bet365 Review

bet365 Review – Introduction:

Most people nowadays think of bet365 as an online-only bookmaker, but its roots go back to 1974 when it began as a chain of betting shops owned by Peter Coates.

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that the retail firm moved online and became bet365.com, when Chief Executive Denise Coates had a brainwave and decided to move the business online, taking out a £15m loan against the family’s retail bookmaking estate. Whilst their betting shops were sold 5 years’ later to Coral, for £40m, the online business has established itself as one of the leading services in the world, with over 18 million customers from over two hundred countries.

bet365 is renowned for its leading in-play betting offering, offering betting in running on almost every sport, and for its live streaming. Not only did bet365 secure the first live streaming rights for an England football match (the World Cup qualifier vs Ukraine in 2009) but for the 2015-16 season has secured the rights to stream every La Liga and Bundesliga match, as well as the English Championship for those customers based outside the UK. All you need is a funded account to watch.

If you’re a fan of watching traditional sports, you’ll no doubt have seen their television ads starring either Ray Winstone, in the UK, or Samuel L Jackson, if you’re in Australia or elsewhere. bet365’s involvement in sport is deeper than that: they own, and are the main sponsor of Stoke City FC, and are a partner of Stoke’s local rivals West Bromwich Albion.

The business is still run by joint Chief Executive Officer Denise, and her brother, John, from Stoke-on-Trent, where it employs over 3,000 staff. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that it moved online and became bet365.com, when Chief Executive Denise Coates had a brainwave and decided to move the business online, taking out a £15m loan against the family’s retail bookmaking estate. Whilst their betting shops were sold 5 years’ later to Coral, for £40m, the online business has established itself as one of the leading services in the world, with over 18 million customers from over two hundred countries.

Until 2014, bet365 was unlike most of its competitors, and had resisted moving offshore to take advantage of more favourable taxation regimes and avoid paying the levy to the British Government, but it eventually ceded and moved part of its operations to Gibraltar. It also employs over 100 people in Darwin, Australia, to support its Australian business.

bet365 is a technology focused company, and were one of the first bookmakers to offer partial cash out. This is where you can choose to “cash out” a percentage of your accumulator in running, so that you can lock in a guaranteed profit early if results are going your way. The partial element means that you do not have to cash out the entire bet, but could take a percentage of it now, and leave the rest to run. All you need to do is click on my bets in the bet slip and you will be presented with the option.

We couldn’t recommend bet365 to you any more, so create your account today – if you don’t already have one, that is.

Reputation and Reliability:

bet365 have one of the best reputations in the world of betting and are a completely trustworthy firm to do business with. You won’t find anyone complaining about bet365 as they are fair, understand bookmaking and resolve any issues quickly and fairly. They are licensed in Gibraltar, which is one of the most trustworthy licenses and is on the UK whitelist, and for Australian residents they operate under a Northern Territory license.

Bet365 – CSGO Betting:

bet365 may not price up as many matches as sites like CSGOLounge, or offer betting in-running yet, but they are expanding the number of matches they offer pretty much every day, and when they do, they price to a competitive overround of between 106.6% and 107.9%. They also offer up map winners, and unlike most of their competitors, they offer correct score betting – that is, for a team to win a match 2-0, 2-1 or to lose by the same scorelines. Correct scores are one way they differentiate themselves and another is that they are often one of the first bookmakers to price up outright markets for the winner of competitions. You can also take advantage of cash-out between legs if you place accumulators.

Bet365’s eSports history:

bet365’s involvement in eSports commenced back in 2014, but has been relatively understated so far. Initially pricing up occasional matches from League of Legends, Dota 2 and StarCraft II, they have greatly expanded their range of markets recently and now offer a wider range of bets across more titles. They are yet to do any real advertising in or focused on eSports, but we believe it’s only a matter of time before they get more involved. Given their focus in traditional sports on in-play betting, once this becomes more developed, we’d fully expect bet365 to establish themselves as one of the leading sites for eSports betting.

Payment Options:

bet365 offers a complete range of payment options, including almost any e-wallet that you can think of. Their payment processing is seamless and they process withdrawals quickly and at no cost, regardless of the amount that you have won. They operate a single wallet system, so you can use your funds on both sports betting and casino without needing to transfer them into a separate wallet.

bet365 uses the highest encryption standards via payment processing through Retail Logic which ensures the security of all personal and payment details. Obviously, due to the legal requirements to identify customers, they don’t accept Bitcoin, but in general you won’t find a better company for payment options.

Customer Support:

Excellent customer service is one of bet365’s primary concerns and they do not disappoint. Their team speak multiple languages fluently, are helpful and quick to resolve any issues. As far as customer support departments go, bet365’s is one of the best. They are available 24/7 by telephone (Freephone – UK: 08000 288 365 or paid 0044 1782 684757; AUS: 1800 200 365 or paid 0044 1782 684612), email and live chat. You can even contact them by post, if for some reason you don’t want to use live chat, which we recommend.

Website & Betting Options:

bet365 operates a slick and speedy website, though one drawback of this is that whilst it makes for very quick navigation, it is not possible to deep link into pages for specific sports or matches. Whilst that’s not an issue in its own right, it makes it hard to send links to your friends if you’re choosing to discuss their csgo odds with them. Bet365 offers to display either fractional, decimal, or American style odds, and is clever in that it will show you the most common odds for your country by default, but you can change this in the top right corner of the site if you prefer something different. Their in-play section is made very clear, and here you can find all the matches, in every sport, that are currently live. On the left side of that page you can choose to hide sports you aren’t interested in, and it’s easy to switch between matches, with lots of statistics available. For a number of sports, but not yet eSports, they offer live streaming. This includes horse racing, football, and BAGS greyhound racing live streaming. We hope that they will add CS:GO soon. One thing we really like is that if you add a selection to your betslip, you can click on max bet to see what the highest limit that you can bet on that particular game is, which is useful for planning your bets, especially if you’re a high roller.

Sports Markets:

CSGO isn’t the only eSport that bet365 offers betting on, with StarCraft II pre-match odds also offered, as well as both Dota 2 and League of Legends where you can also bet in-play. In terms of traditional sports, bet365 has the widest range of available sports of any bookmaker, so whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it. They are particularly well known for their soccer betting, especially their generous free bet in-play offer that they often run for big matches, and horse racing, where they have their 4/1+ winner offer, giving you risk free bets on the next race if you back a winner at odds of 4/1 or more, in selected races. They are most well known for their betting in running offering, and have the widest range of available matches in sports such as tennis, basketball, baseball and ice hockey. They offer all the Australian sports such as AFL and NRL.

Other Products:

If you want to take a break from betting on CSGO or other esports, you can play on any of the other products available with bet365 such as Bingo, Poker, Financial Markets, or in any of their 3 casinos: Casino, Vegas or Games. Their casino is predominantly powered by Playtech, which is one of the more well known online casino brands, but they also have slots from Net Entertainment, Realistic Games, Microgaming, WagerWorks and more. They award casino comp points whenever you play, and also have a bonus of 100% of your deposit free up to £100 or a high roller bonus of 50% up to £500 available when you first play in their casino.

Verdict:

If you’re going to hold an account with only one bookmaker, it’s simple, choose bet365. Globally, they are the leader in sports betting and you’ll be hard pressed to find a better account opening offer either. Their overall eSports product range lets them down slightly, but it’s improving all the time so it’s worth opening an account and keeping an eye for the competitions that they price up. If you’re looking for more CSGO matches to bet on, then consider opening a Unikrn account as well, and using that in the few cases that bet365 doesn’t have the match that you’re looking for.