Small Betting Sites Australia

Best Small Online Bookmakers in Australia

Why Pick a Small Bookie?

When you first look at Australian small bookmakers, it seems like you can close the page immediately because there won't be anything that you can't find on a big brand name betting site. And if you do, you'll be sorely mistaken. On this Match.Center page, we've listed 10 not particularly well-known betting sites. And each has something you won't find anywhere else, despite the fact that there are over 80 licensed betting sites in Australia. 

Usually, we cover the big betting sites Australia provides that have an extensive offer in all sports. This text will be like a small private bakery: yes, there aren't 10 stands, just two, but you won't find that in a supermarket. 

This unique page also required a unique approach from our experts: how to decide who can be called a small betting site and what criteria to use to evaluate and include them in our selection?

For us as betting experts, the answer is simple: small betting sites in Australia are very interesting. How do they even survive in a market where marketing budgets are in the hundreds of millions and the top brands consider it beneath their dignity to offer less than 30 sports?

Here are the advantages of small betting sites Australia offers.

Full focus on selected sports

Small betting sites Australia offers invest all their resources in their chosen sport: horse racing, greyhounds, fantasy sports (these sites may not have any classic betting at all).

This can give you a whole new sports betting experience.

On the SportChamps site, for example, Australian punters participate in betting tournaments regularly. In this way, you are not competing against the bookmaker, but against your friends or rivals. You don't get that feeling from a traditional bookmaker.

Conciseness

If you are interested in a particular type of sport, like horse racing, and don't bet on other sports, then the huge selection of sports is just an overloaded sportsbook's interface. And then there are casinos, bingo, poker...

On small betting sites in Australia you can find the races you want in a second, as well as statistics for each horse or dog's last race.

Traditions

Betting on horse racing markets has a very special atmosphere. Many Australian betting sites retain the tradition of accepting sports bets in cash at the racecourse and by phone. Some still don't accept online betting. Here's the appeal on The Track betting site from bookmaker Anthony Doughty: 

Bookmaker Brandon Cleary ('Clearybet') has followed the same route of human contact with aussie punters to build an interesting betting experience, despite the company's history dating back to 2004, when it was already possible to bet online.

By betting with small online bookmakers in Australia, you can have the rare betting experience of knowing your bookmaker face-to-face. 

More money remains in the country

Small betting sites Australia runs are always owned by Australians. And many of the big online bookmakers are part of international betting corporations - e.g. bet365, Ladbrokes, Sportsbet. They pay less tax than local ones. According to Aussie Fair Play Coalition calculations, Australian TABs, one of the best small online bookmakers, pay 6% tax on each bet, while foreign online bookmakers in Australia pay 3% tax.

Small local betting sites sometimes support this fight publicly. Some of them write on their online betting sites in the "About us" section that if you choose their site, you will support your country. They also assure you that they employ Australian citizens. 

However, the flagship of the fight against overseas corporations was not the small bookies, but a local large company, TABcorp, which operates across Australia and has over 5,000 employees.

The disadvantages of small betting sites Australia provides are the flip side of their advantages, multiplied by the lack of resources.

Poor selection

The most obvious disadvantage of small online bookmakers: their sports markets are almost always narrow. Some only have Australian racing - but this approach is even fairer to the customer.

If a specialised online bookmaker tries to offer bets on other popular sports, it will usually be few of them and bad ones. You can open any match of any sport and see only 2-3 sports betting markets there: 1/X/2 and sometimes a couple of Over/Under bets, the things that most bookies offer.

Fans of mainstream sports like rugby, basketball or soccer have absolutely nothing to do on these online betting sites.

Large number of White Label sites

There are several online bookmakers in Australia using essentially the same website. The pages differ from each other only in colour. The entire betting line, the range of betting options and the statistics are the same.

We wouldn't recommend you to visit the clone sites, although they aren't that bad. We would say a screenshot of such a site can be placed in the encyclopaedia next to the word Average.

Poor websites

Sometimes small betting sites clearly don't have the resources to improve their betting sites. You click on Sports and wait a few seconds for the sports betting markets to load.

Some online bookmakers in Australia don't even have filters for more than sports types. Inside the sports just a dump of upcoming matches from different tournaments.

So the question arises: why did you leave the racetrack and start offering sports bets on basketball if you don't care so much about it?

There are also some completely unexpected situations. For example, the CricketBet betting site cannot be viewed if you are not registered. What are you gentlemen hiding in there? Such things don't let us name them the best small betting site.

Meanwhile, Moneyball has decided to get rid of the small betting site for good and is only available on mobile apps. But they swear that they offer the best odds on accumulators in the country.

Comparison of Small Australian Bookmakers VS Big Australian Bookies

TOP 10 Small Online Bookmakers Australia

And here comes the most interesting part of the review. The top provided by the Match.Center team combines very different small online bookmakers in Australia. There is no single standard by which they can all be properly compared. These are just 10 interesting local sports betting sites that we liked.

This is the largest site in our selection and one of the best small online bookmakers. It is owned by the huge company TAB. Nevertheless, we can't leave it out. Unlike the main TAB.com.au, Touch is heavily oriented towards horse and greyhound racing.

