Fitzdares Review

When asked about the most popular sports betting providers in the United Kingdom, few will whip you if you leave out Fitzdares.

Undoubtedly, Fitzdares doesn’t enjoy the celebrity status of Bet365 and WilliamHill, but it sure makes a strong stand in the racing industry.

Fitzdares’ preoccupation with sports racing has seen them bag the prestigious SBC Racing Sportsbook of the Year. This was a notable recognition of their innovative and distinction-laden approach to racing betting.

But Fitzdares is not a newbie either. Founded in 2006, Fitzdares had expanded enough by 2016 to absorb historic betting providers like Sunderlands, which had earlier taken over the 100-year-old T Guntrip in Mayfair.

It is worth noting that Fitzdares is arguably one of the first bookies to roll out soon after text betting in the United Kingdom.

In this Fitzdares UK review, we went all the way to investigate the reliability of this bookmaker, their banking methods, welcome bonus, odds, and other important aspects.

Read on to find our first-person experience of Fitzdares.

Fitzdares was founded by Balthazar Fabricius, with its early beginning as an old-school private telephone service bookmaker.

Registered in Wales and England with 05478072 for a registration number, Fitzdares is regulated by the United Kingdom Gambling commission with an account number of 400.

The Irish Revenue Commissioner legally permits this bookie to operate in Ireland with a remote license number of 1015927. The casino department has a remote license (with number 000400-R-103839-024) from the British Gambling Commission.

And as further proof of Fitzdares being legitimate and tangible, this bookmaker’s head office is located at Fitzdares Ltd, 182-184 Campden Hill Road, LONDON, W8 7AS, United Kingdom.

Undoubtedly, this is a bookmaker you can hold accountable for underperformance.

In instances of dissatisfaction with Fitzdares betting services where the bookie failed to resolve the dispute internally, you can file a complaint to the Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS).

Furthermore, Fitzdares focuses heavily on safeguarding the integrity of customer information. Our investigation reveals that the Fitzdares betting site is girded with sophisticated encryption technology.

Fitzdares has one of the cleanest websites we have seen. The color palette richly combines red, white, and yellow.

The bookmaker was not shy about its obsession with racing, with a horse racer plastered on the homepage.

Unlike other bookmakers guilty of jampacking their website real estate, Fitzdares adopted a minimalistic design with tabs like Sports, Casino, The Club, and Contact sitting at the top.

At the extreme top right-hand side are the Join and Bet buttons, respectively clothed in yellow and red backgrounds.

Hovering your mouse over the Sports tab triggers a dropdown revealing further options like Horse racing, Football betting, Golf betting, and Cricket betting.

Similarly, the casino tab reveals a dropdown featuring Live Casino, table games, and slot games. Scrolling down leads us to further sections dedicated to offers, news, and customer support.

The lowest sections show this bookmaker’s commitment to responsible gambling while showcasing its regulatory licenses.

Overall, the desktop version is slick and notably spacious. The mobile version is a slimmed-down duplication of the desktop client.

Most of the features are squeezed into a menu at the right. Clicking the menu expands to reveal features like Offers, Sports, Casino, News, and The Club.

While the registration process at Fitzdares was seamless, we find the minimum age requirement for registration a bit steep.

Most bookies in the Uk set their minimum eligibility age at 18. But on Fitzdares, it is up at 21 years for UK citizens.

Aside from that, we find every other aspect commendable. The Join button is abundantly visible on the right side of the homepage.

Clicking on that leads you to a single-page registration destination where details like your name (first and last), mobile number, date of birth, and email address will be required.

Moving forward, you can set your account details, like your preferred username and password. After that is setting the pace at which you would receive promotional offers from Fitzdares.

After signing up, Fitzdares will mandate you to verify your details, especially your age. This validation exercise would entail you uploading your KYC credentials.

Your legal identity card, driver’s license, or passport would do. Fitzdares could also request proof of your residential address. The latter could be a bank statement, a recent utility bill, or a council tax bill.

You can upload these documents on the website, and Fitzdares customer support will look into them, with verification astonishingly taking less than 24 hours.

This short span was notable as we have waited some painful days with other betting sites.

After verification, you can readily deposit funds and place your first bet.

Fitzdares offers new customers matched free bets on their first deposit of £30.

This means that upon registering your account, Fitzdares will give you what you deposit back as free bet stakes, provided it is at least £10 and at most £30.

There are terms and conditions associated with these Fitzdares free free bet stakes.

Your qualifying bet must be placed on an event with minimum odds of 2.00 with a bet size of at least £10. After qualifying bet settlement, Fitzdares rewards you (as free bets) with directly what you have bet so long your qualifying bet doesn’t exceed £30 (maximum matched free bet).

Free bets accrued from the qualifying bet can only be used on events with minimum odds of 1.5. Fitzdares will withdraw the free bets if you have not used them seven days after receiving them.

