Curling betting tips in 2026: what a tip really costs the punter

Updated October 2026

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A “tip” is a piece of advice. A “bet” is money placed against an outcome that may not happen. The distance between the two is the entire subject of this page, and the bulk of what follows is the distance measured: how a tip is constructed, what a bookmaker does to it before the price reaches the punter, and what a free bet or welcome bonus really hands over once its small print is done with. Nothing on this page names a winner. The market does not know who will win, and neither does anyone offering tips. What can be done honestly is to make the cost of a bet visible, so a tip — any tip, from any source — can be weighed on its merits rather than on its packaging.

The data on this page is current as of 27 October 2026 and the operator licence numbers below were checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register on the same date.

Safer gambling before a stake is placed

Curling markets are small, prices move quickly during an end, and the impulse to chase a deficit with a larger stake is exactly the situation safer gambling controls exist for. Before a market is opened, set two things: a deposit ceiling per week that cannot be breached without a deliberate decision to raise it, and a stop-loss that ends the session when it is hit. Both are customer-set tools; licensed operators offer them in the cashier area and on request.

The wider framework is the same across the GB market. GAMSTOP is the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme every licensed online bookmaker is part of. Six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal are the periods; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in force for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. It is the single biggest reason to keep betting on a licensed site and not an offshore one: an unlicensed brand is not in GAMSTOP, so a self-exclusion does not follow a customer across to it. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline, and GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics and Gamblers Anonymous sit alongside it as places to ask for help. The names matter — they are how a punter gets through to a real person when the in-app tools are not enough.

Licensed operators also run financial checks on customers whose deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 over a rolling 30 days, in place since 28 February 2025. That check is a public-record check, not an income check and not a credit reference check, and it exists so that the customer is not betting with money they cannot afford to lose. Anyone who feels the framework is in the way is, at that moment, exactly the person it was written for. The rules on credit cards at licensed sites are simple: since 14 April 2020 no credit card can be used to fund a bet in Great Britain, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet, and debit cards and bank transfers are unaffected.

The sport itself: what a curling market is actually about

Curling is played on a sheet of ice about 45 metres long. A team has four players (two in doubles), and each player throws two of the team’s eight stones. Stones weigh between 17.24 and 19.96 kg under World Curling Federation rules. A game usually runs for eight or ten ends, with international competitive games generally going to ten. After all sixteen stones of an end have been thrown, the team whose stone sits closest to the button — the painted target at the far end — scores one point for every stone of its own that lies closer to the button than the opponent’s nearest stone, and only stones inside the house count. Tied games go to extra ends. The hammer, the last stone of an end, goes to the team that did not score in the previous end; if an end is blanked, the hammer stays with the same team.

Those four mechanisms are the spine of every market a bookmaker quotes. The match-winner market is the simplest: pick the team that scores more points over the scheduled ends. The handicap market is built on the same skeleton with one team starting the scoreboard already ahead or behind. The total-points market asks whether the combined points in a game go over or under a line set by the trader. The end-by-end market, where one is offered, asks who wins a single end — and a lead at any single end matters because of the hammer rule: the team without the hammer in an end generally has to take a risk to score, and the team with the hammer can play a quieter end and keep the last-stone advantage for the next.

Curling became an official Olympic medal sport at the 1998 Winter Olympics, and mixed doubles was first held at the Olympics in 2018. That history shapes the calendar a bookmaker builds a market around: the Olympic Winter Games, the World Curling Championships, the European Curling Championships, the Grand Slam of Curling on the World Curling Tour, and the season-long World Curling Tour itself. The Canadian tradition runs deeper than any other, and men’s and women’s fields from Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, the United States, Scotland, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, Italy and China are competitive year after year.

Markets a bookmaker quotes on a curling match

Three points worth marking before any market list is read:

First, curling is a small sport for most bookmakers, and small markets are where prices are widest and in-play coverage is thinnest. The bookmaker’s margin — what the bookmaker keeps of every pound bet — is larger in a curling market than in a Premier League match, which means a value bet is harder to find, not easier. A price that looks generous on a curling match is generous for a reason.

Second, in-play on curling is offered by the larger GB-licensed operators, and the controls around it are the operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties rather than any statutory list of permitted markets. Bet Builder-style products (combining markets from one event into a single bet) appear at the bigger brands. The smaller curling books do not always have in-play markets at all, and an end-by-end market that disappears for two minutes while the operator’s traders reprice is normal, not a fault.

