How to Start Betting on Your iPhone

If you have an iPhone and want to start betting on it either for sports or financial trading than you now have a choice of ways to do so.

In September 2010, Betfair became the first bookmaker to officially release an iPhone App for their betting exchange.  The Betfair iPhone App lets you access and place bets across all of Betfair's sports and financial markets including in-play betting.  You can view all of the odds and bet on a range of sports or events including football, horseracing, boxing or rubgy etc.  The reason Betfair introduced an official App for their iPhone is supposebly because of the increasing popularity of mobile betting and the emergence of the market.  Executives at Betfair stated that their mobile betting revenue increased 40% over the last year, thus they were keen to get the Betfair Lab to develop something that worked with the release of the 4th generation iPhone – the iPhone 4.

In order to start betting on your iPhone, all you have to do is visit Betfair and sign up an account.  From there, you can download the Betfair iPhone App form the iTunes store and then use the mobile technology to access your account and place bets. The Official Betfair iPhone App has a range of features, allowing you to back or lay teams, bet on any Betfair market, check you account status, make deposits or withdrawals, and the App has a rapid connection speed through Wi-Fi, 3G or Edge.

Since Betfair's iPhone App, a number of other bookmakers have also provided mobile betting and developed 3rd party Apps specifically designed for the iPhone.  Bet365, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power have all developed an iPhone App for their products, allowing users to browse and place bets on all of there markets.  Using in-browser technology, it allows iPhone or iPad users to access the main bookmaker website and all of its main features.

Unfortunately, the Betfair iPhone App is currently geographically restricted to UK and Ireland residents.  Betfair has worked with Apple's existing GPS system in the iPhone to ensure that users cannot place bets on Betfair outside the jurisdiction of the UK.  The App is also restricted to under 18's only to comply with gambling legislation.

As the iPhone increases in popularity, a number of bookmakers including Betfair and Paddy Power have promised to develop more features for the multi-media mobile platform.  Unfortunately poker players cannot yet play real money games on the iPhone yet, but a company called SwitchPoker are set to release a real money iPhone poker client.