Pinnacle, formerly known as Pinnacle Sports, began operating in 1998 and was founded and operated by Pinnacle Sports Worldwide. It was best known for its sports betting service but eventually opened an online Casino on September 2004. Its online casino service includes Blackjack, Roulette, Pontoon, Video Poker and more. It was in August 2008 when the company decided to join the online poker service to take advantage of online poker’s popularity. On June 13, 2011, Pinnacle closed their poker room due to changes in Europe’s gaming regulation. Entraction, the poker network running Pinnacle’s poker room, was unable to accept Pinnacle’s Curaçao license. Pinnacle then ventured to eSports in 2010.
The company was one of the first global bookmakers to offer odds on eSports. eSports is now Pinnacle’s 7th largest market. The company later on rebranded on June 1, 2016, to Pinnacle (from Pinnacle Sports) after it acquired www.pinnacle.com domain from Avnet. Pinnacle is one of the world’s leading online sportsbooks. It is fully licensed and considered one of the world’s largest. The company is available in over 100 countries and can be accessed in 19 different languages. The company is located in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, specifically, on the island of Curaçao. Like what was mentioned earlier, it is fully licensed and is regulated by the Government of Netherlands Antilles. Pinnacle is also the first to introduce a “Reduced Margin Pricing” model or reduced juice among all sportsbook.
Pros:
- Pinnacle could arguably be the fastest paying bookmaker in the world. All withdrawals are processed in less than 30 minutes if the amount is less that EUR 3000 and a few more hours for larger withdrawals.
- Pinnacle’s website is available in many different languages making it accessible to non-English speakers.
- Pinnacle has a rich offer on their betting options. All bettors can bet on a lot of sports or leagues in the world including all American sports like NBA, NFL and etc.
- Pinnacle has one of the highest limits. Bettors can bet as much as EUR 50000 on most competitive matches. Bettors don’t get limited or suspended regardless of how much they win unlike other operators.
- Pinnacle has the best value odds online. Their margins are as low as 2%.
- Pinnacle accepts payments in about 21 international currencies.
- Pinnacle’s email customer support is one of the best and quickest to respond.
- Pinnacle has a beginner’s guide for newbie eSports bettor. This way, new bettors will have a clear understanding of the betting mechanics and other technicalities.
- Pinnacle’s betting site is well trusted all over the world.
- Pinnacle has a “Winners Welcome Policy”. They do not limit, discriminate or close accounts when a player comes out successful.
Cons:
- Pinnacle is one of the bookmakers in the world that does not have a bonus offer or any kind of promo codes. They claim that their services and offers as a whole are far better than any welcome bonus.
- Pinnacle doesn’t have a live chat and phone support for customer. They can only be reached through their email support and they do not have any real-time service.
- Pinnacle is not available in the United States.
Betting Interface and Website Layout
The website follows the ubiquitous three-column layout, with sports navigation on the left, markets and odds displayed in the centre and the betting slip on the right. The navigation menu doesn’t feature nested links. Instead, when you click on a sport a table of leagues is displayed in the centre column above the odds. For popular sports like soccer, tabs are available to view the Featured Leagues or view all of the leagues. When you navigate to a particular event you can navigate back to the league or sport by clicking on the breadcrumbs links in the orange, horizontal panel at the top of the page.
When a league is selected the odds for all upcoming events are displayed in table format. To the right of each fixture a [+] link is available to view all markets for that game. When you click on the odds or white box to the right of a selection, the pick is loaded into the betting slip. You can enter the stake amount either to the right of the selection in the odds area or from within the betting slip.
The betting slip is somewhat unusual for those accustomed to Australian bookmakers because you have the option of entering either the stake or win amount. For example, if the selection’s odds are 2.15 you could enter $10 into the stake box. This means you want to wager $10 to win a possible $11.50 profit. Alternatively you could enter $10 into the win box. The system will then calculate the stake that would win you a $10 profit, which in this case is a $8.70 stake. Be careful when entering bets for this reason!
At the top of the betting slip is a tab which enables you to toggle between viewing your betting slip and your active bets. This is highly convenient when you’re entering numerous bets and
need to quickly see what your existing bets are. Below this is another tab which enables you to toggle between entering single bets and multi bets. If you enter three or more selections into the slip and switch to the multiples view, you can opt to wager combinations of lower quantities of legs. For example if you have four selections in your slip you can click on the available check marks to place one 4-leg bet, 4 3-leg bets and/or 6 2-leg bets.
One interesting feature is the “Accept Better Odds” tab. When you have enabled the feature, if your selected odds change in your favor with greater payout result, the betting slip automatically accept your wager at the higher odds without notifying you. If the feature is off it means that if your selected odds change, the betting slip will always notify you before accepting your wager.
Pinnacle’s Long Lasting Reputation
This betting site has been online for long enough to establish its reputation as a trustworthy and safe betting platform for punters from all over the world. Pinnacle runs a very transparent business and provides quality protection for their customers. They are licensed and regulated by both the Government of Curacao and the Malta Gaming Authority. In addition, their betting site is independently audited by third-party betting audit companies and is partnered up with GamCare, a website that helps bettors deal with their gambling problems.