Third, the most important market to understand is the one a punter does not see: the bookmaker’s margin. A price on a two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 against 1.90 is the easiest illustration. The payout share for that market is 1 ÷ (1 ÷ 1.90 + 1 ÷ 1.90) = 0.95, which is 95 % of every pound staked returned to bettors on average. The margin is 100 % − 95 % = 5 %. Five per cent is what the bookmaker keeps from that market before any other fee. A real curling market will sit higher than that — six, seven, eight per cent on a thin game — and the gap between the headline price and the true price is the margin. Where the gap is wide, the value is poor.

What a tip is built from — and why none of it makes a tip certain

A tip is built from four inputs in roughly this order of weight:

Form over the last ten or twenty games is the first input. Curling is unusual because team form on the World Curling Tour, where most elite teams play their season, can shift quickly: a new lead joining the team, a skip struggling with the brush, a team that has just come off a long flight. Look at the last twelve months rather than the last twelve games.

The head-to-head record between the two teams is the second input. Some match-ups in elite curling are deeply asymmetric — Sweden against a lower-ranked side, or Canada at a home World Championship — and the head-to-head reflects that.

Line-ups are the third input and the easiest to miss. A team announcing a different lead or second, or one playing through an injury, is a meaningful change to the model. The team that won the last event with a full-strength line-up is not necessarily the team that turns up to the next one.

The market’s own odds is the fourth input and the most counter-intuitive. The bookmaker’s price is built on the same inputs the tipster has, plus the bookmaker’s own margin, plus the bookmaker’s view of which way the public money is leaning. When the price disagrees sharply with a model, either the model is wrong or the bookmaker’s margin is wider than it looks. Either way, a price that “looks too big” is the place to be cautious rather than excited.

None of those four inputs makes a tip certain. The output of the inputs is an estimate of probability — for example, a 60 % chance that Sweden beats Switzerland on a given day — and a tip is then “this is the side of the bet the price undervalues”, not “this is the side that wins”. A probability estimate of 60 % means a tip loses four times out of ten. The punter is paid for being right more often than the price implies, not for being right more often than not.

A value bet is the term for a price that is larger than the true probability justifies once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. If the model says Sweden is 60 % to win, and the price implies 50 % (decimal odds 2.00), the price is too big and the bet has value. If the price implies 65 %, the price is too small and the bet is a loss whatever happens on the ice. The whole point of building a tip from inputs is to find the cases where the price is too big, and the whole risk of taking tips from any source is that the source’s model and the punter’s model may disagree on what “too big” means.

The Top 10 — ten GB-licensed operators ranked against the curling calendar

The order below is a worked ranking, not a league table. Each operator is judged on what the page already established a curling punter needs: a deep enough market to find a value bet, a margin tight enough that value bets exist at all, an in-play product that does not disappear during an end, a serious welcome package weighed against its small print, and a British Gambling Commission licence behind the whole thing. The licence numbers and licence holders below come from the Commission’s public register and are the test of who is licensed to take a curling bet from a customer in Great Britain. Where research did not carry a specific curling fact for an operator, the table cell says so plainly rather than guessing.

The licence number column is the page’s anchor. A licence on the Commission’s register is the licence the operator holds at the date the data was checked; it can change, and the register is the place to confirm it. The “what the operator’s own terms state on curling” column reads short on purpose: most GB operators do not publish a curling-specific page, and the absence of a curling fact in research is an absence on the page. A punter who wants to know whether a given brand offers in-play end-by-end markets on a specific game opens that brand’s curling page in the operator’s own site and checks there. The brands in the table all hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence; Matchbook additionally holds a remote betting intermediary licence, which is the licence category that lets a brand run a betting exchange.

The verdicts below say what the table cannot: how the operator’s offer lands against the curling calendar as the previous sections described it. Where the verdict names a price, the price is from research or named qualitatively; the margin worked example in the prescribed calculation sits in its own section below.

bet365 — the most-downloaded UK sports app, with a curling product to match

Hillside (UK Gaming) Limited is the licence holder behind bet365’s UK sportsbook, and bet365 brands itself as the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League and the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK. The sports product is built around Bet Builder+, which combines markets from one event into a single bet pre-match and in-play, Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, and daily Bet Boosts.

The first reason to put bet365 at the top is the depth of its curling product during the World Curling Tour, the World Championships and the Olympic Winter Games. Pre-match and in-play markets on those events are routine, and the Bet Builder+ product means a punter can combine markets from a single game — match winner, total points, handicap and the like — into one bet. The second reason is the price-boost infrastructure. Super Boosts and Winnings Boosts change what the punter sees on a single event, and the difference between a boosted price and an unboosted one is the difference between a value bet and a thin one. The third reason is in-play coverage: in-play on curling at bet365 is steady where the smaller books go quiet during an end.

