Bluebet Review

Bluebet, and not Blue Bet, is an Australian publicly listed company that operates under a NT Gambling Licence. Bluebet, which was established in 2015, is both licensed and regulated by the Northern Territory Racing Commission. Michael Sullivan is the Executive Chairman and brings extensive experience having been a bookmaker for over 30 years. Several key Bluebet executives have held senior management positions in well-known wagering and betting companies including Sportingbet, Centrebet and Aristocrat. In March 2021 the Penrith Rugby League Club’s home ground was renamed Bluebet Stadium for at least the next 2 years.

Bluebet is a 24 hours per day operation with an extensive, scalable, customised, cloud-based website plus full function Android and Apple mobile Apps which have been designed to offer a premium experience. 

Bluebet cover the domestic market for all Thoroughbred, Harness and Greyhound racing, plus an extensive coverage of international events. Although not the subject of this review Bluebet also offer 23 different sports markets (including Politics!) both domestic and international. Bets can be placed online or via telephone.

The Bluebet website is a highly customized cloud-based offering, which is immediately intuitive to use. There is so much function on offer that it would take far too long to explain here.

The home page opens with the typical 3 panels, in the left 1/5th being the navigation panel, the middle 3/5th being where the list of races or specific race details are presented and the final right 1/5th is where the Bet Slip is visible.

One the top row are 4 items of interest:

• a field with a magnifying glass where you can Search for anything up & coming ie a racetrack, I was not successful in finding a specific horse. (I could search for my football team and I was shown the match date, whether home or away and who they would be losing to.)
• a (fastpath) DEPOSIT button
• A dollar balance in your account with a down arrow, which, if selected, gives total visibility of your account including the ability to make a Withdrawal, Black Book, Transactions
• My Bets, which if selected, shows Pending and Resulted.

The left 1/5th panel is extensive as displayed here and this is where you can navigate to all the many areas of the website:              

Starting at the bottom (as I think these sources of information can be overlooked at times), there are links to FAQ (see below), Help information, Contact Us and Live Chat.

Today’s Racing will list all the races of the day:

As you can see it is possible to select one, two or all of Horses, Greyhounds and Harness races. Also those races allowing Quaddie or Double or Treble can be highlighted

Next, in the left panel, the next 5 races with a countdown timer are listed.

Results is an interesting option whereby you can select a date and all races ran on that date are displayed. I managed to find horse results back to August 2020.

Then there are these 2 unique selections: 

-Box Challenges are available on selected meetings. The box is defined as the dog Box Number from which it jumps in the race. The winning box for the meeting is decided under a 3, 2, 1 points scoring system

-Jockey Challenges, where the winning jockey is the rider who accrues the most points based on the 3-2-1 system.

Feature Races as selected by Bluebet can be quickly accessed.

Finally, immediately below the Home option is Promotions which is the place to visit to see what promotions are on offer.

At the bottom of every panel there are 2 other buttons

- Feedback – you can leave feedback, there is a free format input filed and you can even attach a file 

-Chat with an Expert – you can open a Chat window

The Bluebet website is a terrific place to visit. If racing is your focus then you can select everything easily from the Today’s Racing webpage, selecting the race of interest at any moment in time.

🐴Betting Markets - 9/10
BlueBet provide virtually all the important race betting markets you would want including Same Race Multi, a whole range of exotics and a range of niche offerings like Jockey Challenges. But then something like Favourite v Field or Odds v Evens is not provided. Significant development has been put into Bluebet and I can easily say that this is an impressive website for online race betting.

💳Banking Options - 9/10
Bluebet offer multiple deposit methods and 3 withdrawal options. Cash and cheque are accepted deposit methods, but I have not tested whether making (credit card) deposits over the telephone is acceptable. Bluebet offer 2 often seen withdrawal options plus an interesting third option sending funds back to the credit card of the same amount originally deposited.

📱Mobile Experience - 9/10
The Bluebet mobile experience is terrific, fast and intuitive. It certainly will become familiar to all racing enthusiasts. I feel If you are only interested in one aspect of racing, be it Win or exotics or even a specific racetrack you can quickly navigate to wherever you want.

💸​Withdraw Speed - 8/10
I like using Bluebet, and have the feeling that there is so much on offer. There is both the Bluebet website and Bluebet App access and the latter closely follows the design of the former to allow for a consistent look and feel.

