Paf Bonus & Sports Review

Paf is a bookmaker with a difference and this is reflected in its unique site layout and design. Sports betting is not its focus, it’s more focused on games, casino and poker but regardless it offers a decent enough sportsbook though with a notable lack of horse racing. This is all the more odd as it has a UK gambling licence.

One major area for improvement is customer support, simply it needs to add live chat as a feature as this is more an expectation than a bonus these days. Adding live streaming to its repertoire is something else it could do to improve, whilst the range of varied competitions and bonuses is refreshing and a great reason to open an account.

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Paf Football

Football is undoubtedly the most popular sports market on Paf, both for fixed odds pre-match betting and live In-Play betting. A quick look on the Popular markets shows Euro 2016, Copa America and International Friendly matches above any other non Football market.

If you check the sports menu further down the left hand side, you will invariably find more than 3 times as many markets for Football than any other sport. Basketball, Baseball and Tennis are the next biggest for sports betting on Paf.

Once you click into the Football page, you will first be shown the matches that are 'Live Right Now', with the score, match clock, associated odds and total number of markets available.

The option is there to switch the display to show outright odds for the biggest tournaments or find individual matches for leagues from your chosen country. It's quite easy to navigate through this process, but it is strange that it takes 4 or 5 clicks to find your match if it isn't already In-Play.

However, the live betting display is much more impressive with the pitch styled event overview. You can see a clear presentation of the latest match events and live statistics, including record of attacks and dangerous attacks.

Paf Racing

Unfortunately, there are no Horse Racing markets on Paf. Of course they will point to their focus on Football, and other sports such as Basketball and Baseball. However, their appeal to customers in the UK and Ireland is significantly reduced by the absence of Racing. Particularly when they choose to implement Live Streaming, they should complement it with live video for the biggest race meets.

Paf E-Sports

Paf has both upcoming and live E-Sports available for betting. If you click on Browse E-Sports, you will see the 3 focus games are Counter Strike, Dota 2 and League of Legends. From here you can navigate into specific leagues and outright markets, or choose to bet on individual matches. The most popular bet types are Match Winner, Map Betting and Handicap Betting. You will see the statistics, graph styled icon alongside the matches, but unfortunately betradar doesn’t seem to have any real coverage for E-Sports to help you with your bets.

Paf might not have the same level of live betting coverage as other bookmakers, but they do present what they have nicely. Football sits on top of their In-Play listing, above the likes of Tennis and Basketball. The overview of live events is particularly clear with match clock or score, live odds and total number of markets.

Inside the Football matches, we particularly like the pitch styled event overview. Here you can see a clear presentation of the latest match events and live statistics, including record of attacks and dangerous attacks. The number of yellow and red cards is also neatly shown just beneath the live match score.

Finally, you have easy access to the statistics for each match via the relevant graph icon. These stats, which include team stats, player stats and head to heads will certainly help to guide your live bets. You can even dig a bit deeper to find stats on which teams are the most offensive or defensive, including the average number of goals scored in their matches.

Paf’s website Paf.com is amongst the most unique in European sports betting, and it really brings something refreshing to market, as it is nice to see that the bookmaker has not just stuck with a common sports betting layout for its users.

At first glance you can tell that Paf marketing and management have spent great care on detailing user journey. Key information on betting products, promotions, market inventory and customer care are very easy to reach, with most sections within one or two clicks regardless of whether the user is logged in or not.

Another plus for Paf’s website is its ease of use between in-play markets and upcoming events, as SmartBets has placed a uncluttered and relevant dashboard.

All live events are clearly visible as soon as you log-in, and unlike other bookmakers Paf has not stretched its website template by adding unnecessary inventory or content.

Its dashboard is supported by a search functionality that is very responsive to the user’s needs. Furthermore, SmartBets rates the website category menu which is well placed using a drop down options and indexes upcoming popular markets.

Paf’s website is a breath of fresh air in a market where too many operators have cluttered their online desktop offering with irrelevant markets and little understanding of actual player journey and personalisation.

Paf.com was launched in 1999 and is licensed and controlled by the Åland government. It’s well known in its home territory of Finland and quite well known in Sweden, Estonia, Spain and Italy too but outside of these it is not a big name.

This could be due to the fact that it does little in the way of promotional sponsorship of teams or events but then it does embrace social media. There is a Paf presence across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and, uniquely for a betting and igaming operator, Flickr.

The Paf twitter (@playamongfriend) has a low following of just over 1200 followers and is used exceptionally infrequently. The Facebook page, Club Paf, meanwhile is notably better followed with over 23,000 Likes. On Instagram, Club Paf has over 1,100 followers and on Flickr it’s below 100, but that’s as much to do with the popularity of the platform itself.

The Paf YouTube channel has acquired over 880,000 views since going live in 2009 and is regularly updated with video content from promotions, to how to’s and exclusive content with ambassadors such as boxer Robert Helenius.

Club Paf includes trips for customers in addition to events and activities and it’s through these which Paf seeks to establish some visibility. It tends to be more low level and personal such as the Paf Poker Grand tour to Greece. Access to such trips is via winning competitions, and competitions is something Paf is big on - for example, Euro 2016 promotions were offering a travel gift card worth €1000.

Supertoto 14 

Supertoto 14 is the most popular competition on Paf, with big prizes for predicting a full coupon consisting of 14 matches from the biggest leagues in Europe, including the Premier League, Primera Division, Serie A and Bundesliga.

There is a new coupon every weekend, with a cost to play of €0.10 per combination. Anyone who predicts 11 or more of the 14 matches will be winner, and if you are the only one with 14 correct picks you can scoop the bonus point which may stretch into the hundreds of thousands.

In addition to this, a Supertoto 14 XL or Supertoto 14 XXL will indicate that there is extra prize money in the 14 prize pool, normally because a previous prize pool has been rolled over from the previous week.

Tiebreak Offer

On the Paf website, they highlight a statistic that about 10% of tour tennis matches end in a deciding set tie-break. For this reason, they have come up with a special offer where any final set breaker falls in your favour.

If your player wins the tie-break then you get your winnings as normal. If your player loses the final set tie-break, you will get your money back.

This payback only applies to bets up to €50, and only for losing bets that have been placed pre-match on Tennis matches within selected tournaments.

Customer support at Paf is in the form of email and over the phone. There is no live chat feature which is a major blow to an otherwise very modern operator.

The first go to for assistance at Paf is the Helpdesk. This includes FAQs though you’re unable to use a search bar to find your question, and you must scroll through the old fashioned (and longer) way which is another downside to the Paf customer support.

During the SmartBets test the email response was both fast and helpful, and customer support opening hours are 8am to 11pm daily which is longer than many.

• The Paf brand was founded in 1966 to raise funds for good causes
• Paf.com launched in 1999.
• It was founded in Åland where its headquarters are to this day
• The group has almost 400 employees
• Paf operates in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Spain and Italy. It also has a UKGC licence.