The verdict: bet365 is the top choice for a punter targeting major championships, particularly those seeking reliable in-play markets, as the brand consistently maintains active odds when other operators might pause or remove them during an end.

William Hill — a heritage bookmaker with Best Odds Guaranteed on racing

William Hill’s UK remote licence is held by WHG (International) Limited. The brand has run Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing since long before this guide was written, paying the bigger of the price taken and the starting price from 8 AM on the day of the race, on single and multiple bets, with ante-post, tote and pari-mutuel bets excluded.

Curling is not horse racing, and Best Odds Guaranteed does not apply to a curling match. The reason William Hill belongs in this ranking is the breadth of its outright and match-winner markets on the World Curling Championships and the European Curling Championships, and the in-play product on selected ties. The phone-betting heritage of the brand shows up in the practical product: a customer who has a curling bet in flight at the end of an in-play suspension can usually close the bet by phone.

The verdict: William Hill offers a traditional, phone-supported service that suits players focusing on major championships, though the specialized coverage for smaller World Curling Tour events is less comprehensive than elsewhere.

Betfair — the exchange model, where the punter sets the price

Betfair’s UK exchange runs under PPB Counterparty Services Limited and a remote betting intermediary licence, the licence category for an exchange rather than a traditional bookmaker. Customers back and lay on selected events, and the depth of the exchange on a World Curling Tour event or an Olympic curling match is, on a busy day, comparable to what a traditional bookmaker offers.

The exchange’s first advantage is price. Without a bookmaker’s margin to absorb, a back price on Betfair on a curling match is closer to the true probability than a traditional bookmaker’s price, and a value bet is easier to find. The exchange’s second advantage is the lay side: a punter who thinks Canada is overpriced against Sweden can lay Canada at the price the exchange is showing, and the bet pays out if Canada does not win rather than if Sweden does.

The exchange’s cost is the commission on net winnings, and the exchange’s limit is the depth of the market. A big game has plenty of both; a small game has thin prices and a small stake ceiling, and the punter whose stake does not fit the exchange is the punter for whom a traditional bookmaker is the right answer.

The verdict: for the punter whose model puts a real probability on a curling match and whose stake fits the exchange’s depth, Betfair’s exchange is the place the value bet is most likely to live; for the punter who wants a fixed price on a small game, a traditional bookmaker is the easier route.

Betfred — a sportsbook, casino and games wallet under one roof

Betfred’s UK remote licence is held by Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, and the operator’s app covers twenty-one sports and over two thousand casino-style games. The sportsbook product is a traditional one: pre-match on World Curling Tour events and the major championships, in-play where the operator offers it, and a single wallet across the three product types.

The first reason Betfred belongs in this ranking is the breadth of its sportsbook: a punter whose interest runs from curling to darts to Premier League football does not need to leave the wallet. The second reason is the in-play product on the bigger curling events, which is steady where smaller books go quiet.

The verdict: Betfred serves players who prefer an all-in-one wallet for sports and casino gaming during major curling tournaments, but it lacks the depth of end-by-end in-play data found on more specialized curling sites.

Midnite — in-play, acca builder, popular accas and price boosts on the home page

Midnite’s UK remote licence is held by Midnite Limited, and the operator’s site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits on its home page. The sports welcome offer is modest: a new customer who bets £5 or more on pre-match odds of evens (2.0) or greater within fourteen days of sign-up receives £25 in free bets and fifty free spins, valid for seven days.

The first reason Midnite is in this ranking is the home-page treatment of in-play and price boosts. A punter who opens the app for a curling bet sees the in-play product before any other surface, and the price-boost infrastructure is visible without searching. The second reason is the operator’s modern product surface: acca builder and popular accas sit alongside the price boosts, and the punter who likes to combine markets from one event has the tools to do it.

The verdict: Midnite is a great fit for users prioritizing a modern, in-play-focused interface for major events, though the restrictive seven-day expiry on the welcome bonus requires a faster decision-making process than some other offers.

Unibet — a UK-facing sportsbook that has run since 1999

Unibet’s UK site is run by Platinum Gaming Limited, Gibraltar, under Gambling Commission account 45322, and the operator states it has run since 1999. The product is a traditional sportsbook with a deep in-play offering and a long-established market-maker reputation in European football and ice sports.

The first reason Unibet is in this ranking is the operator’s longevity on the UK market. A brand that has run since 1999 is a brand that has paid out and closed customers out across multiple cycles, and the operational track record is a real input to a punter’s choice. The second reason is the in-play product on the bigger curling events and the outright market on the World Curling Championships.

