Virgin Bet Review

Our Virgin Bet bookmaker review is here to provide information about sports, betting markets, and other betting opportunities. Here’s what we thought.

As a brand, Virgin spans multiple sectors. Most UK residents are familiar with the name and its founder Richard Branson. Although Virgin Bet itself might not be a big-name betting site compared to the likes of bet365, William Hill, and Coral, the brand ‘Virgin’ is synonymous with quality and trust. 

The Virgin Bet bookmaker launched in 2019 and has since made great strides in becoming a leader in the field. Some of my highlights include its multiple promotions, good sports coverage, and site usability. Though some odds could be described as average, this doesn’t take away from the overall experience. See what else I thought by reading my review, then click the sign-up link to place your first bet with Virgin Bet.

Bonuses and Promotions

The welcome bonus offer at Virgin Bet is pretty standard compared to its competitors. New customers receive £20 in free bets when they place a qualifying £10 bet. To be eligible, punters need to place a £10 bet with minimum odds of 1/2 (1.5) within the first 14 days after joining the site. The bet must also settle within this period and after this, two free £10 bet tokens will be issued. These expire after seven days so you’ll need to use them quickly. 

Besides the welcome bonus, I was pleased to find lots of other promotional offers. There’s a free £5 weekend bet for anyone who places a £10 bet on football between Friday and Sunday each week. This can be a single bet or a bet builder. You must accept the free bet within 24 hours of issue and use it within 7 days.

If you’re keen on accas, there’s also a weekly free £10 acca to anyone placing two separate £10 accas each week. Be mindful that this restarts every Monday so a bet on a Sunday then a Monday will be in two separate weeks and won’t count for the offer. Your qualifying acca must have at least 4 legs and minimum odds of 2/1 (3.0).

Horse racing fans can also delight in the offers available. If you bet at least £10 on a selected race each Saturday, you can get money back as a free bet should your horse lose. There are also extra places available on pre-race each-way bets on selected races and ‘best odds guaranteed’ promotion.

The free-to-play Virgin Bet FIVES caught my eye as a fun promotion. With this, you get five players in your squad, who can then earn you cash when they score goals. Finally, there are regular price boosts too. 

As you can see, Virgin Bet has enough offers to keep punters coming back. It would be nice to see offers on other sports besides football and horse racing but this isn’t enough to send me elsewhere. I certainly appreciate the price boosts and best odds offers. 

Sports and Markets

Though there is a definite focus on traditional sports betting options like horse racing, football, greyhounds, and tennis–these form part of the ‘featured’ section–Virgin Bet does offer a lot of options. There’s everything from American football to volleyball and these appear as you scroll down the left sidebar. You’ll find options for virtual sports, eSports, and entertainment too.

The extensive sports list is great. There are some niche categories like handball, which offer a surprising range of competitions to choose from, including the World Championship Women’s winner. 

The betting markets within individual sports are as extensive as the top sites. Besides the more typical football bets, for example, you can bet on Egypt’s 2nd Division, Germany’s 3. Liga, and four different Norwegian leagues. Virgin Bet also indicates which leagues currently have in-play matches going on. 

The tennis betting markets are also impressive and easy to navigate. At the time of writing, examples of competitions include the hotly anticipated ATP Paris and the challenger at Bergamo, among many others. 

Fans of virtual sports and eSports won’t be disappointed either. Virgin Bet offers virtual events on football, horse racing, and greyhounds, which run at short intervals. The eSport offering includes Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and League of Legends (including the World Championship).

If you feel like changing things up a bit, Virgin Bet also has a linked online casino. This is well integrated with the casino promotions listed on the betting site promotions section. 

Overall, the sports and markets are great and on par with top players like bet365 and William Hill.

Design and Usability

Virgin Bet displays the classic Virgin colours and logo. For customers with experience of other Virgin products, this may add an element of familiarity.  As a brand that prides itself on high quality, I had equally high expectations. As such, I wasn’t surprised that the site was well-designed and spacious. It was easy to browse with a good layout. 

From the homepage itself, you can navigate to your favourite sports betting choices in a single click. You can also see your bet slip displayed neatly on the right, which is where I prefer it to be–no pop-ups for me, please! I did, however, find the desktop load times slower than some of its competitors but it wasn’t enough to put me off. However, I can imagine this might be a bit frustrating for quick in-play bets. 

When reviewing sites, I like to see how they look in split-screen. Many bettors, myself included, often do this to keep an eye on bets while doing something else online. Thankfully, Virgin Bet adapts nicely to this, although the promotions are very difficult to see and aren’t so easy to read on a reduced size. 

