Coral review

Coral has over 1,800 betting shops in the UK, including betting shops at both Gatwick and Stansted Airports, and at the UK’s largest racecourses. It employs more than 11,000 people in the UK alone and its turnover exceeds £1 billion per year.

Coral’s current CEO, Andy Hornby, is an Oxford and Harvard trained businessman. His reputation was tarnished when he received much of the blame for leading HBOS – one of Britain’s largest banks – to the brink of collapse, before it was bought out by Lloyds in 2008.

Nonetheless, Hornby went on to serve as the CEO of Alliance Boots (owners of Boots pharmacies) before taking over the reins for Coral. Hornby reports to the less controversial Carl Leaver, Chief Executive of the Coral Group and a former director at Marks and Spencer.

Coral attracted some negative publicity in 2013 when it refused to pay out two bets in full, both times on the grounds of errors made by staff at Coral betting shops. This doesn’t mean it’s likely that your winning bets won’t be paid out, however – Coral is a fully regulated, large and well-established bookmaker with a reputation to uphold.

Coral’s odds aren’t generally the best available, but they’re consistently reasonable. Note that Coral is particularly competitive for some lower-level football leagues. For example, its odds for the Scottish Second Division rank among the top three for overall best value.

Coral is currently offering new customers a £20 free bet in return for the first £5 they bet in any sports market.

Like several of the other big UK bookmakers, Coral offers best odds guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing. If you bet on horse racing, it’s also worth noting that Coral offers your money back as a free bet if a horse you’ve selected falls in any UK jump race.

Coral is known for its huge range of football markets, from the Premier League to the Peruvian Primera division, and many of its promotions and extras are focused on “the beautiful game”. It also offers some unique football betting markets. For example, Coral’s “Rapid Fire Markets” enable you to bet in play on the next set piece in a game.

Coral also runs promotions on significant sporting events in racing, rugby, golf, tennis and other popular sports.

Among Coral’s special offers are enhanced football accumulators, promotions on big UK matches, money back specials and “price-bombs”, which involve releasing dramatically better odds for an outcome shortly before an event starts.

Coral doesn’t offer as many promotions as bookmakers like the “Bonus King” Betfred or Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, but when specials are available, they provide good value.

Coral’s website is well organized and clearly laid out, and has most of the features of our favourite online sports betting sites. However, it’s slightly rough around the edges, with reports of browser incompatibilities and problems logging in.

The help pages on the site could also be better. The “Accounts” section of Coral’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) was broken when we tried to visit it, and a lot of the FAQ questions simply link to legal terms and conditions – instead of providing simple answers to direct questions.

The site includes an impressive selection of sports markets. The emphasis on the home page is on football, racing (including dogs) and tennis, but you can customise the navigation to suit your preferences if other sports are your passions. Virtual sports and novelty betting markets, which Coral refers to as “non-sports” markets, are also available.

The bet slip is intuitive and can be moved around the interface. The in-play console has recently been revamped and has some nifty features. These include a detailed scoreboard from which you can easily place bets, as well as a “multi-view” option for following up to eight sports events at once.

The account section is comprehensive and covers the usual bases, giving you access to your betting and account history.

Football jackpot and Lucky 7

Coral runs the Football Jackpot, which has paid out over £2 million in prizes, as well as a Lucky 7 football prediction game that puts your football knowledge to the test. These competitions provide added fun (as well as a chance of winning hard cash) for football lovers.

Live streaming

Coral offers free live streaming of UK, Irish and Dubai racing, and of over 5,000 football, tennis, snooker, rugby and basketball events per year. Its live streaming service still can’t compete with those of rivals like bet365, which offers live streaming of over 50,000 events annually. However, it’s nice to be able to access live streaming of major event

Coral’s mobile app is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android. The app is decent but not as fast or slick as those of its biggest competitors, and it appears to be prone to glitches. The layout is also somewhat cumbersome.

However, it does include most of the features you’d want, including in-play markets, live streaming of racing and access to your account history. Live streaming of other sports events isn’t yet available for mobile users.

Coral has only recently added live chat, which is our preferred method of dealing with bookmakers. You need to be logged in or on the account registration page to access this facility.

Coral also offers polite and helpful service via its telephone support line, but we’ve found the response times disappointing. Similarly, Coral isn’t quite as fast to respond to e-mails as some of its rivals.

Coral accepts all the usual deposit and withdrawal methods, including debit and credit cards, a large variety of e-wallets like NETELLER and Skrill, and voucher payments such as UKash. The minimum deposit amount is £5.

Withdrawals are meant to be instant with e-wallets and take two to five days with credit cards. However, we have heard some reports of withdrawals taking much longer.