Online UFC betting in Great Britain – choosing a bookmaker, reading a price, sizing the offer

Updated October 2026

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A UFC card is short, the markets are short, and the gap between two prices for the same fighter is wide enough that picking the wrong bookmaker can cost a tenth of the return before the fight begins. That is the shape of online UFC betting in Great Britain this year: a small sport on a licence-heavy market, ten bookmakers fighting over the same handful of events, and a margin that varies more between firms than it does between fights. The page that follows walks through what is actually on offer, what it costs, and who each path suits.

Current as of October 30, 2026 · verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own published terms.

What predictions and strategy actually amount to in MMA betting

A UFC betting tip is, at heart, a forecast about how a fight will end and when. The forecast breaks into three practical steps: read the fight, name the market that fits it, and size the stake against the price. Each step is mechanical, each step costs the bettor in a different way, and most of the winnings left on the table are lost in step three.

The reading is the part tipsters sell. A pick on UFC 299 or UFC 298 has to weigh style match-ups, reach, cardio, the cut to weight, and the camp behind each fighter. None of that is mathematics — it is craft, and a reader who has followed a fighter for years has as much of it as most on-page land. What the reader cannot do alone is read a price. A line of 1.83 on a fighter the reader fancies tells them the bookmaker gives that fighter roughly a fifty-five per cent chance of winning; if the reader’s own number is sixty-five, the bet has a positive expected value, and if it is forty-five the bet is a gift to the bookmaker. The judgment, in other words, sits in the comparison between two numbers: the price and the bettor’s own estimate of probability. The pick itself is the smaller of the two.

The second step is market selection. The headline price is on the moneyline. There are also method-of-victim markets (KO/TKO, submission, decision), round groupings, and “fight goes the distance” lines. Each of these is a separate price with its own margin and its own way of paying out depending on how the fight ends. A bet on a method-of-victim market costs the reader if the bout ends the wrong way, and a bet on the over/under round count costs the reader if it ends a round earlier or later than the line. The best UFC bets today are not always the picks most tipsters highlight; they are the picks where the price is wide of the read. Skill matters here, too — knowing that a 1.50 price on a fighter to win is shorter than the read deserves tells the reader to walk past it.

The third step is bankroll. A bankroll is the amount the reader has set aside for betting, kept apart from rent and bills. UFC cards run three to thirteen bouts a night, and a reader who stakes a tenth of the bankroll on each favourite loses it in three bad reads. The rule of thumb is to stake a fixed small share of the bankroll — one to two per cent is the common band — and to log every bet, win or lose. The point of the log is not bookkeeping. It is the only way the reader sees that the price they thought they were getting was not the price the bookmaker was offering: a record of 200 bets at an average price of 1.91, with a five per cent margin baked in, will lose slowly and steadily, and the log is what makes that visible.

UFC fight night betting tips work the same way as tips for a pay-per-view: the sport is the same, the cards differ in depth. A reader can apply the same three steps to any UFC event and arrive at a stake they can defend with arithmetic.

Bet types, odds and how a UFC price is built

UFC betting odds are presented in two forms. British bookmakers write them as fractions — 4/5, 11/8, evens — and the same numbers are shown as decimals — 1.80, 2.38, 2.00 — for readers who think in units of stake. Both forms mean the same thing: the return on a winning stake of £10 at 4/5 (1.80) is £18, made up of the £10 stake returned and £8 of winnings. The maths for any price is stake times the decimal odds, and the maths for any combination is the product of the decimal odds of the legs.

The four bet shapes a UFC punter meets most often are:

Single. A stake on one selection. The price is the price shown. A £10 single at 2.50 returns £25 if it wins.

Accumulator (acca). A stake on two or more selections, each of which must win for the bet to pay out. The price is the product of the leg prices. A £10 acca with three legs at 2.00, 1.80 and 3.50 has a combined price of 12.60, so a winning acca returns £126.

Bet builder. A stake on several markets within one fight (or one event), priced together on a single slip. LiveScore Bet’s builder takes up to ten selections from match result, both teams to score, corners, total goals, player scoring and card markets; the equivalent in UFC covers method of victim, round groupings and fight goes the distance, all priced into one combined line.