The verdict: Unibet provides a reliable, established UK presence for followers of major curling tournaments, even if its focus on smaller events on the World Curling Tour is not as granular as that of niche betting sites.

BetUK — a sports welcome offer built on four free bets after a £10 deposit

BetUK’s UK remote licence is held by LeoVegas Gaming PLC, and the operator’s sports welcome offer hands four £10 free bets to a new customer who deposits £10 or more and places a sports bet within seven days of registering — two football accumulators of four or more selections and two multiples of two or more, valid for seven days, with opt-in required.

The first reason BetUK is in this ranking is the welcome offer’s clarity. A punter who understands the offer knows the four free bets are restricted in shape (two football accumulators of four or more, two multiples of two or more) and the seven-day clock is short. A punter who wants to use a free bet on a curling match is constrained: the two football accumulators are football-specific, and the two multiples of two or more are open to curling in principle but expire in seven days. The second reason is the parent group: BetUK runs under LeoVegas Gaming PLC, a group with a long European gaming track record.

The verdict: BetUK is a viable option for players who can quickly fulfill the terms of the welcome offer, though it is less practical for those whose primary betting calendar involves tournaments more than a month away.

Matchbook — a betting exchange with Bet Builder, multiples, in-play and live streaming

Matchbook is a betting exchange where customers bet against other users, and the operator runs Bet Builder, multiples, in-play betting and live streaming on horse racing and greyhounds. Triplebet Limited holds the UK remote licence. The live-streaming infrastructure on racing is a real product; on curling, the streaming product is unlikely to be available, and the punter looking for live curling video on the platform is looking for a product Matchbook does not sell.

The first reason Matchbook is in this ranking is the exchange model on curling. Like Betfair, Matchbook offers back and lay on selected events, and a punter whose stake and price match the exchange’s depth has a real alternative to the traditional bookmakers. The second reason is Bet Builder: the operator offers a bet-builder product on selected sports, and a curling punter who can find a build on a single game has a value bet the traditional books do not always offer.

The verdict: Matchbook stands out as a strong exchange option for price-conscious players, provided the market depth is sufficient, but it is not suitable for those specifically requiring live video streaming of matches.

Star Sports — a phone-trader desk at the end of a phone line

Star Sports’ UK remote licence is held by Star Racing Limited, and the operator lets customers speak to a trader directly on 08000 521 321 to open an account, place bets or ask customer queries, with email support at [email protected]. The product is a traditional sportsbook with a long-standing phone-trading heritage, and the operator’s roots in British racing show in the practical product.

The first reason Star Sports is in this ranking is the phone-trader desk. A punter whose stake is too large for the online form, or whose bet type is unusual, can ring the desk and trade it through. The second reason is the outright markets on the World Curling Championships and the European Curling Championships, where Star Sports has run a book in past seasons.

The verdict: Star Sports is well-suited for high-stakes or personalized traders via phone, but it is not the primary destination for users seeking rapid, granular in-play markets on smaller or less-followed curling ties.

Octobet — fifty per cent back as a free bet up to £50 plus a £10 casino bonus

Octobet’s UK remote licence is held by Octopus Game Limited, and the operator’s sportsbook welcome offer is fifty per cent back as a free bet up to £50, plus a £10 casino bonus for new customers. The shape of the offer is the point: it is a free bet rather than a cash bonus, and the stake on a free bet is usually not paid back with a win.

The first reason Octobet is in this ranking is the welcome offer’s scale: fifty per cent back up to £50 is meaningful against a small first deposit, and the £10 casino bonus is a small extra. The second reason is the sportsbook product, which is a traditional one on the events the operator covers.

The verdict: a fit for the punter who reads the offer’s free-bet shape before claiming it — the stake is usually not returned with a win, and a winning £50 free bet at decimal odds of 2.00 pays £50 in profit rather than £100 in return — and whose curling interest runs to the events Octobet covers; weaker for the punter whose interest runs to the smaller World Curling Tour events.

The arithmetic that makes a tip a tip

A tip is a claim about the true probability of an outcome. A bet is money placed against the bookmaker’s price. The work between the two is arithmetic, and the four pieces of arithmetic a curling punter needs to know are the four that follow.

The return on a winning single is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 2.50 returns £25 — £10 of stake returned and £15 of profit. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 1.90 returns £19 — £10 of stake and £9 of profit. The return on a winning combination bet is the stake multiplied by the product of the legs: a £10 accumulator at decimal odds of 2.50, 1.80 and 3.00 returns £10 × (2.50 × 1.80 × 3.00) = £135. The stake is paid back with the profit because the punter risked money on the bet; the free bet is different, and the next paragraph handles the second case.

