BetLion Sports Betting Review 2024

As soon as you open BetLion’s website, you will be redirected to the betting site’s homepage. You must click on the red coloured “Register” button, present at the top right of your screen, in order to initiate the registration process at BetLion.

As soon as you click on this button, you will be redirected to the betting site’s registration page, which looks like the above mentioned image. The registration process at BetLion is among the simplest we have encountered in due course of reviewing several bookmakers.

All you have to do is enter your mobile number, and choose a 4 digit PIN, which will serve as your account’s password. Click on the “More” option, if you have been referred to the betting site by a friend, and enter your friend’s registered mobile number, including the +254 prefix.

As soon as you place a 100 KES sports bet (Or more), on odds of 2.0 or greater, you and your friend will receive 100 KES each, as a Free Bet, within 24 hours of your qualifying bet being settled.

As soon as you have entered the above mentioned details, tick the “I am over 18” box, which also confirms that you have read the betting site’s “Terms and Conditions”, and Privacy Policy”. Click on the green coloured “Sign Up” button to complete the registration process. As soon as you click on this button, your registration will be confirmed, and you can log into BetLion, via your registered mobile number, and chosen 4 digit PIN.

As soon as you log in, a “Deposit Now” message will appear on your screen, as can be seen from the below mentioned image.

You can choose to deposit funds into your BetLion account at this stage by clicking on the green coloured “Deposit Now” button. You can also choose to first gauge the various offerings BetLion has to offer, and deposit funds into your BetLion account, at a later stage.

The betting site may ask you to provide Proof of Identity, and Proof of Address, when you initiate your first withdrawal.

As soon as you have registered at BetLion, you can choose to either deposit funds into your BetLion account, or gauge the various odds on offer, at the betting site, before going on to deposit funds into your account. To deposit funds into your BetLion account, click on the green coloured “Deposit” button, present at the top right of your screen.

As soon as you click on this button, you will be redirected to a page, which looks like the above mentioned image. At the time of writing, BetLion provides for only two deposit options – M-Pesa, and SMS.

To deposit funds via M-Pesa, go to M-Pesa’s menu, via your mobile phone, select “Lipa Na Mpesa”, and click on the “Paybill” option. As soon as you click on this option, you must enter 212927, as the Paybill number, and enter your registered mobile number at BetLion, as the account number.

Enter the amount you want to deposit (The minimum deposit amount at BetLion is 50 KES), and enter your M-Pesa Pin. You must then confirm the transaction. Transferred funds should reflect on your BetLion account instantly. If your account is not credited within 30 minutesm you can call customer support support at +254 709515000, or email them at [email protected].

You should receive a quick response, as BetLion works around the clock.

To deposit money via SMS, you must SMS D#Amount or Deposit#Amount” to the number 40418, where “Amount” is the figure of money that you want to deposit into your BetLion account.

When it comes to withdrawals, the minimum withdrawal amount is 50 KES, and there are only two available withdrawal options at BetLion – M-Pesa, and SMS. You will receive your withdrawal amount instantly, when you choose to withdraw via M-Pesa, or SMS.

The maximum deposit that you can make per day, is 140,000 KES. It must be kept in mind that you can only deposit 70,000 KES at a time.

Check our extensive guide to payment options in Nigeria here. 

At the time of writing, there is an average welcome offer on offer, at BetLion. If you deposit a minimum of 50 KES into your BetLion account, and place a stake of at least 20 KES, you stand a chance of winning a Free Bet up to 100 KES.

To qualify for BetLion’s welcome offer bonus, you must place a Single or Multiple Bet on odds of 2.0 or more, and LOSE the bet. Jackpot Bets, and Virtual Games Bets do not count towards the betting site’s welcome offer.

If you lose the bet, BetLion will credit your account with a Free Bet matching your stake to 100 KES, by 4 pm the next day. You must use the Free Bet within 7 days of it being credited to your account.

While the betting site asks you to click on the “HERE” option to help you understand how you must place the Free Bet, there is no option to click on it, and you are not redirected to any link.

At the time of writing, BetLion is offering some excellent promotional offers.

BetLion is offering a good promotional offer, when it comes to getting a friend to join the betting site. If you have been referred to the betting site by a friend, you must enter your friend’s registered mobile number, including the +254 prefix, during the registration process.

Check our extensive guide to Accumulator Betting and Promotions here. 

As soon as you place a 100 KES sports bet (Or more), on odds of 2.0 or greater, you and your friend will receive 100 KES each, as a Free Bet, within 24 hours of your qualifying bet being settled.

