Curling Betting Odds

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Curling is a sport of hailstones on ice, of granite sliding forty metres down a sheet and of teams screaming at a stone that cannot hear them. The betting market on it is small, the season is short and the calendar runs almost entirely on the Winter Olympics cycle. This page works through what licensed British bookmakers actually offer, how a price on a curling match is put together and what a bet on a final actually costs the punter, from the headline price down to the margin sitting inside it. Comparisons and operator profiles are written for the reader in Great Britain comparing options in pounds, against the rules of the Gambling Commission and the framework of the Gambling Act 2005.

Data current as of 27 October 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and each operator’s own published terms.

The legal frame: what a British licence means on a curling bet

Every operator named in this guide is on the Gambling Commission’s public register. A remote general betting standard (real events) licence, held by the company that runs the brand, is the licence category under which curling falls. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, any operator taking remote bets from customers in Great Britain must hold that licence, regardless of where the operator itself is based. A Gibraltar, Malta or Curaçao licence alone is not enough.

The Commission’s register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The number printed against the operator’s own terms, in the small print at the foot of a home page, is the one to enter. The register then shows the licence holder, the categories covered and the domains the licence covers. Several brands can run under a single licence holder — Paddy Power and Betfair under one company, for instance — so two names on the register that share an account number are not two separate licence holders.

The Act applies to Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is outside it and runs on older law. A “GB-licensed” label or a “Great Britain licence” is therefore the correct wording; saying a GB licence covers Northern Ireland is the wrong way round.

There is no statutory list of permitted sports and no statutory list of permitted markets. Whether a brand offers outright winner, match winner, correct score, over/under ends, handicap stones or in-play frames is the operator’s own commercial call, made under its licence conditions. The Commission does not approve individual markets. Betting on novelty events, on politics and on esports is similarly unlisted; the same is true of in-play.

Age, identity and money. A customer must be at least 18, and name, address and date of birth are verified before the first deposit or stake, including with a free bet. The credit-card ban for gambling in Great Britain (in force since 14 April 2020) covers any credit-card-funded e-wallet top-up. There is no statutory cap on stakes in sports betting; maximum-stake settings are the operator’s call and may be reduced on individual accounts.

Responsible gambling in this market

The punter’s protection in Great Britain is layered. GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for every online operator since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. Online self-exclusion is one thing, betting-shop self-exclusion another; the same scheme does not cover both.

Deposit limits are the customer’s choice, not a state-set ceiling. Operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, with the first changes live since 31 October 2025 and a second phase originally scheduled and then postponed to 30 September 2026; whether that second phase is now in operation is unclear.

The financial vulnerability check is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments and the like) that a licensed remote operator runs when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30-day window; the rule has been in force since 28 February 2025. It is not an income check and not a credit reference check. The wider “affordability checks” — financial risk assessments — were announced on 7 July 2026 in a staged plan; no start date has been set.

Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x (a £10 bonus with a 50x requirement would need £500 of qualifying bets; under the cap no more than £100 is needed), and mixed-product promotions that tie a bet to casino, bingo or lottery play are banned. The 10x cap is a ceiling, not a flat figure, and an offer with no wagering condition at all sits outside it. Whether the cap applies to free bets without a turnover condition, and any cap on the cash value of a bonus, were not established.

Help. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. The NHS runs specialist gambling clinics. Gamblers Anonymous runs local groups. Fitzwilliam Sports, not a brand on the comparison below but a licensed operator on the same register, links to all three on its home page; that is the template the others follow.

What a GB licence does for a bettor is real. What it does not do is guarantee a win, a payout or a return. A “safe” bookmaker is a regulated one — checks, limits, GAMSTOP, the bonus cap, the dispute-resolution route — and the protection ends there.

The sport: how a curling game is actually played

A curling team has four players, two in doubles. Each side throws eight stones per end, two per player, alternating with the opposition. The team with the stone resting closest to the button at the end scores one point for each of its stones that is closer than the opponent’s nearest stone; only stones in the house count. Stones outside the rings score nothing.

Games run to 8 or 10 ends, with international competitive games at 10 as the standard. A tied game goes to extra ends until one side leads. The hammer, the prized last stone of an end, goes to the team that did not score in the previous end; if an end is blanked and nobody scores, the hammer stays where it was. A blanked end is a deliberate tactical outcome: the team with the hammer often chooses to blank rather than risk giving it up.

Stones are not light. A World Curling Federation stone weighs between 17.24 and 19.96 kilograms, the 38-to-44-pound range. The handle sits at the top, the running surface is a narrow band, and the in-curving motion of the stone comes from the subtle turn the player imparts on release, with sweepers modulating distance and curl as it travels.

