The Pools Sportsbook Review 2026: Is The Pools Sportsbook Legit?
In 2026, we’ve been looking at different UK online sportsbooks and recently, The Pools sportsbook has been under our microscope to see what it offers in terms of betting markets and other features.
From the outset, this looks to be a solid UK sportsbook entry as it’s fully licensed, supports over 20 different sports, and boasts a wide range of team and player props bets. If you want to learn more though, we’ve created a complete The Pools Sportsbook review below where we analyse these things and more.
- Modern and stylish website
- 20+ supported sports
- Live betting for all matches
- Huge array of team and player props
- No iOS mobile app
- Few sportsbook promotions
Getting started with The Pools - reviewing its welcome bonus
For more information about the bonuses here, we’ve got a comprehensive The Pools Casino bonus code review. For now though, let’s briefly look at what you can get in terms of promotions when you sign up here.
Get a £10 Pools welcome bonus when you sign up
There isn’t strictly a dedicated sportsbook welcome bonus for The Pools. Instead, there are two different subscription welcome bonuses if you sign up to The Pools and subscribe to its jackpot feature. This is essentially the classic pools competitions that you can enter for the chance of winning massive cash prizes.
There’s two bonuses based on your subscription level, and you can either get £10 in free bets for the Classic Pools Subscription, or £50 in free bets for the Goal Rush Subscription.
We also found a range of other promos and features
The Pools Sportsbook has a range of other features too which include acca profit boosts of up to 60% depending on how many legs your acca has, plus a range of price and profit boosts on special bets. Compared to some other UK sportsbooks we’ve tried, we thought that The Pools was lacking a little when it comes to promos, and this is something they could improve.
Is The Pools Sportsbook legit? Looking at its transparency, security, and more
We were confident that The Pools Sportsbook was legit, and The Pools itself is a household name. However, we did our due diligence for The Pools Betting review and looked at core features like licensing, security, and customer support.
Licensing
This site is owned and operated by The Football Pools company which is licensed and registered in the UK. We have no concerns about its legitimacy as The Pools is a well-known institute that’s been around for decades. Additionally, it has a gambling license from the UK Gambling Commission under license number 48272.
We noticed that The Pools Sportsbook is also part of the GAM STOP program, and the IBAS program which is a third-party organisation that adjudicates disputes you might have with the sportsbook, like Matchbook Sports Betting.
Customer support
If you need help while using this site, click on the help link in the website footer. This opens the help center, but there’s also a link to the live chat here. Alternatively, you can leave a support email ticket. The help center is a trove of useful information and it contains loads of details relating to payments, your account, betting, and verification. Alternatively, we tested the live chat over the period of a week at different times, and we always got an adequate reply within 5-10 minutes, so it looks to operate 24/7. Email replies are a little slower, with an average response time of 1-2 hours.
Security and transparency
The Pools Sportsbook uses SSL encryption to protect your data, and while creating this review, we found an active SSL certificate provided by Google Trust Services. The site also uses HTTPS connectivity, and you have the option of enabling 2FA on your account for an extra level of protection. For transparency, you have parent company details in the website footer, an about page detailing the history of The Pools, plus other documents we expect to see like a privacy policy, terms and conditions, and help section.
Responsible gambling
We were pleased to see that The Pools Sportsbook promotes responsible gambling. It has an information page that details their commitment, and also explains the different tools you can use. This includes deposit limits, reality checks, time out periods, longer self-exclusion periods, and full account closure.
Banking
We also looked at the banking setup of The Pools Sportsbook and we found only a handful of accepted payment methods which includes PayPal, Visa debit cards, and MasterCard debit cards. This is a smaller list than other sites, but they are the three main payment methods we expect to see, so we don’t think it will cause an issue.
The minimum deposit and withdrawal limits are relatively low at £10 for both, there’s no payment fees, and we were satisfied with the deposit and withdrawal processing times. Check out our minimum deposit betting sites and find the best offer that suits you.
Does The Pools' have a diverse betting setup?
Similar to The Pools Casino review that we created, we wanted to check the entertainment value of this site so we spent a long time analysing the sports, betting markets, and live betting system.
It features a wide range of popular sports
Whether you’re a footy, cricket, or basketball fan, we think The Pools will have you covered. It’s got a huge range of supported sports which includes:
Football, Racing, Tennis, Alpine Skiing, American Football, Aussie Rules, Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Boxing, Cricket, Curling, Cycling, eSports, Floorball, Golf, Horse Racing, Greyhound Racing, Handball, Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, MMA, Motorsports, Motorbikes, Olympics, Rugby League and Union, Snooker, Squash, Table Tennis, Darts, Volleyball, and Waterpolo.
