Bet365 Review, Free Bets and Offers
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Having started life in a Portakabin in Stoke-on-Trent in 2000, the brainchild of its now billionaire female owner, Denise Coates, Bet365 reached stratospheric heights within a decade, following the online betting boom. It is now the UK’s largest exclusively online operator, and second biggest bookmaker by revenue. It is also the world’s most popular online betting site, with over 35 million customers around the globe.
It’s unlikely you won’t recognise Bet365’s now iconic green, yellow and white colours, but – as the Bet365 chairman, Peter Coates (father of Denise), is also Chairman of Stoke City Football Club – followers of English football may also have spotted their logo on the Stoke City shirt, or heard the company’s name during their home games, played at the Bet365 stadium.
bet365 Free bets for existing customers
For regular bettors, one key area in which Bet365 excels is providing its existing customers with free bets. Whereas many online bookmakers will only offer free bets or deposit match deals as incentives to sign up with an account, Bet365 will regularly offer such freebies to its existing users. So whilst customers are rewarded for their repeat custom, Bet365 are rewarded in having one of the most loyal customer bases in the industry – despite not having any shops, or indeed any face-to-face dealings with those customers.
Bet365’s most well-known offer for existing customers is probably their free in-play bet up to the same stake, when you bet on a big sporting fixture before play. This is not a regular or advertised offer, evidently depending on the popularity of (and market around) individual fixtures, and as such, it’s impossible for those outside the firm to say if and when it will be offered next. But historically speaking – depending on your betting habits and the amount of time you’ve had your account – recipients can generally expect a maximum stake of between £5 and £50, to be matched with a free in-play bet – often for big Champions League ties.
bet365 Free bets on TV horse racing
Bet365 is also well known for its ‘ITV4/1’ offer (previously ‘Channel 4/1’, when Channel 4 had the rights to UK free-to-air racing) where users are rewarded for picking a winner in an ITV or ITV4-featured races at 4/1 or over. Historically, winners have then been awarded a free bet to the same stake, in the next race the channel is televising. Technically, the minimum bet is just 10p – the minimum bet site-wide – and with a high maximum allowed stake of up to £50, this offer is a great one to look out for, if you’re a casual punter who likes to spend a Saturday afternoon watching the racing – even if it’s more about the enjoyment of the sport than the winnings. Even better, Bet365 regularly operates a ‘price promise’ on ITV races, often in addition to guaranteeing best odds, if the SP is longer than the price you bet at. In which case, the chances of your selection coming in at 4/1 or above are markedly improved.
Bet365 doesn’t just offer deals like these for horse racing betting – football, greyhound racing, tennis, basketball, rugby union and Aussie rules football markets are all amongst those which have benefitted from enhancements including best-odds and early payout offers, on the Bet365 website.
Great bet365 sign-up offers with free bets
Like most bookmakers, Bet365 offers a range of incentives to sign up for a new account. In the past, this has often consisted of a deposit match. Such deals that Timeform have included on our free bets page recently include a 100% deposit match in free bets up to £100 – very generous by industry standards, especially considering the lack of a requirement to play through any accrued winnings, before their withdrawal.
Make sure you check our free bets page to find their latest sign-up offer!
Huge range of betting options with bet365
The other factor Bet365 is perhaps best known for is the breadth of its betting options, both in terms of sports offered, and of the available markets within those sports. Well in excess of 100 markets are routinely offered pre-game on high-profile soccer matches, and many more become available in-play. At any one time, customers can bet on over 40 different sports, from the ever-present – like soccer, tennis, horse racing and boxing – to the esoteric – like trotting, bandy and floorball. It also offers regional favourites, including Gaelic, Aussie rules and American football codes, to all its global audiences.
In addition to sports per se, customers can also bet on a range of virtual sports (randomised computer simulations of real sports), Esports (online computer-gaming tournaments) and ‘specials’ markets, including world politics, reality TV shows and awards ceremonies.
Watch live sport with Bet365
Bet365 is also recognised for the enormous number of live sporting events it broadcasts from its website – often available to any customer with a funded account – with around 140,000 events available to view over the course of 2018. So if you’re the kind of sports fanatic who’s happy to sit down and bet on pretty much anything, so long as you can see the action unfold, Bet365 could be the bookmaker for you.
Come for the deals, stay for the usability
Bet365 has a clean and uncluttered look, with Bet365 brand-green ‘trim’ to the dark grey boxes into which markets and prices are divided. With all text the same small size, and images – including video – limited to small sections of the page to help navigation, the site retains its simple, spreadsheet feel. Despite having kept roughly the same layout more or less from the beginning, it’s much easier on the eye than any anything devised solely in Excel ever could be. Prices and scores are displayed clearly in yellow, and sports remain visible in a column to the far left, whilst the bet slip occupies the opposite, far-right column.
The mobile app is much the same, with the winning formula applied to the handheld version of the site – albeit with far fewer markets visible at any one time, to better suit the dimensions and readability of the phone or tablet.
Without large, distracting imagery and titles, or a brightly coloured theme, the site is unusual amongst sportsbook sites for having a far more refined, price-led design, and for that reason, as well as the emphasis on ongoing live sport, as mentioned above, is clearly aimed at the dedicated gambler, who may be willing to spend hours at a time on the site, rather than trying to catch the fleeting attention of the casual punter.