Curling has been on the Olympic programme since 1998, the Nagano Games. Mixed doubles joined it in 2018, at Pyeongchang. The Olympic cycle, with the Winter Games every four years, is the single biggest driver of betting turnover on the sport, and on this page a punter looking for fixtures in the run-up to or during an Olympic year is the central reader.

Tournaments, fixtures and the curling calendar

A British punter looking to bet on curling in 2026 is betting into a calendar dominated by the run of World Curling Tour events through the autumn and winter, by the World Curling Championships in the spring, by the European Curling Championships in the autumn, and by the qualifying events into the Winter Olympics. Olympic curling itself, when the Games run, takes the bulk of in-play liquidity and the bulk of outright markets.

The single most important practical fact about the curling calendar: there is no curling every weekend. A sport that runs to a few sheet-side weekends at a time, between training camps and flights, is not the football calendar. Liquidity is thin between events and prices are sparse. Outright winner markets on a championship appear in the days before, not the weeks before. In-play on an end-by-end basis is offered by some British bookmakers during the bigger championships; on the smaller tour events, in-play tends to be limited to match winner and the most basic of frame markets, if it is offered at all.

The hammer is the variable every punter has to track. A team that has just scored and will give the hammer up is in a different position from a team that has just blanked and keeps it. Pre-match prices that do not take hammer and blank-end logic into account are blunt. Reading curling betting markets without reading the end-by-end is the most common way a curling price misleads.

British licensed bookmakers offer curling under their general sports menus. The brand pages on this site that follow list the ones that carry the sport in their published terms or app description, and the conditions each one attaches to it.

Top-10 ranking and comparison

The comparison below covers the ten operators on the Gambling Commission’s public register whose published terms, app pages or registered services were checked for this page. Two names already in the public register are not in the list: Fitzwilliam Sports, whose home page is checked here for the responsible-gambling links it carries as a template, and Spreadex, whose FCA regulation for spread betting and Gambling Commission regulation for fixed-odds betting, with the spread-bet loss-can-exceed-deposit warning, is a different product from the fixed-odds curling bet this page is built around.

The table’s first column is the brand. The second is the Gambling Commission remote licence number, the licence holder on the register and the account number, all of which the punter can verify against the Commission’s own search. The third is what the operator’s own terms say about curling specifically, or — where the terms do not name curling — what they say about the kind of small-market sport the punter is most likely to be holding a curling bet through.

The numbers, holders and licence categories above are all on the Commission’s public register. The free-bet and welcome-offer descriptions are each operator’s own published terms; the punter reads the small print on the operator’s own site before claiming, because the bonus, the qualifying bet, the minimum odds and the deadline are set by the operator, not by this page.

The overview: what a curling bet is and where the price comes from

A curling bet is, in shape, the same kind of bet as a football or tennis bet: a stake against a price, with the winnings being stake × (odds − 1) and the return being stake × odds. The return is what lands in the account; the profit is the return minus the original stake; a free bet that does not return its stake gives only the profit, not the return, on settlement. In fractional British odds, the same stake at 5/1 wins 5 × stake in profit and returns 6 × stake in total; 5/1 is 6.00 in decimal.

The market a bookmaker puts together for a curling match is built on the same logic as any other. The bookmaker prices each outcome, adds the implied probabilities together, and the gap between that sum and 100% is its margin — the overround — the slice of every pound staked that the bookmaker expects to keep across the market. On a perfectly efficient two-way market at 1.90 / 1.90, the implied probabilities are 1 ÷ 1.90 on each side, the sum is around 105.3%, and the margin is around 5.3%. A margin of around 5% to 7% is the band a British bookmaker typically runs on a liquid sport; a curling match in the middle of a World Championship is closer to 6% on a well-priced match winner, and the smaller the event, the wider the band tends to run. This page is not quoting a specific price; it is showing the shape of the calculation a margin comes from.

The margin is the single most important number a punter can read off a curling price, and the one almost no bookmaker prints. The price shows, the margin sits behind it, and the difference between a 4% margin and an 8% margin is the difference between a market that takes 4p of every pound and a market that takes 8p. On a small, thin market the gap widens further; on a curling match between two teams with low public name recognition, the prices can be wider still.

In-play on curling is offered by the bigger books at the bigger championships, and the margin tends to widen in-play because liquidity is thinner. The handicap markets (a −1.5 end handicap, a +1.5 end handicap) and the over/under ends market (over 9.5 ends, under 9.5 ends) are the second tier of bets, available on the bigger matches and absent on the smaller ones. Outright winner markets on a championship are settled at the end of the event and tend to carry a wider margin still, because the bookmaker is exposed across the whole field for weeks.