Each-way. Two bets of equal stake, one on the fighter to win and one on the fighter to “place” — usually to start a favourite at a price that the bookmaker has shortened. Each-way is more common in horse racing than in UFC, where place terms are bookmaker-specific. The stake doubles, and only the win half counts if the fighter does not place.

The price on a UFC fight is not a single number. It is two or three prices — one for each fighter, and a price for the draw in three-way championship markets — that the bookmaker has chosen so the implied probabilities add up to more than one hundred per cent. The slice above one hundred is the margin: the bookmaker’s share of every unit bet on the market, taken before the payouts. A market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 on a two-way fight is a market with roughly a five per cent margin — the bookmaker keeps about 5p of every £1 wagered on the bout, and the rest is paid out as winnings across winners and losers. The same fight at 1.80 / 1.80 carries about an eleven per cent margin, and a reader who can choose between the two has just been given eleven pence of value for every pound they stake.

The standard calculation for a two-way market is straightforward. The payout share is one divided by the sum of the reciprocals of the two prices; the margin is one minus the payout share. For prices of 1.90 and 1.90, the payout share is one divided by (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), which is one divided by 1.0526 — about 95.0 per cent. The margin is therefore about 5.0 per cent. The same exercise at 1.85 / 1.85 gives a payout share of about 92.5 per cent and a margin of about 7.5 per cent. The condition on this band is that both sides are priced identically — a heavy favourite at 1.20 against an outsider at 5.50 will carry a similar margin in absolute terms but a very different share between the two sides, and the reader who bets only on the favourite pays a different cost from the reader who bets on the underdog.

A margin is not the same as a payout share. A market that returns 95p of every £1 wagered as winnings is a market that keeps 5p as margin, and the two are two ways of describing the same bookmaker edge. Neither is what the reader keeps — that figure is the difference between the price taken and the true probability of the selection, multiplied by the stake, integrated over every bet the reader places. A reader who bets only at markets with a five per cent margin will, on average, lose five per cent of turnover over a large sample, and a reader who mixes in a market at ten per cent will lose faster.

A useful habit is to check the margin of any market before staking. The bookmaker’s site does not print it, but it falls out of the prices: a quick calculation of 1 minus the payout share gives the edge. Where two bookmakers price the same fight at materially different margins, the difference is real money to the reader over a season.

The UFC as a sport and as a betting tournament

The Ultimate Fighting Championship held its first event on 12 November 1993 in Denver, Colorado. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, and Dana White has been its president since 2001. By 2026 the promotion had held more than 750 events and runs eight men’s and three women’s divisions. A UFC card is a mixed-martial-arts tournament in the loosest sense: most events are one-off nights rather than a season-long competition, and the title picture is the closest thing the promotion has to a year-long ranking.

A UFC bout is structured in rounds. Each round is a maximum of five minutes long with one minute’s rest between rounds. Championship fights and non-title main events are scheduled for a maximum of five rounds; all other bouts are scheduled for three. A bout can be won by submission, knockout, technical knockout, judges’ decision (unanimous, majority, split or technical) or disqualification; it can also be ruled a no contest. When the judges are needed, the ten-point must system applies: three judges score each round, the winner of the round receives ten points and the loser nine or fewer, and 10-8 is the typical score for a dominant round. If a UFC title fight ends in a draw, the defending champion retains the title — a small rule with a large effect on how the reader should price a closely matched championship bout.

The calendar through the back end of 2026 has UFC 334 scheduled for 14 November at Madison Square Garden, New York City, and UFC 335 for 12 December at T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas. Beyond the numbered pay-per-views, Fight Night cards run most Saturdays. The volume matters for the reader: more events means more markets, more prices to compare, and more chances to find a price that is wide of the read.

Betting on the UFC in Great Britain is offered by every mainstream bookmaker. There is no statutory list of permitted sports or markets; a bookmaker with a Gambling Commission remote licence may offer any market it chooses under its own terms and the Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. The reader’s choice between bookmakers is therefore a choice between products rather than a choice between what is and is not legal. That choice, and how it is made, is the subject of the next shelf.