You can become a member of BetLion’s VIP Club, if the betting site’s VIP Department deems your account fit of the privilege. The VIP Department reviews accounts on a weekly basis, and chooses accounts for its VIP Club, on the basis of Consistency, Stakes, Loyalty, and Deposits.

If you qualify for the betting site’s VIP Club, a VIP Manager will get in touch with you. You will be assigned a VIP manager, to help you out with your betting endeavours, 5% cash back on your losses, on a weekly basis, VIP bonuses, and Free Bets.

BetLion offers several Jackpots, on a daily, and periodic basis. You must correctly predict the outcomes of the matches advertised on their Jackpots. The punters who predict the most outcomes correctly, will receive cash awards.

The betting site is offering Cash Out as a promotional offer. Cash Out in essence allows you to retrieve partial winnings on a placed bet, which you believe may result in a loss. Cashing out allows you to retrieve partial winnings, and avoid the possibility of potentially losing your entire placed stake.

The amount of money you will receive depends on the odds in favour of your placed bet, and the time of cashing out. You may end up receiving more, or less than your initial stake.

VIP Program

At the time of writing, BetLion offers its customers a VIP Club, a VIP Loyalty Bonus Offer, and a Standard Loyalty Offer.

You can become a member of BetLion’s VIP Club, if the betting site’s VIP Department deems your account fit of the privilege. The VIP Department reviews accounts on a weekly basis, and chooses accounts for its VIP Club, on the basis of Consistency, Stakes, Loyalty, and Deposits.

If you qualify for the betting site’s VIP Club, a VIP Manager will get in touch with you. You will be assigned a VIP manager, to help you out with your betting endeavours, 5% cash back on your losses, on a weekly basis, VIP bonuses, and Free Bets.

BetLion comes with a VIP Loyalty Bonus Offer as well. The betting site’s VIP Loyalty Bonus Offer is up to 3000 KES on a weekly basis. To qualify for this offer, you must be a member of the VIP Club, and place a minimum of five bets per week, at odds of 2.0 or more.

To qualify for the betting site’s Standard Loyalty Offer, you must place five bets or more on a weekly basis, at odds of 2.0 or more, to stand a chance of winning a Free Bet of up to 500 KES.

At the time of writing, BetLion offers odds on over 15 sports. While Football is the most popular sports market on the betting site, the bookmaker offers excellent odds on several other popular sports, including the likes of Tennis, and Cricket, among others. The betting site offers odds on several unique sports markets as well, including Snooker, Darts, and MMA, among others – This ensures that the betting site has something on offer, for almost everyone.

See the list of most popular betting terms and markets here. 

The minimum stake that you can place on a sports market is 20 KES, while there is no defined maximum stake. That being said, the maximum pay out for a single placed bet, is 1,000,000 KES. BetLion also charges 20% tax on any placed stake, as per Kenya’s 2019 Finance Bill. While BetLion is among the best betting sites in Kenya, you must perform your due diligence before placing a bet.

It is of common knowledge that bookmakers earn off bookmaker’s margin. Bookmaker’s margin is the margin of profit which a betting site commands over you – This margin exceeds the ideal market threshold of 100%. You must look at the bookmaker’s margin across several betting sites, for a bet that you may want to place.

Closer is this margin to 100%, greater are your chances of winning a bet. You must also look at the odds being offered, and punt on a bookmaker which is offering the best odds, for a bet that you may want to place. It must be kept in mind that a bet with a margin exceeding the 110% mark is not worth punting on, as it may result in a loss.

To determine bookmaker’s margin, you can calculate the Odds Overround for a bet. While this may seem complicated, it is anything but that. To determine the Odds Overround for a betting variant, divide each individual outcome of a bet by 100, after converting fractional odds to the decimal form. Add the resultant numbers together, to obtain the Odds Overround for that particular betting variant.

To determine the quality of the Odds on offer, at BetLion, we calculated the Odds Overround for a match to be contested in the English Premier League. As per our calculation, the Odds Overround were found to be 101.8. This indicates that the bookmaker offers competitive odds, and active sports betting markets, which is a huge plus, when it comes to choosing the betting site.

Esports

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, BetLion does not offer odds on Esports. We hope that the bookmaker provides for the same sooner rather than later.

Given the rising popularity of Esports around the world, it is quite surprising that BetLion has not ventured into the markets Esports have to offer in the first place.

Read our guide to Esports Betting here.

Other Specials

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, BetLion does not offer odds on Specials. We hope that the bookmaker works on this in the near future.

