The charge nobody shows you
Margin and payout, side by side
Sports betting is 175,100 searches a month in Ghana, and almost all of the writing about it is about which selection to make. This page is about the two figures that apply whatever you select: what the book takes out of the price before the bet is struck, and how fast what is left comes back.
What each book keeps, and how fast it pays
| Bookmaker | Margin | Cash out | How the margin was taken |
|---|---|---|---|
| SportyBet | 6.12% Computed | 2 min | Median across every football match carrying a match-result market on the operator's own Ghana feed. Comparable. |
| betPawa | 5.08% Computed | 10 min | Median across every football event carrying a full-time match-result market on the operator's own Ghana site. Comparable. |
| MSport | no entry No entry | 45 min | No margin is recorded for this book, so there is no basis to state. |
| Soccabet | 5.12% Computed | 8 min | Mean of ten top-flight English fixtures on the operator's own coupon. A flattering basis: books price the top flight far sharper than the rest, so the all-football figure is unmeasured and very likely higher. |
| Betway | 8.98% Computed | 5 min | Two fixtures from a single third-party aggregator, because the operator's own site served no prices. The weakest figure in this set and it should not be compared like for like. |
| BetFox | 4.21% Computed | 15 min | Mean of eight mainstream fixtures read in a browser off the live Ghanaian site. Narrow sample, mainstream basis. |
| Bangbet | no entry No entry | 1.5 h | No margin is recorded for this book, so there is no basis to state. |
| Premier Bet | no entry No entry | 2 h | No margin is recorded for this book, so there is no basis to state. |
These numbers are not interchangeable
Five of the eight sportsbooks on this ledger carry a margin figure and they were not taken on the same basis. A median across all football and a mean of ten top-flight fixtures answer different questions, and the second one always looks better. The basis column is not a footnote to the table, it is a condition on reading it.
No margin is recorded for Wiwi Casino, MSport, Bangbet, Premier Bet. In each case the operator's prices could not be read in a form that survives arithmetic, and a figure borrowed from another market's skin of the same brand would not be about Ghana.
What a margin costs against what a charge costs
Two charges, one of them disclosed
A withdrawal charge is published at the cashier, applies once, and applies to money that has already been won. A margin is not published anywhere a punter will look, applies to every stake, and applies whether the bet wins or loses. On this ledger exactly one bookmaker publishes a withdrawal charge, and every sportsbook on it carries a margin several times larger by any reasonable comparison of what a regular bettor turns over.
That is the reason this publication weighs getting paid rather than odds and then puts the margin on a page of its own instead of into the index. A margin measured four different ways cannot carry points in a ranking without inventing the comparison the fact base explicitly refuses to make.
Where the sportsbooks sit on the index
- 78 SportyBet sports listed: Football, Basketball, Tennis, eFootball, Table Tennis, Ice Hockey
- 77 betPawa sports listed: Football, Basketball, eFootball, Tennis
- 77 MSport sports listed: Football, Virtual sports, Esports, Basketball, Tennis
- 76 Soccabet sports listed: Football, Ghana Premier League, Table tennis, American football
- 68 Betway sports listed: Football, Basketball, Tennis, Cricket, Boxing, Esports
- 60 BetFox sports listed: Football, Basketball, Tennis, Table Tennis, Volleyball, Handball, Ice Hockey, Boxing, MMA, Formula 1
- 52 Bangbet sports listed: Football
- 37 Premier Bet sports listed: Football, Basketball, American football, Ice hockey, Boxing, MMA
A sports list is what the operator's own navigation carries rather than a measurement of depth, and it is recorded that way in the fact base. It is printed here because a reader choosing between two books wants to know whether the thing they bet on is there at all. The full index, with the model behind it.
Questions about margins
What is a bookmaker margin and why is it on a payments site?
It is the share of a market the book keeps once every price in it is added up. On a match-result market a two per cent book and a nine per cent book are two different products rather than two opinions. It is on a payments site because it is a charge: it comes out before any payout exists, it is never shown at the cashier, and it dwarfs every withdrawal fee published in this market.
Can I compare these margin figures directly?
Not safely, and the table says why on every row. Some are medians across all football on an operator's own feed and some are means of a handful of top-flight fixtures. A top-flight-only figure flatters the book, because the top flight is the sharpest thing it prices. Read the basis column before reading the number.
Which is more expensive, the margin or the withdrawal charge?
The margin, by a distance, at every book on this ledger. Only one operator here publishes any withdrawal charge at all, and it is a small percentage of the amount withdrawn; the margin is a percentage of every stake, taken every time, whether the bet wins or loses.