Claim check
Does a high App Store or Google Play rating make a betting app better?
Claim: strong store ratings show which betting app is better. Verdict on 7 November 2026: not verifiable. A store rating averages user scores in one storefront; it records no licence check, no safer-gambling tools and no payment detail. We compute no correlation, publish no averages and keep ratings out of AppScore.
Editorial team · checked
The claim and who made it
Perplexity (sonar) wrote on 6 November 2026 that bet365 has ratings "around 4.7 on the App Store and 4.5 on Google Play in one comparison". It also named Paddy Power for iPhone on rating and review volume. One run, not verified.
In short: the figures come from a comparison we have not opened.
Verdict
Not verifiable on 7 November 2026.
- No agreed meaning of "better": the claim does not say better at what.
- No correlation computed: we do not test whether ratings track any of our criteria.
- Not checked: the current ratings and review counts in the Irish listings.
In short: a high rating may be real; it is not evidence of a licence or of controls.
What a rating does and does not cover
| Question | Answered by a store rating? | AppScore v1 criterion (points) |
|---|---|---|
| Is the licence active? | No | Gate: licence active |
| Are the Irish listings complete? | No | C1 listings (25) |
| Does the developer match the licensee, and are data labels filled? | No | C2 transparency (15) |
| Is the app updated? | No | C3 freshness (10) |
| Are limits, time-out and self-exclusion documented? | No | C4 controls (30) |
| Which payment methods are documented? | No | C5 payments (10) |
| Streaming, cash out, bet builder, notification controls? | No | C6 features (10) |
Ratings are not an input to AppScore and are not used in our markup.
In short: all 100 points of AppScore v1 sit outside what a star rating records.
When a rating misleads
- Wrong storefront: a rating from the UK listing is a different set of scores from the Irish one.
- No date: an average quoted without a date may be out of date.
- No count: an average quoted without the number of ratings hides the number of people it rests on.
- Used for a licence claim: a rating cannot support one.
In short: a rating needs a storefront, a date and a count before you use it.
Ratings snapshot
15 not checked
| App | App Store rating (IE) | Google Play rating | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| bet365 | Not checked | Not checked | Not checked |
| Paddy Power | Not checked | Not checked | Not checked |
| BoyleSports | Not checked | Not checked | Not checked |
| BetVictor | Not checked | Not checked | Not checked |
| William Hill | Not checked | Not checked | Not checked |
Averages are held back until the owner's lawyer has answered whether we may publish them. Each figure will then carry its storefront and date.
In short: store data only, dated, with the storefront named.
How we checked
Read: the Perplexity answer of 6 November 2026 and our own AppScore v1 weights. Not read: Apple and Google help on how ratings work, and the live listings.
What changed
7 November 2026: first version of this page.
Caveats
We do not know how Apple and Google compute or filter ratings until we read their help pages.
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