Winnings from your free bets can be withdrawn at once without fulfilling any wagering requirement. Aside from free bets, fitzdares sports betting has a lot of goodies to reward loyal customers.

Consistently, this bookmaker rolls out attractive promotions like cash backs, special bets, insurance bets, and savory enhanced odds.

We admit Fitzdares’ generosity peaks at major racing festivals. In renowned racing ceremonies like the Cheltenham Festival, Fitzdares marvels with a feast of bonuses.

Customers can get compensational free bets when their horses don’t emerge first amid many other juicy offers.

Fitzdares has been very public with its fanaticism for sports racing. Will Woodhams, Fitzdares CEO, resounded Fitzdares’ conviction that horse racing remains Britain’s finest sports export, vowing to double down on it.

This was reaffirmed with the bookie pledging a whopping £1million to support UK and Ireland racing. But does this means horse racing is all you can get on Fitzdares?

Definitely not. Over the years, Fitzdares has blended into the prevailing bookmaker culture of diversifying betting offerings.

While racing is the dominant category on Fitzdares, this bookie yet offers more than 25 different sports markets, with noteworthy mentions including football, cricket, and golf.

After racing, the largest betting markets on Fitzdares come under football. Fitzdares caters to football enthusiasts, with a regular match on Premier League attracting over 200 betting markets on this online sports betting website.

We admit that this is not enough for ardent football punters since we know betting sites in the UK and Ireland who provide over a thousand betting markets for such events.

Other less popular sports markets on Fitzdares include GAA Football, Snooker, and Handball.

While this bookmaker started as a traditional phone service bookmaker, Fitzdares has modernized to maintain its relevance with millennial sports bettors. This is demonstrated in its rich esports offerings.

On Fitzdares, you can get major esports categories like Call of Duty and CS:GO. At the time of writing, Fitzdares had an overwhelming collection of markets on other CS:GO, Dota 2, and League of Legends. There are lots of virtual horse racing markets to bet on too.

This is one of the very bookmakers that allows you to place esports bets by phone text.

Unlike sports betting providers like Betfred, Ladbrokes, and PaddyPower, Fitzdares doesn’t have “best odds guaranteed”.

Fitzdares’ odds were a bit in the “upper middle class”. That is, they were slightly above the average we saw in the market.

While the payouts understandably varied across sports, the average payout on Fitzdares is 93.2%. It tilts higher for major events in horse racing and football.

The least you can bet on Fitzdares is £1. We think this is too high as we have come across a handful of bookmakers in the UK with a minimum bet of 10p.

The highest you can earn in one day from your betting endeavors (single bets) on Fitzdares is £250,000. Winnings from accumulations peak at £1,000,000.00

Any winnings above these upper thresholds must be forfeited.

Does Fitzdares offer In-Play betting?

Fitzdares offers sizable in play markets. But this is a section where Fitzdares needs to do way better.

Indeed, the in-play market was extensive. Fitzdares went as far as providing live betting markets for events as far away as AFC Asian Cup and even for a competition as supposedly remote (to a UK or Irish bettor) as the Cameroon Elite One.

But the in-play betting markets were starved of real-time statistics. The only data we saw on these events on Fitzdares were the scores.

Unless you are willing to leverage an external resource on an in-play event (outside Fitzdares), the data provided on Fitzdares for in-play betting were limiting and insufficient to maximize your in-play betting fortunes.

Cashout feature is a prevailing tradition among English bookies, and Fitzdares is not excluded from the party.

This sports betting provider offers full and partial cash out on accumulations and single bets. This cuts across pre-match bets and live bets.

As you would understand, not all events come with cashout features. It is within the deserved discretion of Fitzdares to determine which events (and at which intervals of a live bet) the cashout feature is available.

Typically, if your bet is eligible for a cashout on Fitzdares, a cashout amount will be displayed right next to it, which you can click on.

Most times, we saw a box right next to the cashout amount. You can modulate this sum when you want a partial cashout.

For a bookmaker that bagged the SBC Racing Sportsbook of the Year, there is no way live streaming would be missing from the menu it dishes customers.

Fitzdares provides spectacular live streaming on meetings in UK and Ireland. Notably, you can stream just any horse racing events in the UK, Ireland, and even international meetings (all through France, the US, and Australia) at zero cost.

This is one of the rarest bookies offering this luxury to racing enthusiasts. Most sports betting providers charge you a fee for this or require you to have a specified minimum deposit.

While the live streaming opportunities were mouthwatering, we didn’t see much live streaming in other sports markets.

In 2018, Fitzdares launched a dedicated mobile betting app with massive reception among its customer base.

While these Android and iOS versions are available on the PlayStore and App Store, you can also get them directly from the Fitzdares UK website. There are links to these apps on the middle section of the homepage.

Within the last four years, this app has enjoyed monumental modifications, enhancing the mobile betting experience Fitzdares boast.

For example, on the App Store, the Fitzdares iOS app, compatible with iPad and iPhone interfaces, has a 3.9 rating out of 5. This is impressive for a bookmaker.