Their privacy policy is pretty standard, although they do take extra precautionary measures in order to prevent fraudulent deals and dodgy behaviour. All new customers must provide Pinnacle with their full proof of identity before they will be allowed to fully activate their account. The betting platform itself is protected, by a state of the art 128-bit encryption. To sum all of it up, Pinnacle has done everything to make sure their customers enjoy a completely safe and secure betting experience.
Banking Methods
Pinnacle offers a variety of different deposit and withdrawal methods depending on where the member is located including credit card, bank wire, debit card and WebMoney. In most cases, Pinnacle doesn’t charge any fees for deposits with a simple, easy and quick process to getting in to the action. Meanwhile, payouts are just as easy with a simple minimal fee, which is usually somewhere between $15 and $30. The maximum payouts are also extremely high compared with the industry standards.
Pinnacle has simplified withdrawal transactions to the point that they can be completed in only four simple steps. All you need to do to make a withdrawal from Pinnacle is:
- Log into your Pinnacle account
- Navigate to the Cashier section
- Choose a preferred withdrawal method by clicking on one of the featured icons
- Complete the form and finish the withdrawal
Sports Markets
While it does offer betting on all of the popular sports, because Pinnacle is a high odds, high stakes service, it doesn’t offer the same broad array of markets for each fixture that you would get with the other major bookmakers. For example, in an English Premier League football fixture, you will get a head-to-head market along with various half-time and full-time handicap and over/under markets. You won’t anything else like player markets or a correct score markets.
Due to the lack of markets per fixture, we recommend using Pinnacle in conjunction with another membership.
- Horse Racing
No racing is available. Pinnacle focuses purely on sports.
- Live Sports Betting
Another major draw card of Pinnacle from an Australian perspective is it offers in-play betting. The range of sports and markets offered live isn’t as strong as the likes of Betrally, but the odds are more competitive.
- Other Features
Members can use an API to obtain Pinnacle odds and place wagers. This is a great feature for the technically minded punters who wish to set up betting applications. In order to access the Pinnacle API you must have a funded account. The Pinnacle API is a RESTful service that uses the JSON format.
Convenient Betting on the Go with Pinnacle Lite
Pinnacle has a dedicated mobile app called Pinnacle Lite. It allows fast and easy mobile betting to all punters who like to bet on the go. It is available for both Android and iOS devices and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and the App Store respectively. The app allows you to conveniently build tickets without even being logged in. You can place singles and multiples, and visualize odds movement. Live markets are also located at the tip of the fingers, with a permanent menu that holds all of the available live markets.
The Pinnacle live betting platform might not be as comprehensive as is the case with some rival online betting sites, but it provides you with a lot of quality and is handled and designed pretty well. All major sports and eSports events are covered very nicely, you can even fight minor competitions in some of the more popular sports. The information and data offered in the live betting section are pretty solid, although there aren’t any advanced statistical tools that would help you analyze matches more in-depth. Unfortunately, a thing that might set back their live betting platform a bit, is the lack of a live streaming platform. Pinnacle has decided not to implement a live streaming feature, and this can really leave them behind the more prominent bookies if they don’t act on it in the future.
How to Download the Pinnacle App
Downloading the Pinnacle mobile app is rather straightforward. You can download it for both Android and iOS devices.
Android download
- Go to the official Pinnacle website.
- Navigate your way to the “mobile” section of the site.
- Tap on the “Android Download” box.
- Once the Pinnacle app has downloaded, tap to open it.
- You will get a pop-up message saying that your installation is blocked.
- Tap on “settings”, then “security”, and select for “unknown resources” to be activated.
- The confirmation window will pop-up where you need to tap on OK.
- Wait for your Pinnacle mobile app to install and you’re good to go.
iOS download
- Go to the official Pinnacle website.
- Navigate your way to the “mobile” section of the site.
- Tap on the Apple icon to get redirected to the App Store.
- From there, you just need to download and install the Pinnacle app.
- Note that the Pinnacle mobile app for iOS can only be downloaded in four countries: Canada, Sweden, Finland, and Ukraine.
Pinnacle Customer Support
Despite being a relatively big player and a popular platform worldwide, Pinnacle, unfortunately, has only one customer support channel their users can reach them through. This is a bit disappointing, as it delivers a not so customer friendly attitude from the bookie. There is no phone support number or even an integrated live chat channel on their website. All punters have available is a contact form and an email address. The contact form is a bit hard to find, as it’s placed all the way down, on the footer of the page. In line with this, the email is even harder to find than the contact form, as it is located in the help section, next to the FAQ. Here is the email through which you can reach out to them – [email protected].
To be fair, their customer support is relatively prompt in their responses, and it usually only takes them a couple of hours to get back to you, depending on the time of day you’ve sent the email. Unfortunately, no matter how well the contact form and email work, the lack of live chat and phone support is noticeable. Hopefully, Pinnacle will expand their lacklustre customer support service to include more contact options.