Cash Out and Bet Builder

At the time of writing, BetLion comes with option to Cash Out, and an option to build a bet via Create-A-Bet (Bet Builder).

Cash Out in essence allows you to retrieve partial winnings on a placed bet, which you believe may result in a loss. Cashing out allows you to retrieve partial winnings, and avoid the possibility of potentially losing your entire placed stake.

The amount of money you will receive depends on the odds in favour of your placed bet, and the time of cashing out. You may end up receiving more, or less than your initial stake.

Create-A-Bet (Bet Builder) allows you to combine several different selections of your choice, into a single bet. Once you have created a bet of your choice, the betting site will return odds for the same, and you can go on to place a stake on your created bet.

Create-A-Bet in essence, means that there are an infinite number of possibilities, when it comes to creating a bet on BetLion.

Check our extensive guide to Cash Out betting here.

Click here for an article about Bet Builder.

As can be seen from the above mentioned image, the betting site displays its in-play markets under its “Live Now” section. To access BetLion’s in-play section, click on any of the in-play matches that are present at the centre of your screen.

As soon as you click on an in-play match of your choice, you will be redirected to a screen, upon which there will be several betting variants, and a live scorecard, with respect to your chosen sport.

There are no options with respect to analysing the statistics of a match, and following minute-by-minute action of in-play matches. Unfortunately, BetLion does not offer live streaming as well. We hope that the betting site works on this, and offers live streaming on select sports markets sooner, rather than later.

Read our extensive guide to Live Betting here. 

We have also a list of best betting sites with Live Streaming here. 

At the time of writing, BetLion is only available in Kenya, and is among the most popular betting sites in the country. The betting site is regulated and licensed by the Betting Control and Licensing Board of Kenya. The betting site ensures that your funds are securely stored, and that hackers and third party organizations cannot leach onto your stored funds, and personal information.

BetLion comes with a comprehensive responsible gambling section. To access the betting site’s responsible gambling section, click on the betting site’s main menu button, present at the top left of your screen. Scroll down to the bottom of your screen, and click on the “Responsible Gambling” option. As soon as you click on this option, you will be redirected to a page, which looks like the below mentioned image.

BetLion’s responsible gambling section comes with several directions with respect to how you should conduct yourself, when punting on the betting site. The betting site comes with an option to self-exclude yourself from certain facets of its offerings, as well as on option to set deposit limits.

You can set deposit limits on your betting activity for a daily, weekly, or monthly period. You must do your bit to ensure that you do not over indulge yourself on the betting site. Chalk out a betting strategy, and bet in due accordance to that, as wasting away your hard earned money is not a viable option.

That being said, BetLion does not have any links to criminal activity. If there ever comes about a situation in which the bookmaker goes out of business, they have the means to pay you back, as they separate all winnings, from the costs it takes to operate its various platforms.

Overall, BetLion is a safe, secure, and reliable betting platform. You not choosing BetLion (If) should not be on the basis of its security.

At the time of writing, BetLion offers 3 mediums of customer support service – Email, Live Chat, and Free Phone Call. To access the betting site’s contact section, click on the bookmaker’s main menu button, present at the top left of your screen, scroll down to the bottom of your screen, and click on the “Contact Us” option. Alternatively, you can also scroll down to the bottom of the betting site’s homepage, and click on the “Contact Us” option.

As soon as you click on this option, you will be redirected to a page, which looks like the above mentioned image. If you would like to contact the betting site via Free Phone Call, you can call a customer support representative at +254 709515000. Since BetLion works around the clock, a customer support representative should receive your call.

If you would rather send in an email, to evoke a formal response from the betting site, you can email BetLion at – [email protected]. You should receive a response within 24 hours.

Much like many modern bookmakers, BetLion offers an option to initiate a Live Chat. To access this option, click on the “Chat” button, present at the bottom right of your screen at all times. As soon as you click on this button, a pop up chat box will appear on your screen. You can choose to “Browse Help Topics”, “Find an answer yourself”, or click on the “New conversation” button.

As soon as you click on the “New conversation” button, you can initiate a Live Chat with a BetLion customer support representative. You can choose to attach images to your chat as well, to give the customer support representative on duty, a graphical representation of your query. You can also attach GIFs, and Emoji’s. You should receive a response within a few hours, as is advertised by the betting site.

BetLion also comes with a dedicated responsible gambling section, which ensures your sanity of mind, and physical being. Practise safe betting at all times.