🧩Overall User Experience - 9/10

I like using Bluebet, and have the feeling that there is so much on offer. There is both the Bluebet website and Bluebet App access and the latter closely follows the design of the former to allow for a consistent look and feel.

🔒Security - 10/10
BlueBet is fully licenced and regulated by the Northern Territory Commission. Bluebet take security seriously claiming to be 100% safe and secure. All telephone conversations are recorded on a government approved voice logging system for the security of both their clients and themselves. So, you should not have to worry about security and just focus on the races.

Bluebet is a strong player in the bookmaking business with an experienced management team making sure they remain ahead in the game. In my experience Bluebet offer comparative fixed bet odds for Australian racing. I have seen close to race time odds that are comparable (and better) than their competitors, it is all about the timing of your bet.

In terms of the Bluebet Apps, there have been over 10K Android downloads and a rating of 4.5 out of 5 on the Apple App store with over 5K of user comments. 

To date apart from Fixed Win & Place Odds they also offer an extensive range of options including the Best Tote option, which guarantees the best dividend from all the VIC/NSW/QLD Totes plus the Starting Price is another way of ensuring clients remain loyal.

Bluebet offers competitive fixed odds for every thoroughbred, greyhound, and harness racing meeting in Australia and New Zealand, as well as odds for overseas races in so many countries including (looking at prior day, today, tomorrow races plus website comments) France, USA, Canada, Sweden, South Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Ireland, the United Kingdom, plus others.

You should receive Best Tote + SP win odds for all Australian races.

Once you open up the Racing Tab on the left column you will see Horse Racing, Greyhound Racing and Harness Racing as the top 3 options. Technically you can select any of these 3 and the centre panel opens showing all of Today’s races, of your desired racing type. However towards the top of the panel you can simply tick Horses and/or Greyhounds and/or Harness to focus in (again) for your desired race view. Along the very top of the panel you can traverse to Next to Jump or (assuming today is Monday) to Tomorrow or Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Features (Feature races as elected by Bluebet) or lastly Results. Results can also be selected from the Left Column as the last entry under Racing.

The Results panel is interesting in that it immediately shows the results of the current day’s races. But you can change the date, it is a bit fiddly, as you must navigate the year, month and date independently rather than type directly, I was able to track back to results from June 2020.

Now some interesting features I found:

• In the list of Races and list of Results, of any given day, you can hover the mouse over the race and immediately see the name of the race (eg Hungerford Hill Bm64) is displayed.
• For any race you can sort runners in decreasing or increasing order by their Race number or Win Odds or Place Odds. 
• The minimum bet limit is $1 for internet transactions ($50 for telephone transactions).
• For Victorian and South Australian races there is a link to racing,com to pick up a Live TV feed. 
• For most races, at the top of the panel, there is a Bluey’s race tip

If tipping is something you like to have access, in preparing for your race day, it is also worth reviewing our website https://onlyracing.com.au/tips/. 

The Bluebet mobile App debuted in 2016, so it is now a well-established App. Fingerprint login is optional, but a nice option for additional personal security. 

Once logged in the LOG IN and SIGN UP buttons at the top of the screen are replaced by Account Balance (with down arrow) and My Bets mentioned earlier on the website commentary.

Along the bottom of the screen are the Home, Racing, Sports, Search and Menu options

Selecting Menu displays almost the same list as the long left hand side of the Bluebet website.

RACING (middle of screen) is preselected after logging-on and you can scroll down for additional race related information including Future races.

Below are three screenshots:

1. After selecting Racing 
2. After selecting Menu
3. An interesting point and a nice touch, where for any racetrack, finished races are shown after races still to start which can save valuable seconds when looking for a race about to start.

Bluebet TV 

Never miss a Victorian or South Australian race with live vision provided by racing.com

BlackBook

A nice offering to add racers worth noting, together with associated comments to your personal list. You will be notified when they are next racing ,so hopefully you’ll never miss out on backing that winner again.

24/7 Customer Service

Extensive customer service is offered, but, slightly confusing in the Q&A webpage, is the comment “BlueBet provides members with a courteous 24 hours, 7 days a week service both over the Internet .. and the telephone on 1800 797 066”.

