Pinnacle sports are well known for being a key contender that consistently offers the best sports betting odds online. With such a wide range of sports to bet on, ranging from cricket to UFC, Pinnacle are a competitive choice. Pinnacle sports. Pinnacle offers the best Basketball odds and highest limits for Basketball betting.

1. Pinnacle Sports Free Beta
2. Pinnacle Lines

Pinnacle Sports is at the top of our list of top betting sites outside of the U.S. for good reasons: they’ve often got the best betting lines, have been operating since 1996 with a great reputation, and are in general a top-class operation.

Think of them as the Sam Walton or Henry Ford of online bookmakers, willing to sacrifice big profit margins for volume.

Even though Pinnacle Sports is a major operation (some industry experts estimate more than a billion dollars a year in revenue), the company operates in a low-key manner. They rarely advertise anywhere and have strayed away from big, extravagant promotions and such. Instead, they provide betting lines that are better than their competitors’ in countries, sports and leagues around the world.

Pinnacle is licensed in Netherland Antilles and located in the island of Curacao. Customers from the U.S., the U.K. and Spain are prohibited.

Why Pinnacle Sports Has Better Betting Lines

Most sports betting sites attract customers by offering sign-up bonuses (either cash bonuses or free bets). Instead of offering the same bonuses as everyone else, Pinnacle Sports offers you better betting lines without sign-up bonuses.

Nobody’s against getting great bonuses but skilled bettors generally look for the best lines to bet on (also, since online betting bonuses keep getting worse, they’re rarely useful anymore). The idea is to sacrifice profit margins (profit per bet) and focus on volume (more bets with smaller margins).

These lower margin bets are known as ”reduced juice bets.” The less ”juice” a betting line has, the smaller the cut the sportsbook takes. Sportsbooks create their betting lines based on their estimations of the outcome of the game, add their profit margin and a safety buffer (in case their estimates are wrong). The bigger the profit margin and the safety buffer, the more you have to pay; the smaller the profit margin or the safety buffer, the less you have to pay.

At Pinnacle Sports, you have to pay less.

Normally, betting sites offer you -110 ($1.91) odds on point spreads. If the betting site is exactly right with its predictions on average, you will have bet $110 for every $100 you’ve gotten back. (If there were no profit margins or safety buffers, you’d simply bet $100 to win $100, right?)

Reduced juice bets mean that you bet $105 or $104 and get $100 back – suggesting the sportsbook is right. The sportsbook still makes profit in the long run if it’s right often enough, but more importantly, you get a better deal.

Even the smallest of improvements in the quality of a betting line makes a big difference to a skilled bettor. Even the best sports bettors have an edge of not more than a few percentages so finding the absolutely best betting line is a huge deal. (Two other sportsbooks that also offer reduced juice bets are 5Dimes.eu and HeritageSports.com – unlike Pinnacle Sports, they both accept customers from the U.S.)

Now, you might be thinking that Pinnacle probably enforces smaller betting limits on these games? Nope – in fact, it’s the opposite. Since Pinnacle posts betting lines early with small maximum betting limits, they have lots of time refine their lines based on the way people are betting on that particular line. The result? Pinnacle usually has the highest maximum betting limits in the online betting industry.

Banking

Pinnacle Sports has customers from all over the world. One of the reasons they’re able to do this is offering a selection of convenient betting lines to customers from countries where it’s sometimes to difficult to find one. For example, for its Asian customers, you can both deposit and withdraw via Entropay, Webmoney, ChinaBanking, and Chinese debit cards: for Australian customers, there’s Poli; for Polish customers, there’s Przelewy24.

Obviously Pinnacle has all the standard deposit and withdrawal options as well, such as Visa and Mastercard, Neteller and Skrill, and different types of pre-paid cards and online banking solutions. Neteller and Skrill have a 12€ withdrawal fee but all Pinnacle Sports customers get one free withdrawal per month.

Sportsbook

Ironically, even though players from the U.S. are prohibited, Pinnacle offers some of the best betting lines for American sports. Compare theirs with any other bookmaker’s betting lines on American sports and you’ll see the better line at Pinnacle at least seven times out of ten. The other form of betting that Pinnacle is often praised for is Asian Handicap bets on soccer games (if you bet on soccer, you should absolutely place those bets at this site). The quality of betting lines outweighs the lack of a sign-up bonus (by far!).

Pinnacle Sports has some of the highest betting limits in the industry and won’t shy away from professional bettors (they welcome customers of all skill-levels).

eSports betting has become a big deal at Pinnacle – it now belongs in the top-10 of their biggest betting markets. They reached their one millionth eSports bet back in December 2014 (the eSports section was launched in 2010) and it’s reasonable to assume that they’ve already exceeded or are getting close to two million eSports bets by now.

