Coral Review
For punters and gamers that have been around for a while, Coral gives you everything you could need and more. We seriously couldn’t recommend them highly enough.
They have every feature and market you could want as a sports bettor, and are the best for regular customer promotions and odds boosts and things like that. Horse and greyhound racing is a particular strong point of theirs.
They provide an interface that works hard without being difficult to use, although it might have a bit of a learning curve if you are new to betting websites.
It’s well worth it though.
About Coral
Like most of the biggest betting companies in the world, Coral started life on the UK high street, with their origins stretching right back to the 1920s when founder Joe Coral took his first bet. The business really took off in the 1960’s when off-track gambling was legalised and Coral were one of the first operators to open betting shops on the high street.
In 2016 Ladbrokes and Gala-Coral merged to create what is now one of the largest global gambling and leisure conglomerates in the world. With revenues in excess of £2.5 billion and employing over 30,000 people Coral are part of a truly mega brand.
Despite the merger the brands have been kept separate but will both benefit from the wider resources afforded by the larger group. It is possible to have accounts with Coral and Ladbrokes and claim any welcome offers from both.
Coral now support a far reaching sportsbook, a very busy casino with multiple providers, a live casino, a dedicated poker product, bingo… the list goes on.
They have a reputation as a fair and responsible operator that can be trusted, with a strong support team in place to handle any issues that do crop up.
What Can You Do There?
What can’t you do there?
We will talk about the sportsbook later, but suffice it to say that even as a standalone product it is outstanding.
The casino comes in many parts, officially powered by Playtech but with many other top game providers available over in the Slots section. This includes a lot of jackpot games for players looking for a windfall.
It goes a lot deeper than that though:
- Live Casino – Play classic and new casino games with a live dealer or host streamed to your screen.
- Bingo – Multiple rooms including branded and themed rooms with different ticket prices and game variations.
- Poker – A downloadable client dedicated to poker in all it’s forms.
- Virtual Sports – 7 different sports with events every 3 minutes and squashed down into 1 minute sessions so you can’t easily get bored.
- Lottobet – Bet on the outcome of lotteries from around the world without the need for an actual ticket.
- Cash Out – And partial cash out. End your bet early to lock in a profit or minimise a loss.
- Live Stream – Loads of sporting events streamed to your phone or computer for you to enjoy. This is a real strength of Coral’s.
- News and Blog – Use the site as a way to get your daily sporting digest, read opinion pieces, and get some betting tips.
- Statistics – Lots of useful info available for bettors who like to do some analysis before they place their bets.
This all means that Coral can be anything to anyone. Gamers could use the casino and never touch the sportsbook and sports bettors could happily place bets never knowing the slots were even there.
On the other hand, people that like to do both can hop from one to the other.
It’s all there for the taking at Coral, it’s really just up to the customer as to which sections and features they want to take advantage of and which ones they want to leave alone.
Any Good For Newbies?
If you have never placed a bet or spun a slot machine in your life then Coral might be a bit over stimulating as a first port of call.
If I were you I would go somewhere that is a bit more specialist until you find your feet and then diversify. So if you want to start playing blackjack go to a smaller more boutique online casino so you aren’t overloaded; if you have just got into tennis and want to start betting on it maybe try a smaller sportsbook that doesn’t do anything else until you know the basics.
The Coral site isn’t difficult to use by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just there is a lot on it, and with the best will in the world the number of options from one page to another is difficult to minimise without hiding things.
Banking Freedom
It’s not really fair on those bookies that came afterwards, but Coral have a massive advantage over nearly every other online bookmaker, and that is their physical shops. Being 100 years old gives them a century’s worth of history and experience and they have used it to the max by creating the Coral Connect card.
This card links their online operation to the high street one by letting customers use digital and physical funds interchangeably.
The easiest way to explain it is to give you an example:
You stay up late to watch the boxing and stick a tenner on it as well using the Coral app. You had a bit of money in your online account so you use that.
Your bet wins and you’re up £40 quid. Nice one, you’ve got to pay the window cleaner tomorrow (you’re middle class, you’ve got a window cleaner, get over it). You can go down the road to the Coral shop when it opens and withdraw your £40 from your online account using your Connect card.
That means withdrawal waiting times are a thing of the past.
Payment Methods
Coral have doubled down on the above by not just accepting a massive range of payment methods, but by making their limits unbelievably brilliant too.
Have a look:
| Method | Min Deposit | Min Withdrawal | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debit Card | £5 | £5 | 2-5 Working Days |
| Paypal | £10 | £10 | Up to 24 Hours |
| Skrill | £5 | £5 | Up to 24 Hours |
| Neteller | £5 | £5 | Up to 24 Hours |
| EcoPayz | £5 | £5 | Up to 24 Hours |
| Bank Transfer | £5 | £5 | 2-5 Working Days |
| Paysafecard | £5 | Not Available | – |
Promotion Motherload
The odds at Coral are usually decent enough, especially for horse racing and greyhound racing, so even though they aren’t the best in the industry it’s not usually worth the difference to hunt around.
They are a great bookie for offering promotions and odds boosts though, and they change regularly but touch on most of the popular sports at some point. Again, horse racing is the favourite and has promo’s attached year round.
There’s no guarantee as to what’s going to be there at any one time, but in the past they have been known to offer:
- Weekly free bets if you hit wagering targets
- Free bets for every length your horse wins by
- Extra places on some races
- Extra places on golf
- Free bets worth a percentage of winning multiples
- Cashback on Lotto
- In shop specials
- Best odds guaranteed on all UK and Irish racing
- Holiday prize draws for playing certain casino games
- Reward point boosts
There’s loads.
Sports Betting
Even if you only ever used Coral as a sportsbook and ignored the casino, bingo, poker, etc., it would still be able to go like for like with almost any other sportsbook on the internet.
There are more than 50 different sports categories, and although market depth varies a lot from one to another you can find plenty to bet on with all of the main ones.
This is typical of fixtures in top leagues and international competition across a selection of sports:
| Sport | Markets |
|---|---|
| Football | 150+ |
| Tennis | 75+ |
| Baseball | 50+ |
| Cricket | 50+ |
| eSports | 2-5 |
| Badminton | 30+ |
| Ice Hockey | 40+ |
| Beach Volleyball | 30+ |
They are stronger in-play than pre-event for most markets outside of football and the like, but have a good range of outright betting lines, coupons, and specials to have a look at.
Racing
Horse racing and greyhound racing run in the veins of the Coral brand since this is where the business began all those years ago, so if you regularly bet on these markets you will find full coverage of all UK and Ireland races with best odds guaranteed available on them all.
Coral also dabble in the international market. Actually that doesn’t do them justice, because they offer bets on meetings from as far and wide as America, India, South Africa, France, Chile, and Brazil. So everywhere, basically.
They stick to the UK and Ireland for the dogs but they cover the lot, with fun betting options like trap challenges, winning distances, and even virtual races.
App Performance
App’s are available at Coral in force.
There’s one for the sportsbook, the casino and games, the live casino, and the Connect card.
This is good for us because we only need to download the information for the stuff we actually want to use.
No point clogging up your device and only using half of the app, right?
They all do a good job of providing the same level of detail and range as the normal website, and very little falls to the wayside due to the re-optimisation.
You might find a few casino games that didn’t make it across but there will still be hundreds upon hundreds to play, and the live streams will still work for sports and live casino.
The only thing with the apps is they take a touch longer to load than is ideal, but once they are up and running they will do you proud.
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