The ten bookmakers: what each one is for, and who it suits

A licensed bookmaker is one that appears on the Gambling Commission’s public register against a remote general betting standard (real events) licence for Great Britain. Every brand listed below carries such a licence and is a member of GAMSTOP; the licence number on the register is the proof. A reader who wants to check any of them can search the Commission’s public register by company name, trading name, domain or account number.

The list below is not a ranking. It is a comparison of ten firms that meet the same regulatory test, ordered as research delivers them. Each one is described in terms of what it does well and the kind of reader it suits; each write-up closes on a verdict that names the trade-off rather than restating the licence.

The list covers the market, not the whole market. Other licensed firms price UFC fights too, and the comparison is between these ten rather than between these ten and everybody. Each block below unpacks one row.

LiveScore Bet

The LiveScore Bet product is built around in-play coverage and a bet builder that takes up to ten selections. For UFC, the builder’s value is that it lets the reader combine moneyline, method of victim and round groupings on a single slip — the kind of combination that is hard to assemble elsewhere without an acca. The firm runs on the same platform as the LiveScore scores app, so live data sits next to the betting slip during a card. The trade-off is depth of market beyond the headline fight: LiveScore Bet is stronger on the televised bouts than on the undercard. The platform’s integration with the LiveScore app makes it a strong contender for anyone who prioritises live data availability over deep undercard market variety.

BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin’s £15-in-free-bets welcome offer, split across a £5 sports bet, a £5 acca and a £5 Sub-Cover bet, is one of the smaller headline numbers in this set. The size of the headline is the easy thing to measure; the harder one is what the offer demands in qualifying stake and odds. A £10 qualifying bet at the minimum sports price is the kind of stake a casual reader can place on any UFC favourite, and the three-token return gives three chances to convert it into withdrawable cash. BetGoodwin’s wider product is horseracing-led, and the UFC offering is the supporting card rather than the headline. The offer is clearly designed for racing punters looking for a minor diversion, so casual UFC fans might find the overall market depth somewhat restrictive.

Bet600

Best Odds Guaranteed is the Bet600 promise on horse racing: take a price early, and if the starting price is bigger at the off, the bet is paid at the SP. That is a racing product and not a UFC one. The UFC side of Bet600 is the standard moneyline, method of victim and round groupings offered under a remote general betting licence, with no frills attached. While the platform covers UFC as a secondary offering, it lacks any standout features that would justify a switch for a dedicated combat sports bettor.

William Hill

William Hill is the longest-established name on the list and the one with the broadest UFC menu. The firm prices the full card, runs in-play on the main event, and offers the standard accumulator, each-way and bet builder shapes. Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing from 8 AM on the day of the race — on singles and multiples, not on ante-post or pari-mutuel — is the racing product, but it is the racing product on the firm most readers already have an account with. The UFC reader who wants one account that covers the sport, has a deep in-play product, and is run by a household-name operator pays a premium over the smaller firms only in the sense that the menu is bigger, not that the price is worse. The choice is breadth, not value.

Hollywoodbets

Hollywoodbets’ sports welcome offer is a stake-back on the first qualifying losing accumulator: a £10+ acca with three or more legs at minimum odds of 4/1, settled within seven days, returns the stake as a free bet of up to £30 if it loses, and the offer is once per customer. That is the kind of offer that suits a reader who already plans to place an acca on a UFC card — three fights at combined odds above 4/1 is a small bar — and wants the safety net of a refund. Hollywoodbets is a South African brand with a UK remote licence, and its UFC offering is part of a broader sportsbook rather than a UFC specialist product. Punters primarily interested in accumulator betting on UFC will find value in the safety net, but those focused on singles may prefer a different approach.

Fitzdares

Fitzdares is positioned as a premium product, with cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials and ante-post markets across racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, and in-play prices across the same set. The UFC menu sits inside the broader sportsbook rather than as a standalone product. The premium positioning shows up in the look of the app and the price of certain markets — ante-post on UFC title fights carries a longer horizon than most firms offer. The high-end positioning makes this a suitable choice for someone seeking a curated betting experience across several sports, rather than just the lowest possible price on a UFC main event.