The search function was very similar to LiveScore Bet – a little bit lacking. It’s hit and miss whether you see the search icon or not on your screen. I would appreciate it being available on every screen, but this is a small niggle. 

Mobile-wise, Virgin Bet works fine on a smartphone browser. I actually preferred the layout and found that it loaded quicker than the desktop site. 

Payment Methods and Withdrawal Times

I was surprised to find less payment methods available than with many of the competitors. As a brand that runs banking too, I presumed that there would be a ton of options. However, you can only choose from Visa, Mastercard, Revolut, and PayPal - not the extensive list I hoped for but at least it covers most bases. For withdrawals, you also have the option of a bank transfer. 

The minimum deposit amount is £5 for card payments and £10 for e-wallets. The maximum for any deposit is £20,000. For withdrawals, the minimum you can take out is £10 and the maximum is £20,000 for all methods. 

The withdrawal times are pretty standard for the top UK betting sites and you can get your cash out quite easily. Virgin Bet will process all withdrawal requests within 24 hours internally. After processing, you can expect PayPal withdrawals to arrive instantly while other methods generally take up to 3 working days (although bank withdrawals can take 5 business days). 

In-Play Betting Options

The Virgin Bet in-play betting options are excellent. The section is clear and the number of options is visible from the home screen – this changes automatically without manually having to refresh the page. I checked this out a few times during the day and the number ranged from 54 to 64. 

From the in-play page, there are many tabs to choose from. This includes highlights and streaming as well as football, tennis, basketball, eSports, ice hockey, snooker, and table tennis. Games that have live streaming available are highlighted with a red triangle and a ‘watch’ button for easy access. 

When live streaming isn’t available, you can still find live information on the event itself. For example, in ice hockey, you can see who’s attacking, the number of suspensions, and the puck possession. It would be useful to have all of this information to read as a history too but this changes as a live update.

Bet Builder

Virgin Bet has a bet builder option for popular football matches. Punters can choose up to six selections from a range of markets like both teams to score, match results (full time, first half, and second half), total corners, red cards, and more. 

The bet builder can be made in its own tab. You can make your selections and combine them or you can choose pre-built bet builder options. This option is only available for football and not in any other sports disciplines. 

Virgin Bet Betting App

The Virgin Bet betting app is excellent. I actually preferred it to the desktop site. Though I use Android, I also tried it out on an iPhone to experience both versions. The mobile app offers everything at your fingertips. It’s streamlined, functional, and fast. 

Both apps are linked from the Virgin Bet homepage and have excellent ratings in their respective stores. The Android version has been downloaded 100k times and has a rating of 4.3 out of 5. The iOS version has been downloaded less at 9.9k times but its rating is an impressive 4.8 out of 5.

Customer Support

I found the Virgin Bet customer support to be good. There is an extensive FAQs section which answered all of my queries without me needing to use the live chat function. 

Should you have questions that you can’t find the answers to in the help centre, you can use the live chat function, which is available 24/7. This starts as a virtual assistant but you are swiftly connected to a real person. 

One thing I found rather annoying, though, was how often the live chat screen maximised as I was browsing the help centre and FAQs. Every time you navigate to a different section and start reading, the pop-up appears and covers the text. However, I did appreciate that the help centre launches in another tab so you can go back to your betting screen without getting off the help page. 

In terms of other support channels, you can email queries to support@virginbet.com. Unfortunately, there is no customer support telephone number. 

Responsible Gambling Features

Virgin Bet makes its commitment to responsible gambling clear. There is a link on all pages, which brings up a pop-up detailing how the company takes responsible gambling seriously. This contains heaps of information and mentions the range of tools available to support customers to gamble responsibly. 

The tools available include deposit limits (daily, weekly, and monthly), account closure, account cool-off (take a break between 1 day and 6 weeks), reality checks to help you keep track of your time spent betting, and self-exclusion (for an extended breather away from the site). There are also tips, self-assessment questions, and links to GAMSTOP, GamCare, Gamblers Anonymous, and BeGambleAware.

It’s clear that Virgin Bet offers way more features than the UK Gambling Commission dictates as a minimum, which is pleasing to see. 

Summary

I had high expectations of Virgin Bet, given the good reputation of the wider Virgin brand, and I wasn’t disappointed. Yes, I’d have liked more payment options and a less annoying live chat pop-up, but these were all minor inconveniences compared to the whole offering of this betting site. 

This bookmaker knows how to serve its clients well. It offers excellent functionality and great betting options with a good mobile website and app. All in all, this is a top contender for betting sites even though it’s only a few years old. If you like the sound of what Virgin Bet offers, click our link to join. 

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