A complete breath of fresh air to the industry, SportsBroker is a real money gaming platform that allows customers to buy and sell virtual shares in football teams.
This new approach bares almost no resemblance to what most recreational sports enthusiasts might be used to, and requires a different way of thinking in order to be successful, but for those with good footballing knowledge it could not only be a lot of fun, but could also be profitable.
What’s more, the company is home grown being based in Huddersfield, where it has already shown support for its local team by becoming an official partner.
This site is an excellent example of the constant innovation going on in the industry, and it has hit the ground running with a brilliant website and an even better app that makes it easy for anyone new to this kind of thing to get to grips with the concept.
It’s currently only available for football fans, but if things go well you can expect to see more leagues and maybe even more sport markets added in the future.
- Brand New Concept – Nothing else like it on the market
- Peer to Peer – Go head to head with other football fans
- Flexibility – Buy and sell whenever you want
The SportsBroker Experience – How Does it Work?
Since this is something of a new concept for people more used to traditional methods of recreational spending on sporting outcomes, it makes sense to explain how it works in a bit more detail.
SportsBroker is effectively an online trading platform, similar to those used by professional traders and private investors – although much much simpler and focused on football.
Customers can buy virtual shares in football teams from the Premier League or the Championship, and the price of those shares goes up or down depending on each team’s performance.
The way in which each team’s price is worked out is top secret. There is a proprietary algorithm that takes all sorts of stats into account, but it’s not as simple as the winning team going up in price and the losing team going down. In fact, if a smaller team loses to a top of the table team but puts in a storming performance, their share price can actually go up. Equally, a side that wins by the skin of their teeth but should really have romped home could see their share price go down.
As an example of what we mean here, a goal scored by Man City against Liverpool would have a bigger impact on their share price than a goal scored against Burnley, because Liverpool are a stronger side and thus more difficult to score past.
This means the share price is based on merit more than simply on results, and forces the customer to think differently if they want to be successful in their trading. It also means that you don’t need your team to win in order to profit from them, you just need them to perform well enough for their share price to go up.
Timing is a big factor too. Spotting an opportunity as the season progresses could see you buying at an absolute bargain price, only to watch the price sky rocket after a winning streak. People can buy into a position for the whole season or just for one game, and then sell out of that position whenever they feel like it, creating a lot of flexibility.
This is all peer to peer trading, so in effect you are trying to win money from people who have shares in the opposing teams to yours, and SportsBroker takes a commission on winning trades.
Isn’t this Just an Exchange?
If this thought crossed your mind then give yourself ten points.
SportsBroker is very similar indeed to an exchange, although there is no option to take a position against a team. With Sportsbroker, you can only buy shares in a team in order to make money, you can’t sell them as a first point of call. Of course though, you can sell shares if you have previously bought them and want to take profits.
An exchange allows customers to take positions in favour of a selection or against that selection, and win money either way so long as their prediction is correct. That is not the case here.
What you can do here is jump in and out of the market whenever you want. So if you buy shares in a team and then 5 minutes later they go up in price you can sell for an instant profit, then buy back in when the price dips.
You don’t have to wait for a result of any kind if you don’t want to, so the structure is a little different to an exchange.
The Psychology Factor
The other thing to take into account here is that you are trading peer to peer, not against SportsBroker. That means you win money when someone else loses it – SportsBroker just take a commission on winning trades as payment for providing the service.
That means you can use your knowledge of human psychology as well as your football knowledge.
You might notice that Tottenham’s share price has been coming down because of a few dud games, so you figure that people are going to be panicking and selling out as their share value drops. You see this as a golden opportunity to buy in on the cheap because you know they have a few easy games coming up at home and a key player returning from injury.
This is using the perfect combination of football knowledge and psychology.
It works the other way around too though. It’s hard to watch the value of something you own going down, but if you bought the shares for a long term reason and nothing significant has changed, then a short term dip in the price must be weathered or you will sell out of fear at a lower price and crystalise a paper loss.
Website Functionality
Since there are only two leagues to buy shares in at the moment, the website is incredibly simple to look at and to use.
It’s not basic or stripped back though; the interface is colourful and interesting and the layout makes sense while giving all of the available options plenty of space to breath.
Prices update in real time so this can get busy on match days but even then, new pages load very quickly and in the time we have been using the site we never experienced any lag or other annoying blips.
There is an ever present header bar which displays your available cash, spend, profit/loss, and overall account value, which helps keep track of your performance as a whole, and the side bar menu is the gateway to all of the site features.
Markets is the option you want if you fancy having a browse. It will display the league of your choice as it currently stands, with each team’s buy and sell price as well as their 5 match history. In this tab you can also look at upcoming fixtures and recent results.