Betfair

Betfair is the only firm on this list that is also a betting exchange. The sportsbook side offers in-play, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish racing and football inside the app, and a 90 Minute Payout market for football — the last of these is a football product, not a UFC one, but the in-play and live-streaming features apply to the UFC card as well. The exchange is a separate product: it lets the reader back and lay selections at prices set by other users, with the exchange taking a small commission on net winnings. For the UFC reader, the exchange is the place to lay a losing bet, to trade out of a position when the price moves against the read, and to find prices on bouts the sportsbook has not bothered to price. The sportsbook is the easier account for a casual reader; the exchange is the sharper tool for a reader who wants to take the bookmaker’s price and act against it.

DAZN Bet

DAZN Bet’s deposit floor is the standout specification: £5 by debit card, Apple Pay, Paysafecard, Trustly or Skrill, and £20 by PayPal, with no processing fees on any of them. The low floor is the right shape for a reader who wants to bet small on a UFC undercard without committing a full £10 stake to a single fight. The UFC menu is part of a broader sportsbook that sits alongside the DAZN streaming product. The trade-off is that the firm is newer to UK sports betting than the established names, and the in-play product on UFC is thinner than at the bigger firms. With its accessible deposit floor and streaming alignment, the platform is tailored for the occasional bettor, whereas more seasoned punters might find the in-play options lacking.

NetBet

NetBet offers Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers, a Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds, and sports stats for the major leagues. The Daily Boost is the relevant product for a UFC card: a one-off price improvement on a featured bout, available to all customers rather than tied to a welcome offer. The Bet Builder with instant dynamic odds means the combined price updates as the reader adds legs — the kind of feature that lets the reader see the margin of a multi-market combination in real time. The focus here is clearly on multi-sport betting enthusiasts, and while UFC coverage is present, dedicated MMA punters might prefer a platform with a more consistent fight-focused schedule.

Sporting Index

Sporting Index is a spread-betting firm as well as a fixed-odds sportsbook. The combination is unusual on this list and is the reason a reader might choose it over a pure fixed-odds firm. Spread betting lets the reader stake a unit amount per point of movement on a market — the over/under round count, the method of victim — and the payout is the unit amount times the number of points by which the actual outcome differs from the spread. A winning spread bet pays more than a fixed-odds bet on the same fight, and a losing one costs more than the stake. The fixed-odds sportsbook runs alongside it with the standard Bet Builder for football, auto cash-out and Multi-Markets. For the reader who wants spread betting on UFC and the safety of a fixed-odds product as a fallback, this is the only firm on the list that offers both; for the reader who wants fixed odds only, the spread-betting menu is noise.

Online UFC betting in Great Britain: how the market is shaped

Online UFC betting in Great Britain sits inside a broader online betting market that has been licensed by the Gambling Commission since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 took effect. The Act brought every operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain inside the Commission’s regime, regardless of where the operator is based — a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute for a Commission licence, and the only test of whether a brand holds one is whether it appears on the Commission’s public register.

There is no statutory list of permitted sports or markets. A bookmaker with a remote general betting standard (real events) licence may offer any market it chooses under its own terms and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice; the Commission’s role is to license the operator, not to approve the menu. In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers and is controlled by the operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties; no statutory prohibition on in-play was found. Esports are treated like any other event, virtual events are a separate licence category, and bets on politics, novelty markets and television outcomes are offered by some GB bookmakers.

The minimum age is eighteen. Name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can deposit or gamble — since 7 May 2019, including with a free bet or bonus. There is no anonymous play at a licensed site, and a reader who wants anonymity has to leave the licensed market entirely, with the consequences that follow.

Betting exchanges — Betfair being the most prominent — run under a separate betting intermediary licence category. Spread betting on financial markets is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission; spread betting on sports falls under General Betting Duty. A reader who is unsure which regime applies should check the operator’s terms and the regulator named on the licence.

For the reader, the practical shape of the market is this: a small number of household-name firms with broad menus, a longer tail of smaller firms with sharper prices on selected events, and a set of betting exchanges that let the reader back and lay at prices set by other users. UFC fits into that shape the same way boxing and tennis do — a niche sport with deep coverage at the top of the market and thinner coverage at the tail.