The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap the wagering requirement on a bonus at 10x. For a £10 bonus the worst case is £100 of qualifying bets before the bonus is withdrawable; a 50x rollover on the same £10 would have required £500. The cap does not touch the stake or the price, which is a separate question.

The 25% remote betting rate that takes effect from 1 April 2027 sits inside the operator’s General Betting Duty. Until that date the rate is 15%, the same as the rate on bets taken in person. The remote rate on bets on UK horse racing stays at 15% under the same policy paper. The duty is the operator’s tax, not the punter’s, and how — or whether — it is passed on in the odds is not clear.

The bet builder, the cash-out, the acca: what they cost

A bet builder is a market the bookmaker builds from several legs of the same event, and the punter pays a margin on every leg combined. A curling bet builder on, say, a match winner plus over 9.5 ends plus a specific team to have the hammer in end five is three legs priced in one ticket; the margin is the sum of the per-leg margins, and the bigger the bet builder, the bigger the total margin. Bet365’s Bet Builder+, which combines markets from one event into a single bet, available pre-match and in-play, follows that model. QuinnBet’s Best Odds Guaranteed is on horse racing, not curling, and does not apply to a curling bet builder.

A cash out is a feature offered by some operators, including Fitzdares, by which the punter closes a bet before the match has finished and takes a price the bookmaker quotes at that moment. The cash-out price is the bookmaker’s mid-market price with a wider margin, and on a small-liquidity event such as a curling match the cash-out price is often sharply worse than a price on the same selection a few minutes earlier. It is a useful tool for a punter who wants to lock a profit or a loss; it is a poor tool for a punter who thinks they have spotted a price.

An acca (accumulator) combines legs from different events. The odds multiply, the margin compounds, and a curling acca with three legs has a margin roughly three times the margin of a single leg. A four-leg curling-plus-football acca at the World Championships has the same compounding. Acca insurance, which refunds a stake as a free bet if one leg loses, is offered by some British books; the refund is usually a free bet, not cash, and the stake is not returned with the win.

A “boosted odds” offer on a curling match is a higher price than the bookmaker’s standing line, and the marketing word is the same as on a football boosted odds offer. The price is higher; the marginal odds on the same event from the same bookmaker are also on the page; the punter compares the two. A “best odds guaranteed” tag on curling, where it is offered, follows the same shape as on horse racing: the punter takes the higher of the price at placement and the starting price; BOG is a feature of the bigger books on horse racing and a small number of operators carry it on other sports.

Curling betting markets: a working list

A bookmaker’s curling market runs deepest on the bigger championships and shallowest on the smaller tour events. The list below is a working catalogue, in roughly the order a market appears in a betting slip, not a guaranteed menu on every operator.

Match winner. The simplest market, on which team wins the match. Priced on a two-way line in regulation, with the draw and the extra-end possibility handled either by a three-way line (home / draw / away) or by the “any extra end” rule. The punter reads the price and the margin inside the price.

Outright winner. The market on which team wins the championship, settled at the end of the event. Wide field, wide margin, longer exposure for the bookmaker and the punter.

Over/under ends. The market on whether the match goes over or under a stated number of ends. The bookmaker sets the line, typically at 9.5 ends on a 10-end regulation match; the line moves with team strength and with hammer.

Handicap ends. A −1.5 end handicap on the favourite, a +1.5 end handicap on the underdog. Settled on the final end count. Common on the bigger matches.

Team to have the hammer in a named end. A specific-end market on which side takes the last stone of an end. Used in-play at the bigger championships.

First-end winner. The market on which side wins the first end. Settled on the first-end score.

Total stones in the house. A market on the count of stones in the house at the end of a named end. Less common, more bookmaker-specific.

Correct score. The market on the final end-count, typically offered as 5-4, 6-3, 7-2, 8-1 and similar. Wide margin, settlement at the end of the match.

The list above is the shape of the market, not a menu on every brand. The punter opens the operator’s curling page on the day, reads the menu and reads the prices.

How to bet on curling: a step-by-step

The bet itself is the same shape as any other sports bet, and the difference is the calendar and the menu. A punter on a curling event runs through the following in order.

Open the operator’s site or app, and the punter checks the brand is on the Commission’s public register (the account number is on the operator’s own terms page, the register is on the Commission’s own site). The punter signs in or opens an account, passes the identity and age check, and deposits by debit card or bank transfer (credit cards are not accepted for gambling in Great Britain). The punter opens the curling page, finds the match, and reads the prices. The punter places the bet at the displayed price; the price at placement is the price settled, except on a “best odds guaranteed” tag where the higher of placement and starting price applies. The bet settles at the end of the match or, in an outright market, at the end of the championship. Winnings are paid into the account as cash; a free bet is paid as a free bet.

