Betway Review: Will Betway’s Sports & Casino Become Your Way To Play?
The JustGamers review of everything Betway offers, Betway sports and Esports, Betway casino – way or no way?
Betway aren’t one of the biggest bookmakers but, since they were founded in 2006, they’ve grown into a big player in online betting, with Betway sports, Betway casino, and Betway Vegas sites available to play online and on mobiles, with separate Betway sports, Betway casino, and Betway Vegas apps. They cover everything you’d expect a big gaming site to cover, with a wide range of sports, table games, slots, and live casino games on offer. They’ve also wholeheartedly embraced the excitement of Esports betting, and were one of the first to do so and their offering is the best we’ve seen.
But, being a big name and covering sports, Esports, and casino gaming isn’t enough to make Betway sports a great bookmaker or Betway casino & Vegas great slots and table sites. No, to become a great player in the online gaming world, you need to pass the JustGamers test. And here, in our JustGamers Betway review, we’ll run through every single important aspect of this bookmaker and gaming site. And that should give you an idea whether it’s worth setting up that Betway login getting your bet on with Betway!
1. Betway offers double welcome bonus action
With Betway sports, casino & Vegas offering you deals!
There are three separate Betway sites; Betway sports, Betway casino, and Betway Vegas and they’ve got two welcome offers for new players who haven’t used a Betway login before.
New customer bonus option 1 is for Betway sports and is a great matched welcome free bet of up to £30. Bonus option 2 is for casino and Vegas with a multiple matched deposit bonus with the first deposit generating up to £250 in bonus cash. Both come with t&cs and wagering requirements. The Betway sports offer is simple and reasonable, but we feel the casino bonus will just cost you too much.
The Betway sports bonus needs you to deposit £10+ and make bets with that first deposit at odds of 3/4 (1.75) or more. Once you’ve done this, a free bet to the value of your first deposit, up to £30, is available to you. To get the casino and Vegas welcome bonus, you’ll need to opt in when you register and set up your Betway login. You get 100% matched deposit bonus on your first deposit of £20+ but this has a 50x wagering requirement attached, meaning that £20 first deposit would give you £20 in bonus cash but to withdraw any winnings from that bonus, you’d need to make 50 x £20 in bets, that’s £1,000 in bets! Ouch.
2. Betway, the King in Esports coverage?
Does it keep the crown?
Betway describe themselves as the home of Esports betting and over the years, we think they’ve earned that. They were one of the big sites to truly embrace the spectacular action you can find in Esports. And in addition to the great coverage of the various Esports, including Betway LOL, CS:GO, and Dota2, they have a Betway Esports blog and sponsorship deals with the ESL League and the Ninjas in Pyjamas Esports team. We think that all that shows you how much they believe in their Esports.
But, with more and more betting sites getting into Esports, does Betway still deliver the best? Well, we think they do. They offer a fabulous range of all the best in Esports, including the big three games – and Betway LOL coverage, CS:GO and Dota2 coverage is just exhaustive, but they also cover some of the smaller games that others don’t bother with, including Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Stracraft2, King of Glory, and Overwatch. You can find live betting and coverage of all the major tournaments, with a huge number of markets available. For example, Betway LOL betting covers the top leagues and tournaments, such as the LPL Playoffs and EU Masters. Yes, when it comes to Esports… Betway still has the crown!
3. Betway – not just one casino site
But how good is betway casino and betway Vegas?
With Betway, you get two gaming sites… Betway casino and Betway Vegas. And frankly, it’s just a little confusing. According to Betway, the Vegas site is meant to be more geared towards slots play, but it also offers table gaming, keno, bingo, and live games, just like the Betway casino site and app. Yes, there’s more focus on video slots, jackpot and classic slots on Vegas, but it still doesn’t feel different enough to warrant another site. Sure, offer two different sites, but we think they should try to do more to actually make them different.
As for the content they offer, both Betway casino and Betway Vegas have pretty much everything you could really want for all your casino online gaming. It gives you a huge range of slots, video poker, classic slots, all the table games you could want, including roulette, poker, and blackjack. Plus, you get the option of the Betway live casino, with all the games you expect, with great live dealers and chat for a more immersive experience.
All in all, the casino options at Betway are very good, but we do think they don’t need two separate sites, the Betway casino and Betway Vegas to deliver them.
4. No dedicated poker at Betway
They’re missing out here!
Unlike a lot of other online casino operators, Betway don’t provide a dedicated poker area. And we think they’re missing out here. For example, 888 gaming has its own dedicated 888poker site, with downloadable program for poker tournament play and an 888poker app.
Yes, you can still play a lot of poker at Betway through the Betway casino and Betway Vegas sites and mobile apps, but these are either poker table games, video poker slots, or poker table games, including hold ‘em, 3-card, and Caribbean Stud. For the majority of players, these will more than suffice, but for dedicated poker players, who want a choice of big game choice and big tournament options, Betway doesn’t deliver.
5. Live in-play betting and streaming is big at Betway
Great choice, great depth!