Responsible gambling: what the licence buys

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. A reader who registers with GAMSTOP is excluded from every licensed online bookmaker in Great Britain for the period they choose — six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal — and the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years after the minimum period unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service.

Financial vulnerability checks have applied since 30 August 2024 under LCCP condition 3.4.4: a licensed remote bookmaker must run a public-record check — for example, bankruptcy or county court judgments — when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, since 28 February 2025. It is not an income check and not a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments — the “affordability checks” of the press — are announced in a staged plan by the Commission, with no start date, and should not be written as in force.

Deposit limits are a customer-set tool: every licensed operator offers a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, with the first changes under the new RTS 12 rules in force since 31 October 2025 and a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting; limits are the customer’s choice.

Help is available through GamCare (which runs the National Gambling Helpline), GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics, and Gamblers Anonymous. A reader who is worried about their own betting or someone else’s should contact one of these before placing another bet. The numbers and addresses are on each operator’s safer-gambling page.

A reader who bets at an unlicensed site gives up the lot — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no obligation on the operator to apply the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check. The licensed market is not a guarantee against loss, but it is the only path on which the protections above apply.

Crypto and anonymity at licensed UFC bookmakers

No GB-licensed online bookmaker accepts cryptocurrency deposits. The Commission’s identity-verification rules require name, address and date of birth before a customer can deposit or gamble, including with a free bet or bonus, and that requirement applies regardless of the deposit method. There is no British named-account rule or state list of permitted payment methods; the absence of crypto at licensed firms is the choice of the operators and their payment partners, not the terms of the licence.

Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020 under LCCP condition 6.1.2, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by the ban. The accepted payment methods at each licensed firm are set out in the firm’s own terms: DAZN Bet, for example, accepts deposits from £5 by debit card, Apple Pay, Paysafecard, Trustly or Skrill, and £20 by PayPal, with no processing fees.

A reader who wants to bet on UFC with bitcoin or another cryptocurrency has to use an unlicensed site. The cost of that path is the loss of every protection named in the previous section — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress, no obligation on the operator to apply the 10x bonus cap, and no source-of-funds checks under the money-laundering rules. The crypto sportsbook also pays no General Betting Duty to HMRC, so the operator’s cost base is different, and the price the reader sees reflects that. Whether the difference is worth the loss of protections is a judgment the reader has to make for themselves.

Bonuses and free bets: what the offer is really worth

A welcome offer is the headline; the terms behind it are the cost. Three terms matter most: the wagering requirement, the minimum price on the qualifying bet, and the deadline. A £10 free bet with no wagering condition is a £10 bet whose stake is not paid back with a win — at decimal odds of 2.00, the reader keeps £10 of winnings and loses the £10 stake. A £10 bonus with a 10x wagering requirement means the reader has to bet £100 of their own money before the bonus converts to withdrawable cash; the cap on the wagering requirement is 10x under the Commission’s promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026, so any offer above that is in breach of the licence conditions and should not be at a licensed firm.

The BetGoodwin welcome offer is a £15-in-free-bets bundle for a £10 qualifying bet, split as £5 sports, £5 acca and £5 Sub-Cover. The three tokens are three separate bets rather than one combined free bet; each carries its own terms, and the reader who wants to convert them into withdrawable cash has to clear each token on its own conditions. Hollywoodbets’ offer is a stake-back on the first qualifying losing acca — a £10+ acca with three or more legs at minimum odds of 4/1, settled within seven days, returns the stake as a free bet of up to £30. NetBet runs Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers, each tied to a specific event or selection. Sporting Index offers free bets inside its spread-betting product, with the spread-betting terms applying.

A “risk-free” bet refunded as a free bet is not a refund in money. The free bet is a separate stake whose terms apply on its own; the reader who thinks of the refund as cash has misunderstood the offer. The Hollywoodbets offer above is the clearest example: the stake is returned as a free bet, not as cash, and the free bet has its own minimum price and its own settlement rules.