But 1800 797 066 is the Racing telephone number, Customer Service is 1800 797 644.

There is even a fax service offered 02 9571 0033.

Protest Payout

Bluebet offers their Protest Payout feature, and will pay out if your horse is first and gets beaten in a protest. This is available on all Australian thoroughbred meetings. This is a great feature as it covers all punters in the event of a protest, whether the original winner or the runner protesting.

Best Tote plus SP

Bluebet offers their Best Tote plus SP prices on all Australian Thoroughbred markets. This product provides you with the best dividend between all three of the Australian Tote pools or the 'Official On-Course Starting Price (SP)' for the Win portion of a bet. Best Tote is a highly useful feature for punters as it guarantees you are getting the best tote odds possible at the time of the jump.

Bluebet offers a wide range of markets and features that makes it a great choice for horse race betting:

• Bluebet offers competitive fixed odds markets for both Australian and International horse races, with a minimum internet bet starting at $1.
• Bluebet offers an extensive range of markets for Thoroughbred, Harness and Greyhound racing.
• Bluebet has Exotic betting options such as Trifectas, Quadrella, Quinellas, First Four and Exacta for all races
• Bluebet offer their Best Tote + SP betting option, a great way to guarantee the best tote prices available. 
• Bluebet offers Top Fluctuation which is the highest dividend forming part of the Official Price fluctuations as posted by the state where race is being run.
• Bluebet offers Best of the Best (BOB) which offers the greater of the highest of the dividends declared by the 3 TABs and the Official On-Course Top Fluctuation. Bluebet state that bets need to be placed three minutes prior to the advertised starting time on selected meetings as displayed on the BlueBet website.
• Bluebet offer Multi Bets (called All-Ups) which is a combination of numerous single bets which multiply the individual odds creating the total dividend. BlueBet accepts Multi Bets from 2‐12 legs including a combination of Racing and Sports.
• Bluebet offer Same Race Multis (SRMs), which allow you to combine two or more runners to win or finish top 2, top 3 or top 4 and receive a multi price for your selections. The maximum number of Same Race Multi legs is 4.
• Bluebet offer Odds v Evens and Inside v Outside
• Additionally, Bluebet offer Jockey Challenges at selected racetracks for those willing to put faith in a rider.

As you can see a lot of racing thought has gone into developing the Bluebet website and Bluebet Apps making them a great bookmaker and worth considering adding to your race day portfolio.
Bluebet, if I am cherry picking and wanting to add to their core offerings, could consider adding  Favourite v Field which is currently missing from the Bluebet racing markets. 

To sign up at Bluebet, you need to follow a 3 step process which only takes 2 minutes.
You can either call customer service on 1800 797 066 (the racing number!) to complete the whole process or you can navigate via the App or the website (internal link to bluebet) enter 4 pieces of information, your First name, Middle Name, Last Name and email address then press CONTINUE.
The rest of the sign up process is pretty straightforward where you enter your personal details including your address.

How to Deposit at Bluebet?

Once logged in there are 2 options to make a Deposit, you can select the DEPOSIT button at the top of the APP or website or this same button will appear once you navigate via the Balance down arrow.

How to Withdraw

After login, there is only one way to navigate to make a Withdrawal and that is via the Account Balance down arrow and then select WITHDRAW.

You can also navigate to Withdrawal once you have selected to view any of your Personal Details, Black Book, Transactions etc.
The Withdrawal page presents you with 2 options:

1. Bank EFT (shown here) - you can select any previously saved Bank account details or enter make a new entry
2. Paypal - A previous PayPal deposit is required prior to withdrawing to PayPal.

Note, in both cases the minimum withdrawal is $10.

Bluebet put great emphasis on Customer Service, as can be seen by their listing of email address, contact telephone numbers (and fax), the Live Chat window as well as the always available Chat with an Expert at the bottom of every webpage. 
There are extensive (web and App) pages for Help & Information as well as FAQs.
Finally there are 3 separate downloadable documents of interest:  

1. BlueBet Terms and Conditions (20 pages)
2. BlueBet Racing Rules (12 pages)
3. BlueBet Promotional Terms and Conditions

Bluebet is an Australian Stock Exchange listed company, so this is a serious business enterprise and if you follow the rules, I do not foresee you having problems in using their services.