That said, this doesn’t mean the Fitzdares mobile app is perfect. We think Fitzdares can still improve the user interface, especially the font sizes.

Occasionally, the resolution made them overwhelming for smaller iPhones. This is because the app is more titled toward tablet users.

Our user experience on an iPad was way superior to what we had on our iPhones.

The app comes with the create-a-bet feature that significantly simplified our betting on the desktop version. You can also stream races on the app, making it all jollier.

The casino experience was also commendable on the app, only that some slots took too long to load.

We would be whitewashing Fitzdares if we give them a 10/10 score in the banking department. While they provide traditional debit card channels like Visa, Mastercard, and Maestro, Fitzdares disenfranchises digital-leaning customers.

It is questionable that Fitzdares is yet to integrate electronic payment gateways like Skrill and Paypal. The larger fraction of today’s punters prefer these digital solutions because of their speedier processing intervals – albeit having to part with a transaction fee.

With Paypal and Skrill not available, it would be fantastical to expect Fitzdares to offer more revolutionary banking methods like cryptocurrency (say Bitcoin and ethereum).

But Fitzdares appears to make up for this by having some of the fastest withdrawal times we have seen with credit cards.

While Mastercard has the usual 2-5 business days processing interval we see with many bookies, we were very impressed to see that Visa withdrawals on Fitzdares can be processed within 24 hours.

This speediness is a luxury typically reserved for the digital likes of PayPal and Neteller. This said, £10 is the minimum you can deposit on all payment platforms with Fitzdares.

We couldn’t moan about this as this is quite the standard. High rollers can bet up to £40,000.

This allows both greenhorn bettors and experienced gambling veterans to enjoy the show on Fitzdares.

Here is something else worth noting. Should you decide to withdraw the money you deposited into your Fitzdares account without placing any bet on the website, Fitzdares will charge you 5% of the amount you are pulling out as processing fees. This is accompanied by a minimum charge pegged at £3.00.

Yes, Fitzdares has a blossoming casino division. This is, however, dominated by slot games. Fitzdares offers coveted slot games like Wild West, Elemental Gems, Mustang Gold, and Queen of Atlantis.

There were several Megaways, too, including 4 Diamond Blues, Poisedon Ancient Fortunes, Big Bass, and Buffalo King.

There are also table games on the menu. Expectedly, Casino staples like Blackjack and Roulette are on offer.

We came across Roulette variants like the Roulette European, Realistic Roulette, and American Roulette. Evolution Gaming powered a significant slice of the roulette offerings on Fitzdares.

The Live Casino section was even more entertaining. Here we were treated to live roulettes, live blackjack, dice games, Football Studio, and live Baccarat.

The limits varied, as is obtainable in many contemporary online casinos. Many of the slot games we saw had a maximum limit of £20. Others were £10. Some table games had their upper limits set at £25.

It is quite disheartening that Fitzdares doesn’t have a casino bonus.

Fitzdares is one of the few bookies that offer a private membership club, bringing back the social vibes that came with old gambling houses.

The Fitzdares Club was launched in 2020; this club has two permanent homes. These are located in Cotswolds and Mayfair. The Mayfair home is at 50 Davies Street, Mayfair, in the West End of London.

Fitzdares Club provides fantastic networking and recreational opportunities for members while enjoying a luxurious treat of live sports. There is a dedicated racing room, double dining rooms, a restaurant, and private rooms.

You can enjoy these facilities at no cost, provided you are a registered member. You can apply for the private club membership here with an annual membership fee of £600.

Fitzdares’s remarkable customer service is one of its brightest selling points. This bookie offers an abundance of channels to get across for support, a massive upgrade on many bookies we have seen who appear to shy away from customers.

There is a live chat feature and contact form on the Fitzdares website. There is also a standalone email address and dedicated telephone numbers for calling and texting.

If you want to put a quick across to this bookie, you can reach them via 020 7851 5407. If you prefer texting, you can contact Fitzdares via 07492 882213.

Email correspondence to Fitzdares can be conducted via bet@fitzdares.com. The customer support channels are available from Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 9 pm (UK time).

On Sundays, you can reach customer support anywhere from 10 am to 9 pm.

Overall, we were impressed with Fitzdares. Their racing offerings count among the best in the market. We found the 100% matched free bets reasonably generous.

The website was sleek and neat – just as we like it, with less work to do placing your bet. The free live streaming facility was heartwarming for every racing enthusiast.

Also, the mobile app was amazing. Furthermore, the customer service is one of the most responsive we have experienced.

On the less positive side, we wished Fitzdares could spread some attention (which it lavishly pours on horse racing) to some other sports like football.

For a bookmaker in the 21st century, Fitzdares definitely needs to expand its banking options to include electronic wallets. Exclusively focusing on debit cards wouldn’t cut it for modern punters.

While the in-play market was reasonably broad, we felt we would do with more data on games to make more informed betting decisions.