We recommend paying attention to it not only as one of the best small betting sites, but also as a sports media about horse racing. Experts discuss horse racing on the blog, as well as the TABradio programmes. Both are available to any small betting site visitor. And registered aussie punters can watch videos.

TAB blog is updated daily with three topics: dogs, horses, trots. There you can find announcements of upcoming races and expert advice. It is laconic and one text won't take you more than 2-3 minutes to read. 

The horse racing markets feature both Australian and international racing. Right there you can see detailed statistics on the performance of the selected competitor.

The list of races on the desktop version of the site is a bit shallow. If you cannot see well, it is not comfortable. In this case, we recommend using the mobile version or app, where everything is larger and the functions are the same as on the main site.

Two identical websites. The main profile is horse racing. But what makes them stand out among the other small betting sites is their good betting offer in different sports.

Of course, it cannot compete with the giants. But you will find there a betting line of 15 sports with a good selection of tournaments. In the soccer section, for instance, you'll find over 40 leagues including internationals and the second leagues of the main national competitions. You can also bet on all the major tournaments in rugby, baseball, basketball and tennis. Admittedly, without much imagination, there will rarely be more than 10 betting options on any given match.

Horse racing is another matter. There are plenty of races and all the exotic bets: Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, and First Four. There are also statistics, though we found more data at many competitors.

These online bookmakers in Australia will suit those who bet on horse racing most of the time, but sometimes don't mind betting on rugby or soccer, purely for fun.

Apart from that, we liked the visual design of the websites of these small online Australian bookmakers.

Bet Hunter is similar to JimmyBet and BetBetBet: the same sports and bets, but in a more concise design. There are no pop-ups offering chat, no ticker with upcoming races on top. They've also cut down on the statistics.

Instead, you get fantastic page navigation speed. It really does feel like a betting hunter and that's what we like the most about Bet Hunter.

The speciality, of course, is horse racing. According to the About Us page, the creators of Bet Hunter have over 70 years' betting experience in betting on thoroughbred and harness racing.

A special feature of one the small online Australian bookmakers is that they accept live bets online. However, the selection of these bets is very poor: when we first logged in, we only saw 4 basketball matches. You can choose from 15 to 30 bets. The second time we saw even less.

Otherwise, Booki doesn't stand out much among other small Australian betting sites. There's plenty of horse racing and a good offering of other sports: 20 in total, plus politics and entertainment. There are horse statistics, the site is neat, and there are mobile apps. You can see that Booki is trying.

The owners claim to have 50 years of betting experience. We can't verify that.

A small betting site for fans of greyhound betting. There you will find great statistics on all the dogs: information on form, results of the last few races and a chart characterising the dog.

Betdogs offers many types of bets, including Best of the best, Multi betting and Exotics.

According to the website, one of the owners of Betdogs, Lloyd Merlehan, became the first licensed Australian bookmaker in 1990. 

As the name suggests, this is a greyhound racing online bookmaker and one of the small betting sites Australia offers. Nothing else, and that's fair enough. The owners write about the founding of the company like this:

"We were a couple of frustrated New South Wales dog punters that could hardly even get a decent bet on these days".

Actually, all bookies promise you something cool. In this case, to our surprise, it turned out not to be empty words. PuntOnDogs does offer odds that are very different from others. Not in the sense that they are many times higher - of course, that can't be, the bookmaker has to earn money somehow.

But the odds of a race are sometimes assessed differently here than on other sites. Almost everywhere the odds of the dogs are almost the same. When Ladbrokes sets the odds of 3.0 on the favourite, the punt123, for instance, will set the odds between 2.5 and 4.0. On a potential runner-up, by contrast, punt123 will only set the odds of 8.0 and Ladbrokes will set the odds of 9.0.

At PuntOnDogs, you can see not 3.0, but 6.0 on the favourite for the same race, and almost as much on the second favourite in the race. You get really varied odds. 

The aussie punters who place bets on SportChamps are not competing with the bookmaker, but with each other. But this is not a betting exchange, the format of the game is a tournament. To participate, you have to pay the required entry fee and then place at least 5 bets during the tournament.

Tournaments can be either multi-sport, where you can choose from a wide range of games, or the opposite, dedicated to a specific competition. For example, T20 Cricket World Cup or NBA Season (long tourney).

After paying in real money, you get conditional ChampCash tokens, like in poker tournaments, and you use them for betting. A tournament can last 1 day or the whole season. Whoever has the most coins at the finish line gets the biggest part of the prize pool.

Competitions are held for both playing sports and horse racing.

To bet from a smartphone, you need to install the app. SportChamps does not have a mobile version of the website.

This online bookmaker only operates in the mobile app.

Moneyball claims to have the best odds on accumulators of 3 or more selections. 

DraftStars is a fantasy sports site with tournaments for several sports, different entry fees and number of games. For example, you can participate in a tournament that includes all the NBA games of the day, or one dedicated to a single baseball game.

Fees range from $0 to $500 per tournament.