Bwin Review

Bwin were founded in 1997 in Vienna, Austria, before launching its online betting website just one year later. Its formation of the live bet format was instrumental in forging their status as one of the best online gambling sites, and in 2001 they implemented a casino gaming format. Having been placed on the stock market, Bwin formed with PartyGaming in 2011, becoming Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment. They are one of the most well-known betting sponsors in football, having been partnered with Real Madrid from 2007-2013, as well as being tied with Bayern Munich and previously AC Milan.

Deposit & Withdrawals

As expected, Bwin offer a variety of different currencies to both deposit and withdraw in. This goes alongside the standard use of debit/credit cards, as well as standard bank transfer. One interesting feature is that they used to ask for identification during your first withdrawal, though due to other competitors not implementing this, they have since removed this. The max deposit is around £10,000 for most methods, though BankTransfer can be up to £70,000.

Customer Service

Bwin’s customer service is one of the best around, with the Help and Contact section easy to access in the top left of the screen. The pop-out window leading to the FAQ is extensive. They are, however, not 24/7 with their telephone details only going from 10am to 10pm, meaning those in Europe betting on foreign markets such as NBA will prove difficult should a problem arise. Their live help, on the other hand, is very good.

License Information

Customers in the United Kingdom: Bwin is licensed and regulated by the Gambling Commission7.

At Bwin whether you wish the odds to be displayed in European (decimal), British (fractional) or American format

Betting limits

At Bwin, winnings are limited by per player per week and are outlined below for various currencies.

CHF 300,000, USD 310,000, EUR 250,000, £200,000, DKK 1,800,000, SEK 2,100,000, NOK 1,800,000, PLN 950,000, CZK 6,000,000, HUF 72,00,000, BGN 490,0000,000, YTL 500,000, HRK 1,800,000, RON 1,000,000, RUB 9,000,000, LVL 175,000, LTL 860,000, ARS 1,700,000, MXN 4,000,000.

Types of bets

Bwin are not exactly the best giver of odds compared to some of their rivals, though they should not be disregarded completely. There is little to no movement in some of the major sporting events in the United Kingdom such as rugby and football, though their in play is better than some. They have continued to branch out beyond European sport with both Aussie Rules, bandy and baseball. That means that although their odds may not be as good as some of their other counterparts, there is always something for the average bettor to gamble on.

Sport coverage

Bwin cover a total of 33 sports on the site.

In-play experience

Live betting was one of the first features from Bwin that has since carried over to pretty much all other online betting companies. Because of this, they have one of the most in-depth live betting around, with extensive selection of bets. Of course, much like their rivals Bet365, they have live match streaming and it is completely free, as long as you have an account. One rather striking feature is the virtual tennis streaming. If the match is not available to watch live, a video game-esque presentation is displayed instead, which is a nice little addition.

Live streaming

At the moment “Live Streams” are totally free on bwin, the only conditions are that you have an account with money in it or have placed a bet within the last 24 hours.

When you enter the Bwin domain the first page you land on is a splash page with a very clean layout and because there is limited information on the page, it is very fast loading. Once on this page it is very easy to get to the product you want with Sports list first in the main menu.

Once you hit the Sports betting portion of the site you are greeted with a really simple and easy to navigate layout. The black, dark grey and bright yellow colour scheme works really well and is very easy on the eye.

The to menu shows all of the products and the left hand menu is broken down into 3 sections. The way it is laid out makes a lot of sense. the first section on the left is current highlighted and live sports. below this you have any favorites (My Favorites) that you may have selected. This makes it easy to get to your favorite sport. Then below this you have the other sports.

One of the other things that is really nice about the Bwin site is that the help and contact links are clearly displayed as soon as you hit the first landing page, and are located in the top left corner. When you move to the sports betting tab they remain in exactly the same place, so, you never have to scroll to the footer as in many other sites.

Once you click on an event or market it is very easy to see the odds. Also when you open the event the markets are shown in the centre of the page and if there is any live stream it shows to the right of the markets. A very nice interface.

An overall average odds margin across sports of 5.7% shows that Bwin is definitely not the most competitive when it comes to odds, and although they are big into football betting, their average percentage on football is really quite high at 6.4%.

Being one of the major bookmakers outside the UK high street names this is surprising. If you are a punter/bettor who likes to bet on tennis then the odds offer is not muc better at 6.3%.

A lot of bookmakers offer quite low margin on US sports but Bwin are pretty high in comparison to other sites.

Although the odds offer is weak from Bwin they do have a very good market coverage. As mentioned previously, football is a big sport and one of the main ones for Bwin. In most games you will find at least 80 markets on the major leagues and this is more often than not more than one hundred.

Range of bets is another area where Bwin have an advantage as they offer some very different bets to other bookmakers. A few of these are explained below.

What are Head-to-Head bets?
Head-to-Head bets are available for sports in which a direct comparison can be made between two starters or teams (e.g. in Formula 1). If you bet on Fernando Alonso in a Head-to-Head bet between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in a Formula 1 race, you win if Fernando Alonso finishes ahead of Hamilton in the final rankings. He does not have to win the race. He just needs to obtain a higher position than Hamilton.

Another interesting bet from Bwin is the “System Bet” and this works with up to eight selections with doubles as a minimum. Here is an example:

A 2/8 system bet consists of 28 bets which transpire from 8 picks — twenty-eight 2-pick multis (parlays or doubles). At least two of the eight picks
must be correct to win.

If we look at the live interface it is very straightforward to use and is the same layout as the normal pre match betting interface. On the right hand side you have a couple of tabs, the “Live Streaming” tab and the “Animation” tab.

It is the animation tab that is really very useful. At any point in the game you can see every single stat and this is broken down into the whole time the event has been play as well as last 5, 10 and 15 minutes segments.

For punters who like to bet live, particularly on fast markets, this is a fabulous tool.

Bwin do not have a large amount of offers but two of the ones that are very good are their enhanced accas and daily price boosts. The enhanced accas take a selection of games and you are given a price which is better than the standard pricing. These acccas are selected by Bwin. They also have two types of enhanced acca. You can bet on the favorites or you can try your luck on the underdogs.

The price boosts are even better as you are getting bigger prices on single events or markets. As an example, you may get a price boost on a red card happening in the game, it could be a penalty in the match or even a player to score 2 or more goals. These types of bets will be interesting for the bettors who look at stats and historic data when certain teams play each other.

Well when we talk about deposit and withdrawl options then Bwin probably win this hands down with 33 different payment methods. A few of these are country specific but for mainstream methods there are more than 25 to choose from.

The only downside is that when withdrawing, Bwin have an internal team that check all withdrawal requests before they can be sent to your account or card. This review process takes 1-2 days so if you add transfer time as well you will be looking at a minimum of three days before receiving your funds into your own account.

Live chat is quick and on a Saturday afternoon when it is a busy sporting day it took around 15 seconds for an agent to respond. The response time is excellent and the agent was highly knowledgeable and courteous.

Bwin have been active in the sports betting market for more than 10 years and have a very solid reputation.

To protect your personal data during communication with their web browser, the company uses secure and tested encryption technology from VeriSign®.

Online transactions are protected by the extremely reliable security system of a worldwide accredited clearing partner, which guarantees that its payment system is available and has up-time of at least 99.5% of the time every month.

In terms of licensing Bwin is a fully licensed sportsbook under the Government of Gibraltar, as well as holding a license from the UK Gambling Commission.