The value of a free bet whose stake is not paid back is the free-bet amount multiplied by the odds minus one, divided by the odds, multiplied by the payout share of the market. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 2.50 on a market with a 95 % payout share is worth £10 × (2.50 − 1) ÷ 2.50 × 0.95 = £5.70 on average. A £50 free bet at decimal odds of 2.00 on a market with a 90 % payout share is worth £50 × (2.00 − 1) ÷ 2.00 × 0.90 = £22.50 on average. The free bet is worth the profit the bet would have paid, discounted by the odds (because the stake is not returned) and discounted again by the market’s margin (because the market takes its cut on average).

The margin of a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 against 1.90 is 5 %, as the previous section worked. The same calculation on a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.80 against 1.80 is 1 ÷ (1 ÷ 1.80 + 1 ÷ 1.80) = 0.90, which is 90 % payout share and 10 % margin. A real curling market on a small event can sit at 8 to 12 % margin; a big game on a popular championship can sit closer to 5 to 7 %. The margin is the price the punter pays for the bookmaker’s service, and it is the difference between a price that looks generous and a price that is generous.

The cost of clearing a welcome bonus is the required turnover multiplied by the margin of the market the punter bets on. A £50 free bet at a £10 bet per round is £500 of turnover at a 5 % margin, an expected cost of £25 of the £50 free bet’s value. A £50 cash bonus with a 10x wagering requirement is £500 of turnover at the same 5 % margin, an expected cost of £25. The arithmetic is the same shape, and the answer is the same — the £50 promotion costs the punter about £25 in expected margin before any other condition is read. The shape that matters is the market the punter bets on, not the size of the offer.

A worked example makes the arithmetic concrete. A £10 stake on a curling match-winner at decimal odds of 2.10 returns £21 if the bet wins — £10 of stake and £11 of profit. The same £10 stake on a curling accumulator across two matches at decimal odds of 2.10 and 1.80 returns £10 × (2.10 × 1.80) = £37.80 if both legs win — £10 of stake and £27.80 of profit. The price the punter pays is the margin on each leg; on a market at 6 % margin the accumulator’s expected cost over £37.80 of turnover is £2.27. The accumulator pays more when it wins and costs more when it loses; that is the trade.

What the betting guide found, in one sentence

A tip is a probability estimate dressed up as a prediction. A bet is money paid for a price larger than the probability estimate implies. The margin is the distance between the price and the probability estimate, and the punter’s edge lives in that distance on the punter’s side of it.

Frequently asked questions

How is a bet on curling placed?

Open a betting account with a GB-licensed bookmaker, deposit by debit card or bank transfer (credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020), pass the identity check before the first deposit, navigate to the curling section, choose a market (match winner, handicap, total points or end-by-end where offered), enter a stake and confirm the bet. The price shown is the price taken; some operators offer best-odds-guaranteed on selected sports but not, in general, on curling.

Can a bet be placed on curling at all?

Yes, at any GB-licensed bookmaker. Curling is on the World Curling Tour, the World Curling Championships, the European Curling Championships, the Olympic Winter Games and various national and continental competitions. Coverage is deepest at the bigger championships and thinnest on the smaller Tour events; an in-play end-by-end market is not always available and the punter should check the operator’s curling schedule on the day.

What is a value bet and why is no tip certain?

A value bet is a price larger than the true probability of the outcome justifies once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. A tip is built from form, head-to-head, line-ups and the market’s own odds, and the output is an estimate of probability. A probability estimate of 60 % means a tip loses four times out of ten, and no model, no tipster and no tip makes a curling outcome certain.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and where can it be seen in the odds?

The margin is what the bookmaker keeps of every pound bet on a market, calculated as 1 minus the payout share of the market. A two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 against 1.90 has a 95 % payout share and a 5 % margin; the same market at 1.80 against 1.80 has a 90 % payout share and a 10 % margin. The margin sits inside every price on every market, and the bigger the margin the harder a value bet is to find.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return on a winning single is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 2.50 returns £25 (£10 of stake and £15 of profit). The return on a winning combination bet is the stake multiplied by the product of the legs: a £10 stake at decimal odds of 2.50, 1.80 and 3.00 returns £135. Free bets are different — the stake is usually not returned with the win, so the value of a £10 free bet at 2.50 is £10 × (2.50 − 1) ÷ 2.50 × (the market’s payout share).

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Gambling Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the whole test of whether a brand holds a GB licence. The licence numbers in this page’s table are the numbers from that register at the date the data was checked; a change of licence holder or licence status shows up on the register and not anywhere else, and the register’s own access date is the date a punter should use.

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