Virgin Bet Review

Within the last five years, the UK sports betting industry has been rapidly populating with bookies. Virgin Bet is one of the relatively new bookmakers that have entered the space and enjoying a speedy rise to the top.

Since launching in 2019, Virgin Bet has embarked on a charm offensive, wooing UK bettors with attractive betting conditions.

Owned by Gamesys Group Plc, Virgin Bet precedes the earlier Virgin Games online casino Gamesys rolled out in 2013.

Of course, there is so much to know about this bookmaker. How reliable are they? How do their odds and sports markets compare to other bookmakers? Also, what banking options do they have?

We thoroughly investigated this bookmaker, and we will serve you our authoritative findings in this Virgin Bet review.

In the sports betting industry, regulation is a critical parameter for credibility. You don’t want to bet with some anonymous offshore bookie that can disappear into thin air at a moment’s notice.

We found Virgin Bet has licenses from respected regulators like the UK Gambling Commission and the Global Gaming Community (GGC).

To further consolidated its transparency, Virgin Bet has passed credibility tests conducted by industry-leading bodies like the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA) and eCOGRA.

This means you have zero worries about the fairness of your gambling experience with Virgin Bet. On the casino dimension, the games from this bookmaker are provided by top-notch gaming providers with rigorously tested Random Number Generator (RNG) software.

Virgin bet further prides itself on running its platform on SBTech. For those who don’t know, SBTech is an award-winning sports betting platform providing solutions to over 50 licenses distributed across 15 regulated markets.

Lastly, Virgin Bet protects punters from compulsive gambling by helping them with resources to bet responsibly.

The Virgin Bet website neatly blends a red-and-white color combination. The homepage has a top red bar that houses the Virgin Bet logo, with the Log-in and Join Now buttons located at the top right hand.

After this comes a carousel denoting the welcome offers new punters can enjoy. To the left of this banner is a compilation of tabs like My Bet, In-play, Promotion, Casino, Live Casino, and Daily free game.

To the right of the welcome offer is your bet slip which fills up as you bet.

We love the minimalism in the website design. The body was predominantly dressed in white, with the lower sections revealing the banking methods and customer support options available to customers.

Overall, the website loaded fast. On our mobile browsers, the user experience didn’t significantly drop. The resolution on our mobile screen was still commendable, with prominent tabs like Sports, Promotions, Casino, and Live Casino on the homepage.

The Log in and Join now buttons follow this. This is succeeded by a sliding carousel denoting free bets, Download App, and Price Boost offers.

On the digital security side of things, we found the Virgin Bet website equipped with sophisticated 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) technology. This ensures all customer data are protected from intrusive access.

The registration procedure is effortless and can be rapidly completed by the least digitally savvy users.

As we said, the Join now button is shown at the top right of the homepage. When you click on that, the registration page launches, where you would input your personal details.

You must provide your full name, date of birth, email address, and postal address.

Virgin Bet is huge on authenticity, so they leverage third-party credit reference agencies to validate how genuine the information you provided is, without having to stress you with further documentation requests.

In exceptional cases, however, Virgin Bet would require proof of originality for your provided personal details.

In such scenarios, you would be requested to provide a legally recognized document proving your address. This could be a bank statement or your current utility bill.

You can also be requested to prove your photo. This would involve submitting a copy of your driving license or passport.

Note that registration at the time of writing is exclusive to the new customers from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Virgin bet welcome offer is fairly commendable. Here you get £20 in free bets if you bet £10 on your first stake. £20 in free bets are credited to your Virgin Bet account as two batches of £10 free bets.

How do these free bet tokens work?

Upon registering your Virgin Bet account, you must place at least £10 on your first deposit. To get these free bet tokens, you must stake (on your first bet) on an event with minimum odds of 1.5 (with a fractional equivalent of 1/2).

Whether your qualifying bet is successful or not, Virgin Bet will credit you with £20 in free bets. The bet settlement of qualifying bet must not exceed seven days.

But you don’t need a virgin bet bonus code to get a qualifying bet.

Note that deposits made only through Visa and Mastercard would count among qualifying bets. Paypal payments will not receive these free bet tokens.

