application uses caching technology both on the odds comparison feed and in the user interface.
Our Commitment
We strive to provide the most transparent, accurate, and user-friendly betting experience possible. We believe our Best Price feature is a testament to this commitment.
Questions? Contact our support team at support@getsbk.com
Should you require further information on how our price comparison works, please contact support@getsbk.com.