Casino

The sportsbook is easily Pinnacle Sports’ strongest area. They have an online casino too, though, with games provided by Multislot and Global Gaming Labs (GGL). Multislot provides all the standard casino games while GGL provides the live dealer games.

Up until January 2015, you could find reports of game payout audits at PinnacleSports.com but they’ve quit uploading those for some reason. The reports include the actual payout percentage for each game (not the theoretical payout but what was actually paid out) – therefore if you look at the reports, you’ll see that some games have paid out more than 100%. Pinnacle Casino’s auditor is GLI Test Labs Canada ULC.

Pinnacle Casino has no bonus promotions much like the sportsbook. They give you a 0.3% cashback for each wager, though, although this seems kind of silly (why not just set the payout percentages at 0.3% higher?).

Customer Service

You can contact Pinnacle’s customer service via e-mail only. On the surface, this seems like they invest less into serving their customers than the bookmakers that have phone support and live chat support. Offering e-mail support only is Pinnacle’s way of driving the costs down, though, and therefore being able to offer low-margin betting lines.

Every time I’ve contacted their customer support (and I’ve had little reason to do so over the years), they’ve been fast, helpful and friendly. It would be better if you could call them or chat with them (since that usually gets the job done more efficiently) but I’m satisfied with the quality of the e-mail support.

Conclusion

I’ve said a lot of nice things about Pinnacle throughout this review but they deserve it. It’s difficult to find sites that handle so many parts of their business masterfully.

Instead of focusing on promoting all-but-impossible-to-clear bonuses, posting expensive betting lines and closing customer accounts due to identifying the customer as a skilled bettor, Pinnacle focuses on what every other online bookmaker should focus on: offering competitive betting lines in a wide variety of betting markets and providing great service. That’s it.

This review was made by: LegitGamblingSites.com Rating: 3.9 out of 5

Pinnacle (formerly known as Pinnacle Sports) is an online gaming website that was founded in 1998. Since its inception, Pinnacle has become a medium-sized, fully licensed, online sportsbook. Pinnacle Sports rebranded to Pinnacle on June 1, 2016^[1] after acquiring the pinnacle.com domain name.^[2]

Presently, the company has customers in over 100 countries and is available in 19 (including international English) different languages. While most of the company information, including number of employees and gross revenues are kept private, Michael Konik, author of The Smart Money, believes 'it would not be out of line to guess that their [Pinnacle Sports] annual handle is in the billions of dollars.'^[3]

Pinnacle headquarters are located on the island of Curaçao of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the group is fully licensed and regulated by the Government of the Netherlands Antilles (license number: 8048/JAZ2013-013),^[4] which also functions as the regulating body for the gaming industry. On March 19, 2015 Pinnacle announced the award of a Class II Remote Maltese Gaming Licence,^[5] MGA/CL2/1069/2015 for the provision of sports betting.

Regulation requires that Pinnacle must maintain sufficient funds to be able to honour the winnings of their customers at all times.

Reduced margin pricing[edit]

When Pinnacle began trading in 1998, most gaming companies used bonuses to lure potential customers. Rather than offer sign up or reload bonuses, Pinnacle became the first sportsbook to introduce a reduced margin pricing model or reduced juice, thus deriving profit from lower margins but a far higher turnover. Pinnacle began offering -105/-104 ($1.95-$1.96) prices on head-to-head match odds and spreads, significantly undercutting the standard -110 ($1.91) pricing model that was used by its competitors.

Pinnacle is able to operate under this pricing model by posting opening 'overnight' lines with smaller limits. This allows Pinnacle to shape their lines according to the betting activity of 'sharp' bettors without exposing the book. These early, low limit bets ultimately allow Pinnacle to offer betting limits with confidence as high as $50,000 or more on selected games with their low margin pricing model.

In an episode of The Sopranos, Tony is informed by a hospital neighbor (a shot rapper) that the neighbor got down a $50,000 bet on a boxing match they were watching at favorable odds from 'Pinnacle, man...Pinnacle!'

Casino[edit]

Although Pinnacle is best known for its sports betting service, Pinnacle has also operated an online casino since September 2004.