A punter on a curling bet who has not read the smaller print on a welcome offer has read the bigger print on a price; both are necessary, and the small print is the part that turns a free bet into a withdrawn one.

In-play and live betting on curling

In-play on curling is offered by the bigger British books at the World Championships, the European Championships and the Olympic curling competition. The market is the same as the pre-match menu, with prices that update end by end and that incorporate the running score and the running hammer. On a smaller tour event, in-play is limited, sometimes to match winner and over/under ends, sometimes not offered at all.

The margin in-play is wider than the margin pre-match on a curling match, and a punter who thinks an in-play price is mispriced against a static model should be aware that the bookmaker’s model is also updating against a thinning liquidity. A bet on a single end in-play is a small-stake, short-window bet, and the cash-out feature on the same in-play ticket is offered by some operators including Fitzdares.

The live-streaming coverage of curling on a British bookmaker’s site tends to be through the rights-holder’s own feed, embedded on the operator’s page. A punter who has placed a bet at qualifying stake on the event can usually watch; a punter who has not placed a bet sometimes can, depending on the operator. Betfair’s app offers free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football, and curling coverage is rights-dependent.

Promotions, bonuses and the 10x cap

A welcome offer on a curling bet is, in shape, a free bet on a sports bet, and the 19 January 2026 promotion rules cap the wagering requirement on a bonus at 10x. A £10 bonus with no wagering condition is the simplest form: the punter stakes the £10, the winnings are withdrawable in cash after settlement. A £10 bonus with a 5x wagering condition requires £50 of qualifying bets at the operator’s minimum odds before the bonus is withdrawable. A £10 bonus with a 10x condition is the worst case the new rules permit, at £100 of qualifying bets.

The cap is a ceiling, not a flat figure. A free bet whose stake is not returned on a win is, in value, free-bet amount × (odds − 1) ÷ odds, multiplied by the payout share of the market. A £10 free bet at decimal odds 3.00, on a market with a 95% payout share, is worth around £6.32 in expected value, not £20. The marketing word “free bet” carries a number; the punter reads the number.

A “boosted odds” offer on a curling match is a higher price than the standing line, and the comparison the punter makes is between the boosted price and the standing price. A “risk-free” bet is a stake refunded as a free bet, not in cash, if the bet loses; the punter reads the refund form, because a free bet that does not return its stake on a win is not the same thing as a refund in money.

A “deposit-gated” welcome package is one whose free bets unlock against a deposit and a first qualifying bet at minimum odds within a deadline. BetGoodwin’s “Bet £10 & Get £15 in Free Bets” and Bet Ahoy’s “Bet £10 & Get £10 in Free Bets” are both deposit-gated, both time-limited and both at the operator’s minimum-odds floor. The terms on each operator’s own page are the version that counts; this page describes the shape, not the current small print.

Mixed-product promotions, which tie a sports bet to casino, bingo or lottery play, are banned since 19 January 2026. BetTom’s UK welcome, which pairs a 50% sports free-bet refund up to £50 with a 50% casino slot-funds refund up to £50, mixes products, and the punter checks the current page to see whether the offer has been re-cut to the post-19 January form.

A voucher code or a promo code is a marketing device, not a feature of the offer. The page does not print one. The offer is in the operator’s own terms, the punter reads them and claims the offer through the operator’s site, not through a code carried elsewhere.

Reading the margin: the calculation behind the price

The price on a curling match is the number the punter sees; the margin is the number the punter does not. The margin is the slice of every pound staked that the bookmaker expects to keep on a market across many bets, and the calculation is the same on curling as on football or tennis.

On a two-way market with decimal odds 1.90 on each side, the implied probability of side A is 1 ÷ 1.90 = 0.5263, the implied probability of side B is 0.5263, and the sum is 1.0526, or 105.26%. The bookmaker’s payout share is 1 ÷ 1.0526, or 0.9501, or 95.01%. The margin is 1 − payout share, or 4.99%, around 5%.

On the same two-way market with decimal odds 1.85 on each side, the implied probabilities are 1 ÷ 1.85 = 0.5405 on each side, the sum is 1.0811, the payout share is 0.9250, and the margin is 7.50%, around 7.5%. A two-way market priced at 1.80 / 1.80 has an implied sum of 1.1111, a payout share of 0.9000 and a margin of 10%.