It goes without saying that the Virgin bet welcome offer is not the most generous welcome offer that we have seen. But the free bets expire after 14 days, which is way longer than the customary 7-day expiry limit we see with other bookies’ bonus bets.

Also, we find the Virgin bet welcome offer worth applauding because you get credited with your free bets whether your qualifying bet wins or not upon bet settlement.

There is also no virgin bet bonus code needed.

For existing customers, Virgin Bet offers lots of daily price boosts. Nonetheless, most of the price boosts we saw were on football.

Virgin Bet provides an encompassing range of sports markets. Our investigation reveals this bookie has over 30 markets you can bet on.

As is quite the tradition among British bookmakers, football, horse racing, greyhounds, and tennis are the frontline sports that Virgin Bet concentrates on most.

This doesn’t mean the likes of darts, snooker, and futsal are left out. Football bettors would enjoy it on Virgin Bet.

This bookmaker extensively covers competition from Europe to North America as far down to Africa.

As of the time of writing, we had markets on the Tanzanian Premier League, Korea K-league 2, and even the Brazilian Serie D. This is massive for a bookie that predominantly serves a British audience.

That said, coveted football competitions like the English Premier League, Champions League, La Liga, and the Italian Serie A inevitably attract the most markets.

Horse racing is also generously covered on Virgin Bet. Famous horse racing competitions like the Cheltenham Festival and Royal Ascots attract hundreds of betting markets on Virgin Bet.

Aside from this, we saw an overwhelming spectrum of markets on meetings outside the UK and Ireland.

It is interesting to note that we came across racing events on Virgin Bet as far as Seoul in South Korea, Scottsville in South Africa, and even Maronas in Uraguay.

Aside from sports, Virgin bet provides betting markets on politics and Specials. In the Specials, we saw appealing betting markets on the Love Island and the British Personality of the Year.

Does Virgin Bet offer esports markets?

Yes, Virgin Bet thrills esports lovers with some exciting markets they can make a killing on. We saw enticing markets for esports competitions like King of Glory KPL, League of Legend Development League, Counter Strike: Go Blast Premier, and Starcraft 2 World Team League.

Virgin Bet counts among the few recently launched bookmakers to have the “best odds guaranteed” enhancer.

This is what it means.

You place your bet on a horse racing event after 7.00 am on the precise day that event holds. The dynamism of the betting market means odds on events change from time to time.

Now, if the starting odds for that horse racing event are higher than the odds of your initial bet, Virgin Bet would automatically upgrade the odds to the starting odds.

This means that you are guaranteed the best odds ever presented for your horse racing bets.

Sounds exciting?

The betting limits are way more permitting on Virgin Bet. While many bookies cap their wins at £250,000, you can win as much as £1 million on Virgin Bet.

The attractiveness of Virgin Bet is further demonstrated in the lowliness of their minimum bet. On Virgin Bet, the least you can bet is 5p.

The maximum bet is a bit flexible and often depends on the event you are betting on. If your stake exceeds the upper limit Virgin Bet set for it, the platform will automatically flag it and direct you to adjust it correspondingly.

We saw lots of in-play betting markets on Virgin Bet sportsbook. At the time of writing, we saw in-play markets in faraway football competitions like the Argentina Torneo Federal A, tennis competitions like the Queen’s Club Championships, and even MLB in-play events on ATL Braves.

While the odds were fair, there weren’t enough statistics on these events to make the most informed betting decisions.

We didn’t have live streaming for these in-play events or even a digital gameplay simulation to know which teams were making promising attacking forays, set pieces, or shots.

Indeed, we were concerned that Virgin Bets only provided the real-time score for the events without furnishing us with more intricate happenings in such events.

This doesn’t blemish the exciting live stream opportunities on Virgin Bet. This bookie offers live streams on many events – far more than the average bookie in the UK.

If the event you are following has a live stream feature, this bookie will indicate it with a video icon appearing under the designated event.

However, you can’t watch any live stream if you don’t have a positive account balance. Virgin Bet requires you to have at least 1p in your account before you can stream a live event.

On the brighter side, Virgin Bet offered us attractive cash-out options. On Virgin Bet, we had cash-out options on both live events and in-play events.

This cash-out feature extends to both single and multiple bets. This means we could cut our losses when our bets were not going favorably.