The site offers the following casino games, in cash, high-stakes cash and a free play format:

• Oasis poker
• Hold’em poker
• Three card stud poker
• Single line slots
• Multi-line slots
• Progressive slots

Poker[edit]

In August 2008, Pinnacle entered the online poker realm, in hopes of taking advantage of the online poker phenomenon. Pinnacle’s poker room was run and operated by Entraction software. The same poker network is used by other online gaming websites, such as Betdaq, I4Poker and Redbet.^[6]

In June 2011, Entraction informed Pinnacle that due to changes in EU gaming regulation their Curaçao license was no longer accepted. Pinnacle closed their poker room on 13 June 2011 stating “the steps required to remain within the Entraction Network will necessitate a significant commitment for Pinnacle Poker. Given that our current focus is on developing our leading Sportsbook and Casino products, we have decided not to pursue the necessary changes.^[7]

eSports[edit]

In 2010, Pinnacle was one of the first global bookmakers to offer odds on eSports. What began initially as an experiment quickly turned into a major market which has doubled in size for four consecutive years (2010 to 2014). According to Pinnacle, eSports is now the 7th largest market for them in terms of volume, exceeding regular sports like golf and rugby. Pinnacle reached the milestone of a total of one million eSport bets in December 2014, and five million in February 2017.^[8] In the rank of money volume wagered, in 2018 the eSports has become the fourth most popular sport and could clinch number two in a few years.

Drone racing[edit]

In 2016 Pinnacle was the first bookmaker to offer odds on drone racing.^[9] On October 5 Pinnacle announced:

Starting with the 2016 Drone Racing World Championships first event at the Kualoa Ranch in Hawaii (October 20–22) Pinnacle will initially offer odds on the outright winner to gauge interest in the market.

Exit from US market[edit]

On January 11, 2007, in what was considered a controversial move, Pinnacle voluntarily announced that it would no longer accept wagers from customers based in the United States in accordance with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which was passed on September 30, 2006. The law, which was a last minute addition to Security and Accountability For Every Port Act, stipulates that “participants in designated payment systems to establish policies and procedures reasonably designed to identify and block or otherwise prevent or prohibit transactions in connection with unlawful Internet gambling.”^[10] At the time, Pinnacle Sports posted the following message to their U.S. based customers:

After careful consideration, Pinnacle Sports has chosen to voluntarily exit the U.S. market. Accordingly, wagers will no longer be accepted from clients within the U.S. as of Thursday, January 11, 2007.

At the time of the announcement, nearly 60-65% of Pinnacle’s customers were based in the United States.^[11] Passage of the legislation led Pinnacle to have problems with transactions involving US banks.^[12] Shortly after the decision, an executive at Pinnacle was quoted as saying: 'When the U.S. focuses on something and says 'Enough,' and when they go to war, no individual company can possibly win in a fight of this nature.' The executive also reportedly said that 'since the Internet Gambling Bill went into effect, we have lost the ability to do business with many quality banks.'

After the decision, Pinnacle teamed up with World Sports Exchange (WSEX) to offer their US based customers an alternative to their website. At customer’s requests, Pinnacle willingly transferred all money left in US based accounts to new accounts at WSEX.

Pinnacle Sports Free Beta

On December 19, 2008, Pinnacle ceased offering odds on North American horse racing. Although no official reason was given, it is believed this decision was made due to ongoing pressure from the U.S. government, as well as a general decline in interest from their non US based customers.^[13]

Notes[edit]

1. ^pinnacle.com Pinnacle Sports rebrands to Pinnacle
2. ^dotweekly.com Pinnacle Sports acquires Pinnacle domain
3. ^After Pinnacle, It's All Downhill From Here, washingtonpost.com, 17 January 2007, accessed 18 April 2009.
4. ^Pinnacle Sports Review, esports-betting.pro
5. ^www.pinnacle.com Malta License Press Release
6. ^Entraction CustomersArchived 2009-04-22 at the Wayback Machine.
7. ^Pinnacle Poker closed due to updates to EU poker regulation^{[permanent dead link]}.eog.com, July 20th, 2011
8. ^Zalik, Dejan (9 February 2017). 'Pinnacle Reaches Massive Milestone In Esports Betting With Five Millionth Bet Placed'. EsportsBets.com. Retrieved 14 February 2017.
9. ^Pinnacle first to offer betting on Drone Racing
10. ^Internet Law - Implementation of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is Coming, ibls.com, 8 October 2007, accessed 18 April 2009.
11. ^Pinnacle Sports stops accepting U.S. bets, casinocitytimes.com, 11 January 2007, accessed 18 April 2009
12. ^Offshore Gambling Site Stops Taking U.S. Bets, bloodhorse.com, 12 January 2007, accessed 18 April 2009.
13. ^Pinnacle Sports halts US horse racing service, reviewed-casinos.com, 19 December 2008, accessed 19 April 2009.

Pinnacle Lines