Live in-play betting is a huge part of betting today. It’s one of the biggest growth areas in sports betting, with players loving the excitement of being able to bet according to how the games they’re interested in are going, rather than the old-fashioned way of simply betting on outrights. And Betway have long been heavily involved in getting their live betting offering just right. The cover a huge number of sports and if you can bet on them, Betway will give you a live betting option. They also deliver in terms of the number of in-play markets they offer, across a big number of sports, including Esports, something other gaming sites just don’t seem to match.
When you look into live in-play betting at Betway, you’ll see most sports in-play are offered and there are plenty of markets available, all accompanied by some excellent graphics and live data to let you follow the action. But, more than this, they also offer some excellent live-streaming options, top quality video streams to watch along with your betting. As long as your account is in credit, there’s plenty at Betway to watch and bet on live.
6. Licenses and security at Betway
It is locked down as tight as you could want!
Any bookmaker and casino operation worthy of a good rating has to get their security right, and this Betway review found that there’s no problems at all on that front. It’s a Malta based company and holds licences from the Malta Gaming Authority for operations outside the UK and the prestigious UK Gambling Commission licence to operate within the UK. All the pages on the website and apps use industry-secure standard 128 bit SSL encryption, so you know your personal data and financial transactions are safe and secure.
7. Betway’s customer support –margin for improvement
We wanted 24/7 support in multiple ways – we couldn’t find it!
When we played Betway a while ago, their customer service was excellent. But not anymore, not that we could see. Basically, when we look for great customer service and support we want to see 24/7 access to support; we want email, free telephone lines, and live chat, in addition to an excellent FAQs section. But, when we investigated the Betway site for this Betway review, we found that they came up short. When we do these reviews, we look at the sites from the point of view of a player, and we expect to be able to find help and support and contact us details easily and quickly. Sadly, with Betway, we just couldn’t, not with the main site or the mobile apps. All of the links to help and support take us to a FAQ style page. And while this is good and informative, it’s always an additional resource. When we looked there was no Betway live chat England available, no phone line shown, no email us option that we could see. Even the contact link on our account redirected to the same generic FAQ, ‘what can we help you with?’ page. This isn’t good enough, not at all.
8. Limited payment options at Betway
But most of what you need
Across all of the Betway sites and apps we found that they, surprisingly, don’t do that well in terms of payment options. They only offer a very limited range of payment options, with Visa and MasterCard credit and debit, Neteller and PayPal e-wallets, and rapid transfer. That’s it. Now, when we used them, all was well, with nicely instant depositing and standard withdrawal times easily beaten. We had easy access to our banking options for deposit and withdrawal through our Betway login, but it would have been good to have more options available to players with Betway. What they do, they do very well, but they just don’t really do enough for the ways people bank and pay today.
9. Mobile gaming with Betway is an easy and fully featured delight
Enjoy your mobile gaming!
You’ll find three different Betway apps available through both the Google Play and Apple stores for all your mobile devices; Betway sports, Betway casino and Betway Vegas. However, they’re not really different apps, just different versions with different focus. Each app actually has full access to all the areas of Betway so, in truth, you only need download one to get them all.
However, whatever app you choose, the Betway apps are excellent, with everything we wanted for our mobile betting and casino games exactly where we wanted them. The apps look attractive and play extremely well. It’s one more area where Betway really does do great things.10. Does Betway go the extra mile with any extra features? Oh yes!
You can find also the Esports blog
Betway offer you a great betting and gaming experience, but they don’t just leave it there. Betting firms don’t need to offer extras, but we do love it when they do and Betway definitely go that extra mile for you! You have a lot of sponsorship deals at Betway, whether that’s their high profile sponsorship of West Ham United, or their continuing involvement with the Esports world with their big sponsorship deal with the ESL and their ongoing sponsorship of Esports team Ninjas in Pyjamas (and if you’re not sure if there’s money in Esports, the deal, which started in 2016, was rumoured to be ‘high 6-figures!). And then you have the Betway Esports blog, another little extra that shows Betway are prepared to go above and beyond for their players!
Bet on ESL One tournaments with BetwayBetway – sports, Esports, casino and Vegas – it’s all done really well, but there’s things they could do so much better!
Conclusion
In our Betway review, we’ve gone through all the aspects of this well-known bookmaker and gaming site and broken down where it does things well and where it could do so much better.
They’re definitely a fully featured site. There’s just so much sport, so much Esport, so many different slots, casino games, live casino options, and much more that we really don’t think you’ll be wanting for anything. Their commitment to the exciting world of sports deserves a special mention, and they’re currently the best Esports provider around. So, on all those things they’re a fabulous site, but there are definitely things they need to improve. We’d like more payment methods, we’d love to see a dedicated poker site, and they really, really need to sort out their customer service because, when we looked, it was terrible.
So, we can’t totally recommend Betway based on all that, but we can say that they’re a bookmaker and gaming site that offers a huge amount of betting variety for all your gaming requirements.