But as you would understand, this bookmaker doesn’t guarantee you the cash-out facility at just any time. If the facility is available, you will see the cash-out button adjoining your bet.

Should you want to cash out, simply click the toggle button on the My Bets section. A compilation of bets with the cash-out feature available appears.

This is accompanied by the offer amount for each cash-out. Clicking on the cash button transforms the button to “Accepted”. This transfers the cashout amount to your Virgin Bet balance.

Consequently, the bet you claimed the cash out on will be relegated to your settled bet history.

Virgin Bet has a mobile betting app (for both iOS and Android), and this bookmaker couldn’t be prouder about it. No exaggeration, this is one of the best betting apps we have seen from a sports betting provider.

And the evidence is clear.

On the Google Play Store, the Virgin Bet app has a premium 4.2-star rating with over 100k downloads. On the App Store, it boasts an even higher rating of 4.8, ranking notably as the 50th best free sports app.

For context, this is a tremendous achievement for a bookmaker barely two years in operation. The likes of Bet365 and PaddyPower (who rank above the Virgin bet app) have been around for over 20 years.

This is one of the few bookmaker apps where you can log in with your fingerprints.

The Virgin Bet mobile app brings an extensive range of sports markets. It is compatible with even older mobile operating systems.

The limited banking options at Virgin bet soured the soup a little. The only accepted banking platforms on this bookmaker are MasterCard, Visa, Paypal, and Trustly.

This is substantially handicapping as many punters are already used to Skrill, Neteller, PaysafeCard, and Interac.

The least you can deposit via the three approved channels is £5. For Mastercard and Visa, the maximum deposit is pegged at £10,000. Virgin Bet doesn’t charge you for deposits.

It is lower for Paypal, where the highest allowed deposit is £5,500. The same limits correspondingly apply for withdrawals.

Withdrawals on Paypal are almost immediately executed. For Mastercard, your withdrawal can take between 1-3 working days to be completed. Visa takes between 1-2 working days.

Bank transfers can take as long as five working days to get completed.

Yes, Virgin Bet also has an online casino division. Although it was disappointing that there was no sign up offer (dedicated to casino punters), there were lots of exciting free bees for existing customers.

At the time of writing, there were enticing daily free spin offers, live casino deals, and an enormous Jackpot totaling £700,000!

On Virgin Bet, we found over 30 live dealer games for you to bet on. This includes favorite titles like Monopoly Live, Crazy Time, Immersive Roulette, and Three Card Poker.

And yes, we were inundated with slot games on Virgin Bet. Diving deeper into the numbers, there were over 200 slot titles to play.

We enjoyed the likes of Jurassic Park Gold, Starburst, and Secrets of the Phoenix. There were further progressive jackpot slots from Mega Moolahs. Virgin Bet also offered more than 10 BlackJack titles.

Virgin Bet further impresses us with a sizable collection of customer support channels. You can reach their customer service department via a quick phone call, live chat on the Virgin Bet website, or via email and social media.

Virgin Bet’s customer support line is +44 808 169 7700. You can send them an email via support@virginbet.com.

You can reach Virgin Bet on Twitter via @VirginBetHelp.

However, the live chat feature was a bit difficult to find. You would have to click on the “Help and FAQs” tab hidden at the bottom of the website before you can access the live chat widget.

Regarding the FAQ section, Virgin Bet did a thorough job providing resources on the most prevalent issues customer runs into.

The FAQ section covers categories like Banking, Technical, Responsible Gambling (to help punters bet responsibly), Features, Casino Games, and Promotions.

Overall, Virgin Bet is a fine bookmaker – and we mean every bit of that recommendation. For a bookmaker who entered the industry in just 2019, Virgin Bet has done well more than most of its peers that debuted alongside it in 2019.

The range of sports betting markets is impressive; the odds are reasonable, and the betting limits are fair.

We liked the sleekness of the website design, and navigation was not a problem – unless finding features like support.

Live Streaming and In-play betting didn’t disappoint, and the mobile betting app was spectacular.

What urgently needs an upgrade is the range of banking platforms available. Virgin Bet leaves customers seriously disadvantaged by accepting only debit cards, Trustly and PayPal.