For an illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 — the same example as the calculation, not a quoted price — the margin sits in the band of around 5%, with a payout share of around 95%. On a curling match, the band a punter can reasonably expect on a well-priced match winner is around 5% to 7% at the World Championships, wider on the smaller tour events. The band, not a single figure, is what a margin looks like on a real market.

The margin compounds on a multi-leg bet. A four-leg curling-and-football acca, with each leg at a 6% margin, has a total margin closer to 22%, and the expected cost of the acca is the total stake × 22% of the stake. A two-leg curling bet builder at 6% on each leg has a margin of about 12%, not 6%.

The expected cost of a turnover requirement on a bonus is the turnover × the margin of the market the qualifying bets are placed on. A £100 turnover requirement at a 6% market margin is an expected cost of £6, plus the bonus amount itself is paid out only on a winning bonus bet at the underlying price. The expected cost is the cost of clearing, not the cost of a winning bet.

Responsible gambling for a curling punter

A curling punter betting on a single Olympic final in February is, in the calendar, a once-every-four-years punter; a curling punter betting through the World Curling Tour is, in the calendar, a winter punter. The seasonal shape of the sport changes the kind of gambling it can become: a short, intense window of betting, then a long quiet stretch, then another window. The window is the place a budget is easy to overshoot and where a deposit limit is the cleanest preventive tool.

The GAMSTOP self-exclusion scheme is the multi-operator backstop, covering every GB-licensed online operator, and the period of six months, one year or five years is the window the punter commits to. The minimum period stays in place for a further seven years unless the punter asks GAMSTOP to remove it.

GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. The NHS runs specialist gambling clinics. Gamblers Anonymous runs local groups. The same organisations are linked from every licensed operator’s safer-gambling page. A punter who feels the betting has become the focus rather than the entertainment uses the same channels a punter on a football accumulator does.

The deposit limit on a licensed operator is the punter’s call. The operator must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame; the punter sets the limit; the operator enforces it. A punter who has not set a deposit limit and who is approaching a curling event with a fixed budget sets one before the event starts.

Frequently asked questions

How to bet on curling?

A bet on a curling match is a stake against a price on one of the markets a bookmaker offers, settled on the result of the match. Open a licensed British bookmaker, open the curling page, find the match, place the bet at the displayed price and the bet settles at the end of the match or, in an outright market, at the end of the championship. The winnings are paid in cash; a free bet is paid as a free bet whose stake is usually not returned on a win.

Can you bet on curling?

Yes, at British licensed bookmakers. The Gambling Commission does not list curling as a permitted or a prohibited sport; a remote general betting standard (real events) licence covers it under the operator’s own commercial menu, and a brand that offers curling in its published terms is offering it under that licence. The list of brands in the comparison above is a sample of licensed operators; the Commission’s public register is the full list.

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

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The licence number is on the operator’s own terms page, usually in the small print at the foot of the home page. The register shows the licence holder, the categories covered and the domains the licence covers. A brand whose number is on the register, and whose domains match, holds a live licence; a brand whose number is not on the register, or whose domains do not match, does not.

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

The return is stake × odds, in decimal form. The profit is stake × (odds − 1). A £10 stake at decimal odds 2.50 returns £25, of which £15 is profit. In fractional form the same stake at 6/4 (a 6/4 price is 2.50 in decimal) returns £25, the same number. A free bet that does not return its stake on a win pays only the profit, not the return, and the free-bet value is free-bet amount × (odds − 1) ÷ odds, multiplied by the payout share of the market.

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

The margin is the slice of every pound staked that the bookmaker expects to keep on a market across many bets. On a two-way market priced at 1.90 / 1.90, the implied probabilities sum to 105.26%, the payout share is 95.01% and the margin is around 5%. A market priced at 1.85 / 1.85 has a margin of around 7.5%, a market at 1.80 / 1.80 a margin of around 10%. The margin compounds on a multi-leg bet. The expected cost of clearing a bonus turnover is turnover × the margin of the market the qualifying bets are placed on.

How do fractional odds such as 5/1 convert to decimal odds such as 6.00?

A fractional price of a/b is converted to decimal by a ÷ b + 1. 5/1 is 5 ÷ 1 + 1, or 6.00. 11/4 is 11 ÷ 4 + 1, or 3.75. Evens is 1/1, or 2.00. Odds-on prices are shorter than 2.00 in decimal, and the fraction is between 0/1 and 1/1. A price of 4/6 is 4 ÷ 6 + 1, or 1.67 in decimal, and the punter reads it as a price the bookmaker expects to win more often than it loses.

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