One of the more useful screens for research is the results screen actually, because you can click through to each match and see a lot of detailed information both in terms of match stats and how each team’s share price changed and – to an extent – why.
You can keep tabs on all the teams in your portfolio and how they are performing for you using the My Teams tab, while the Wallet tab is the equivalent of a cashier and the only other tab is the Academy.
The Academy is like an interactive FAQ in a way, in that is has mini ‘how to’ videos alongside traditional questions and answers.
The soft focus background colours really work for the site and make the team shirt icons pop, and an alert bell will keep you informed as to when your buys and sells have gone through etc.
The site really is as simple as that, but it’s all it needs to be for now. This simplicity will actually be really helpful for anyone who is maybe a little unsure, as the site couldn’t be less intimidating if it tried.
Banking, Limits, Deposits and Withdrawals
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Payments are simple with SportsBroker, currently they only accept debit cards and the minimum deposit and withdrawal is £10. You can set you own maximum deposit limits from £10 up to £100,000 on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
You can also set playing limits also on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, again from £10 up to £100k.
SportsBroker keep all player funds in a separate account which does not mix with operating funds, those funds are ring fenced. Also their payment provider holds a retainer of a portion funds to ensure payouts are instant, that’s right, if you withdraw back to your bank card the funds will appear instantly (i.e. within minutes) rather than the usual 2-5 days. Pretty impressive.
SportsBroker Mobile App
The website feels simple, but condensing all of that down in to an app for a much smaller screen could still prove tricky.
Not the case here though.
SportsBroker’s app is very good indeed. Almost all options are built into the interface so page loads are minimal which means everything feels free flowing, and in most cases you can get to where you want to be in 2 or 3 taps.
It’s an intelligent piece of software too, and it has clearly been designed from the user’s point of view. For example, certain useful elements you might want quick access to (such as the buy and sell options) will stick in place as you scroll through the rest of the info on the page, giving you the freedom you need to explore as well as remaining convenient.
The app works in exactly the same way as the desktop site, the user journey is very similar, but small adjustments have been made to the layout to optimise it for phone screens and make it very easy to use one handed.
The footer holds the key menu tabs you would need and all of the more functional options such as account management are hidden under a small menu button out of the way in the top left corner.
This keeps 90% of the screen space available for the interesting stuff like researching teams, tracking your portfolio performance, and buying and selling shares.
In all probability, SportsBroker has most likely been designed as a mobile first product, and it shows. You won’t got far wrong downloading this app.
Support
To be completely honest, while there is plenty of positive stuff here it’s surprising that SportsBroker haven’t done more with their help and support areas – especially given that they are introducing something so new to the market.
They should have tutorials and explainer videos galore to educate their customer base, many of whom will never have used anything like their platform before.
As it is, they have an ‘Academy’ section of the site, which sounds good but is fairly light on material at the moment despite a few basic ‘how to’ videos. What’s there is useful though and will hopefully be built on in the future, and the FAQ adds more depth.
Customer support availability is excellent for a company so young, with live chat and email available 24/7 – although some of the chat operators don’t seem to understand the product very well in all honesty. There is no phone option but it would be harsh to hold that against them – even some of the biggest names in the industry don’t offer phone support anymore.
Their social media channels are semi-active, so probably good to follow but not to be relied on if you are in a pickle.
Who is SportsBroker For?
This trading platform is likely to be totally different to anything you have used before – unless you also happen to trade in stocks and shares.
If you do, this will be an absolute breeze for you, but for the majority of us who don’t, SportsBroker will likely fall into one of two categories:
- No way, don’t understand it, don’t trust it.
- Interesting, exciting, I’d love to try something new.
Those in camp 2 will find something that appeals to their sense of adventure, as well as a totally new way to use your footballing knowledge to try to make money.
There are many more levels here such as timing the market, spotting opportunities, and buying dips. You can be much more strategic than you can when taking fixed prices on the high street etc., and your ability to profit isn’t based solely on specific outcomes, but also on general performance that is relative to the opposing team.
In short, SportsBroker is for anyone who loves football and wants to extend their usual recreational spending on predicting outcomes to something more all-encompassing. With SportsBroker, you can take things further.
Contact & License
- Name – SportsBroker
- Registered Company Name – Sport Brokers (UK) Ltd
- URL –sportsbroker.com
- Live Support – 24 hours a day 7 days a week
- Email – [email protected]
- Phone – Not available
- Twitter – @SportsbrokerHQ
- Registered Address – Eldon House, 201 Penistone Road, Kirkburton, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD8 0PE