They’ve basically got every professional sport we could think of, but it’s not just the sport variety, when you dig into each category, you’ll see that they also feature all the popular leagues for the sports. For instance, for footy, you’ve got the top flight leagues like the EPL, La Liga, and Bundesliga, but also 2nd and 3rd tier leagues like Ligue 2 and the Championship.
There’s a top selection of betting markets
Not only can you bet on loads of different sports, but for individual games, we found a great list of betting markets. This includes standard options like:
- Singles.
- Accas.
- Bet Builder.
You’ve also got transitional picks like outright winner, over/under, and spread bets. What really caught our attention though, was the team and player props bets for individual games. For example, we checked a range of the football matches, and for an upcoming EPL game between Man U and City, these were some of the options:
- Total goals.
- Number of shots.
- Both teams to score,
- Anytime goalscorer.
- First goalscorer.
- To score 2 or more goals.
If you’re into bet builders and diving into the stats then we think you’ll get great enjoyment out of the betting variety they present.
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| 🏆 Sports Coverage | Football ⚽, Basketball 🏀, Cricket 🏏, Tennis 🎾, Baseball ⚾, Ice Hockey 🏒, Golf ⛳, MMA 🥊, Rugby 🏉, Motorsports 🏎️, eSports 🎮, Cycling 🚴, Volleyball 🏐, Snooker 🎱, Darts 🎯, plus niche sports 🌍 |
| 🌍 League Coverage | Top-tier leagues 🏆 (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga) + lower divisions 📊 (Championship, Ligue 2) across multiple sports |
| 🎯 Core Betting Markets | Singles 🎟️, Accumulators (Accas) 📈, Bet Builder ⚙️, Outright Winner 🏆, Over/Under 🔢, Spread Betting 📉 |
| 👤 Player & Team Props | Anytime Goalscorer ⚽, First Goalscorer 🥇, Total Goals 🔢, Shots 📊, Both Teams to Score ✅, Multi-goal scorers 🎯 |
| 🔴 Live Betting Features | In-play betting across most sports ⚡, Live Tracker 📡, Real-time stats 📊, Play-by-play updates 📝 |
The live betting setup is excellent
We love a bit of in-game betting action, so to finish off, we looked at the live betting setup The Pools Sports offers. From our testing, we saw live options for virtually all of the sports and matches they have bets for which was impressive in itself - this includes for the less popular events.
For each game, you get a simple score breakdown at the top, but you can click on the “Live Tracker” button which expands and shows a game render so you can see the action and follow the play more closely if you can’t watch it live. There’s also the option to look at in-game stats to give you more betting insight, or you can look at a text feed of the play-by-play game breakdown.
What’s The Pools Sportsbook like for usability and mobile accessibility?
The last thing we looked for our The Pools Sportsbook review was the usability of the mobile and desktop sites. It’s definitely one of the better bookies we’ve tested when it comes to browsing the sports markets and making bets from your smartphone.
It has an Android app for mobile betting
Like other betting sites in the UK, The Pools does have a mobile app, but we could only find one for Android phones which you can download from the Google Play Store. It only has a 3.6-star rating from over 2,000 reviews, which is lower than some of the other top apps we’ve checked. Most of the comments we read though from reviewers mainly related to payouts on their bets, but we think this is simply a case of disgruntled bettors who have had a bad streak at The Pools.
Our experience using the app was fine. It has a great layout similar to the desktop site, and the touchscreen controls work effectively. As far as we can see, you get all the features and betting markets that the desktop site has, and it’s definitely a great companion app if you want to make a few bets while watching the footy, for example.
The desktop site has a fresh and uncluttered design
Sometimes, UK sportsbook websites can feel cluttered, but we think The Pools has done a good job of avoiding this as it has a clean, modern, and spacious site design. The mainly white colour scheme makes the site pop, and the black text against this gives excellent readability.
We like how they’ve used the traditional left-to-right sportsbook layout too, with sports categories on the left, betting content in the middle, and your bet slip on the right - it’s familiar and easy to understand. On top of that, page speeds are fast, the different menus and betting options are all collapsible to give you more space, and it’s just a pleasant website to use.
Conclusion - The Pools Sportsbook is a top contender
The Pools itself has been around forever and it’s become something of a UK institute, and we think that The Pools Sportsbook has the potential to do the same. It’s got all the right features and gives customers a mix of betting variety and excellent usability that’s backed by the reputation of the brand, same as Priced Up Sportsbook. The only thing we would like to see is an iOS app, and perhaps a few more promotions for existing customers.
These are minor issues though, and we do not think they will detract too much from your overall enjoyment of this sportsbook. If you fancy giving it a try yourself, we’ve got some banners here that you can tap. It’s then a case of going through the signup process to create your account and get your welcome bonus.