Mixed-product promotions — offers that require gambling on two or more product types such as betting, casino, bingo and lottery — are banned under the same set of promotion rules. A welcome offer that requires a sports bet to unlock free spins, for example, is not permitted at a licensed firm.

A free bet is worth, on average, the free-bet amount times (decimal odds minus one) divided by the decimal odds, multiplied by the payout share of the market. A £10 free bet at decimal odds of 2.00, on a market with a 95 per cent payout share, is worth £10 × (1.00 / 2.00) × 0.95 = £4.75 on average. That is the average over many bets, not the outcome of any single bet. A free bet at long odds is worth more than a free bet at short odds; a free bet on a market with a low margin is worth more than a free bet on a market with a high margin. The reader who spends a free bet on a 1.20 favourite gives up most of its value to the bookmaker’s margin.

The reader who wants the best free bet is the reader who treats the offer as a marketing cost to the operator rather than as a gift to the reader. The 10x cap is the law; the deadline and the minimum price are the operator’s choice. Both matter, and both are in the terms.

UFC betting apps: the mobile experience

The UFC card runs late into the UK night — main events typically end between 3 AM and 5 AM — and most bets are placed from a handset rather than a desktop. The shape of the betting app matters more for this sport than for most.

Three features separate a UFC app from a generic one. First, in-play coverage that updates prices between rounds rather than only between fights; the round is the unit of the sport, and a price that updates only at the bell is half a product. Second, a bet builder that supports method-of-victim and round-grouping markets inside a single fight rather than only across multiple fights. Third, the ability to cash out a bet between rounds — a feature the reader either uses or wishes they had, and one that varies sharply across the firms on the list. Fitzdares offers cash out alongside accumulators, Lucky 15s and specials; Betfair offers in-play and Bet Builder with free live streaming; Sporting Index offers auto cash-out on its fixed-odds product.

Bet365 is the most-downloaded sports betting app in the UK and the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League; its UFC product is part of a broader sportsbook. The firm is licensed by the Commission and sits outside the top-ten comparison on this page only because the comparison is shaped by research, not because the product is weaker. The reader who wants the most-downloaded UK sportsbook for UFC betting is the reader who goes to Bet365; the reader who wants a smaller account with a different shape goes to one of the ten above.

A reader who bets from a phone should also check the deposit floor. DAZN Bet’s £5 floor by debit card is the lowest on the list, and is the right account for the reader who wants to bet small on the undercard. The £20 PayPal floor at the same firm is a constraint for the reader who wants to use PayPal on every transaction.

The British punter who bets on UFC from a phone will, on most cards, place the bet inside an hour of the main event and check the result inside ten minutes of the final bell. The app that loads fast, prices the method-of-victim market, and settles the bet without a support ticket is the app that wins the reader.

Live UFC betting and cash out

A live UFC market is unusual among live betting markets because the rounds are short and the breaks are regular. The price on the moneyline moves between rounds more than during them, and the method-of-victim market moves sharply after a knockdown that does not end the fight. A reader who wants to trade out of a position has a one-minute window between each round to do so — long enough for a single cash-out, short enough that the price can move against them while they decide.

Cash out is a feature that lets the reader settle a bet before the event ends, at a price set by the bookmaker. The price is the bookmaker’s estimate of the current value of the bet, less a margin that the bookmaker keeps. A bet placed at 2.50 that has moved to a true value of 3.00 may be cashed out at, say, 2.85 — the bookmaker keeps the 0.15 difference as the cost of the feature. The reader who cashes out locks in a smaller win than they would have got at the final bell; the reader who does not cash out and loses gets nothing. The decision is whether the certainty of the smaller win is worth more than the chance of the larger one.

Auto cash-out, offered by Sporting Index on its fixed-odds product, lets the reader set a price at which the bet settles automatically, without the reader having to tap the screen between rounds. The feature is useful for the reader who cannot watch the card live and wants the discipline of a pre-set exit.

In-play betting on UFC is offered by every mainstream GB bookmaker and is part of the standard product rather than a premium feature. The Commission has not prohibited in-play, and the controls are the operator’s licence conditions and customer-protection duties. A reader who wants the deepest in-play product on UFC is the reader who checks the in-play menu on each firm’s app before choosing the account; the headline product is similar, the depth varies.