BetLion comes with a simple, yet modern design, set in a perfect mix of maroon and white. You can visit all major options of access, via the bookmaker’s main menu button, and its homepage. The betting site’s main navigation bar comes with options to access its “Jackpot”, “BetLion-V-League”, and “Promotions” sections, among other options.

If you look at the bottom of your screen, you will see options to access its “A-Z Sports”, and “Chat” sections, among other options.

To access BetLion’s in-play section, click on any of the in-play matches that are present at the centre of the betting site’s homepage. As soon as you click on an in-play match of your choice, you will be redirected to a screen, upon which there will be several betting variants, and a live scorecard, with respect to your chosen sport.

There are no options with respect to analysing the statistics of a match, and following minute-by-minute action of in-play matches. The bookmaker does not offer live streaming either.

BetLion comes with a comprehensive responsible gambling section. To access the betting site’s responsible gambling section, click on the betting site’s main menu button, present at the top left of your screen. Scroll down to the bottom of your screen, and click on the “Responsible Gambling” option.

The betting site comes with an option to self-exclude yourself from certain facets of its offerings, as well as on option to set deposit limits. You can set deposit limits on your betting activity for a daily, weekly, or monthly period.

At the bottom of your screen, you will also see options to access the betting site’s “terms and Conditions”, and “Privacy Policy” sections, among other options.

At the time of writing, BetLion comes with an excellent Sportsbook app. The app is only available for Android users. That being said, the betting site comes with an equally good mobile-friendly website, which can be accessed by both Android, and Apple users.
BetLion’s Sportsbook app and mobile-friendly website come with ease of access, and readily available options. The homepage of both of these mediums come with options to access the betting site’s “Promotions”, “Jackpot”, and “BetLion-V-League”, among other options, from the convenience of the betting site’s main navigation bar.
The betting site comes with a Live Chat option at the bottom right of your screen. You can click on the main menu button, at the top left of your screen, to access the various sports markets on offer, at BetLion. What’s more, BetLion’s app, and mobile-friendly website allow you to bet on the go.
The app is not available on Google Play, and you must click on the betting site’s main menu button, at the top left of your screen, to access the option to download the betting site’s app. As soon as you click on this button, you will see an option to “Download Our App”. You must click on this option, to initiate the downloading process.

Read our article about best mobile betting apps here.

At the time of writing, BetLion offers Virtual Sports, of which Virtual Soccer is the only option, and a Virtual Football League. You can choose to follow and punt on Virtual Soccer Games (Several take place each day), when it comes to BetLion’s Virtual Sports.

We have an extensive article about Virtual Sports here.

BetLion’s virtual football league, is called “BetLion V-League”, and it is based on the English Premier League. It involves 20 virtual teams competing with each, in a league-based system. You can choose to follow and punt on matches which take place in due course of a league season.

There is no provision for popular products like Casino, Bingo, and Poker, among other options.

Read out article about how to win in the casino here. 

We hope that BetLion offers other products in due course of time.

BetLion is among the best available betting sites for Kenyan citizens. The bookmaker comes with wonderful Football markets, competitive odds, and several excellent promotional offers. That being said, the purpose of this review is to gauge the various facets of the bookmaker, as we already know that BetLion is among the best bookmakers around.

Having extensively reviewed the betting site, with respect to its offerings, we have determined that there are several better betting sites on the market. The betting site comes with its fair share of pros and cons, but this not deter us from the fact that BetLion is among the best available bookmakers for Kenyans.

Let’s start with the betting site’s cons. BetLion offers just 2 deposit, and withdrawal methods. The bookmaker comes with an average welcome offer, which must be improved in due course of time. The betting site does not offer odds on Esports, or Specials. The betting site does not offer live streaming as well, and has a decent in-play section to say the least.

BetLion only comes with an app for Android users, and has limited other products. That being said, BetLion comes with an array of wonderful advantages. The betting site comes with a simple registration process, and offers several enticing promotional offers. The bookmaker’s VIP Club, and VIP Loyalty Bonus Offer are among the best that we have come across.

The betting site offers quality odds, and active markets, and comes with an option to Cash Out, and Create-A-Bet. BetLion is an extremely secure platform, and comes with a much needed comprehensive responsible gambling platform. The betting site comes with an eye-catching, modern design, and a good Sportsbook app for Android users as well.

Overall, while the bookmaker offers plenty of niceties, it comes with several disadvantages as well. If you are looking for a good bookmaker which offers quality odds on football, excellent promotional offers, and a few more features to complement these options, look no further than BetLion. If not, you are better off choosing a different bookmaker.