A worked example: the margin on a UFC moneyline

The margin on a two-way market falls out of the two prices. Take an illustrative example — not a quoted price — of a UFC moneyline priced at 1.90 on each fighter. The reciprocal of 1.90 is 0.5263; the sum of the two reciprocals is 1.0526; the payout share is one divided by 1.0526, which is about 95.0 per cent. The margin is one minus the payout share, which is about 5.0 per cent.

The same calculation at 1.85 / 1.85 gives a payout share of one divided by (1/1.85 + 1/1.85), which is one divided by 1.0811, or about 92.5 per cent, and a margin of about 7.5 per cent. At 1.80 / 1.80 the payout share is about 90.0 per cent and the margin is about 10.0 per cent. The condition on this band is that both sides of the market are priced identically — a heavy favourite at 1.20 against an outsider at 6.00 carries a similar margin in absolute terms but a very different distribution of that margin between the two sides.

The condition is also that the prices are decimal odds, not fractional. A British bookmaker showing 9/10 on each side is showing decimal odds of 1.90 on each side, and the calculation is the same.

A two-way UFC market at a margin of 5.0 per cent is a sharp market by retail standards; a margin of 7.5 per cent is ordinary; a margin of 10.0 per cent is loose. The reader who wants to keep more of every pound staked should look for the sharper market, and the way to find it is to compare prices across firms on the same fight.

Frequently asked questions

Where to bet on UFC fights?

UFC fights are priced by every mainstream UK-licensed online bookmaker, including the ten reviewed above and the broader licensed market. A reader who wants a single account that covers the whole card should look for a firm with broad UFC coverage and an in-play product that updates between rounds; the firms in this comparison with the deepest UFC menus are William Hill, Betfair and NetBet. The check before opening an account is whether the firm holds a Gambling Commission remote licence, which is confirmed by searching the Commission’s public register by company name, trading name, domain or account number.

Where to bet on UFC?

UFC is offered as part of the standard sportsbook menu at every licensed UK online bookmaker; there is no specialist UFC-only operator in the licensed market. The choice between them is a choice between products — the depth of the in-play menu, the presence of a method-of-victim market, the quality of the bet builder, the cash-out feature — rather than a choice between menus. The trade-offs in the comparison above cover the product differences.

Where can I bet on UFC fights?

UFC fights can be bet on at any licensed UK online bookmaker, either through the website or the mobile app. The reader who bets on a phone should check the app’s in-play product and the deposit floor before choosing the account; the reader who bets on a desktop should check the depth of the method-of-victim and round-grouping markets. The licensed market is the only market on which the Commission’s protections apply, including GAMSTOP, the 10x bonus cap and the £150 vulnerability check.

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

The Gambling Commission publishes a public register of licence holders, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A reader enters the firm’s name or domain in the search box, and the register shows the licence type, the account number, the trading names covered and the licence holder’s legal name. A licence for remote general betting standard (real events) is the right category for an online sportsbook; a betting intermediary licence covers an exchange; a remote pool betting licence covers pool products. The register is the only test of whether a brand is licensed, and the only place to confirm an account number.

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

The return on a winning bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 2.50 returns £25, made up of the £10 stake and £15 of winnings. A combination bet multiplies the decimal odds of the legs into one combined price; a £10 acca with three legs at 2.00, 1.80 and 3.50 has a combined price of 12.60, so a winning acca returns £126. The net profit is the return minus the stake, and is the figure that matters for the reader’s bankroll.

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

The bookmaker’s margin is the share of every pound wagered on a market that the bookmaker keeps, before paying out winnings. It is calculated as one minus the payout share, where the payout share is one divided by the sum of the reciprocals of the prices on every outcome. A two-way market priced at 1.90 on each side has a payout share of about 95.0 per cent and a margin of about 5.0 per cent; the same market at 1.85 / 1.85 has a margin of about 7.5 per cent. The reader who wants to keep more of every pound staked should look for the market with the smaller margin, which is the market with the larger combined payout share.

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