Virgin Bet is a popular sports betting site that has a high number of UK users. Founded by the Virgin group of companies, it is now a brand in its own right, even though it maintains the use of the familiar Virgin branding. You can find out all you need to know about this betting site through this Virgin Bet review, including details of how you can obtain a £20 free bet.
Bet £10 Get £20 in Free Bets
Bet £10 Get £20 in Free Bets
The ‘Virgin’ name should need no introduction to people in the UK. The brand was founded in 1970 by Richard Branson and Nik Powell as a mail-order record business that later branched out into retail. Over time the company expanded and expanded into multiple sectors … everything from publishing to air travel.
The history of Virgin Bet UK is slightly complicated. It was created in 2019 in partnership with the Virgin Group, rather than being owned by them. The partners were Gamesys, but this partnership did not last long as three parts of Gamesys (LiveScore, LiveScore Bet and VirginBet) were demerged from the company to form the Anzo Group. This largely separated the bingo and casino side of Gamesys from the sports betting side.
The Virgin Bet brand is now operated by Virgin Bet Limited, even though it is still owned by LiveScoreGroup.
In terms of sponsorship, Virgin Bet seems content to keep their sponsoring endeavours to horse racing, In past years they have sponsored the December Gold Cup at Chelteham, Easter Saturday Raceday at Musselburgh, and both Women’s Day and the Gold Cup at Ayr. We could find no evidence of them sponsoring a football team, or having anything to do with darts or snooker sponsorship.
The first thing we always look for when deeming if a betting site is safe is its track record in dealing with customers. The best of doing that is checking for strikes from the UKGC, and we are happy to report that Virgin Bet UK has a clean bill of health in this regard. Since 2019, the UKGC has had no reason to even tut at Virgin Bet, never mind fining them. We did find one for Gamesys but as it was late in 2023 it seems very unlikely that this has anything to do with VirginBet.
If you pop down to the bottom of most pages at VirginBet you’ll find a link to Gambling Therapy, and the number for the National Gambling Helpline (or live chat if you feel uncomfortable talking to someone). As VirginBet has a UKGC licence, it naturally adheres to GAMSTOP, so if you have universally self-excluded you will not be able to use any aspect of VirginBet’s software. You can find more information about responsible gambling in Virgin Bet’s help files. In case you want to bypass that rule, you have a number of non-gamstop casinos that will let you in.
Your data is safe at VirginBet due to the encryption tools the site uses. These tools render all internet transmissions unintelligible until they arrive safely on Virgin Bet’s servers. The site also does not keep sensitive financial information, so data breaches cannot harm you.
If you are a new member at Virgin Bet there’s a treat in store of the potential of £20 in free bets. Of course, there are a few hoops you have to jump through in order to grab yourself the Virgin Bet welcome offer, but for once they are utterly untaxing.
The first step is of course to register a Virgin Bet account (details on how you can do that later on in this Virgin Bet review). Once that has been completed, make your first deposit at the site. Just so you know, your deposit has to be for a minimum of £10 if you want to get your hands on the free bets.
Once the deposit money is in your account, you need to place your first bet. Note, it is only your first bet that will qualify for the welcome offer. The odds of the event you bet on must be at least 1.50 or 1/2 in old money. Also, if you bet each way as your first bet then it is only the win part of that bet that qualifies – so an each way bet would have to be for £20. You must also place this first bet within 14 days of your signing up with Virgin Bet.
Once your free bet has settled, win or lose you will receive two £10 free bets. You are free to use your free bets on singles or acca, and if you use it on an acca the minimum odds are 1/100 (and good luck finding an acca with odds smaller than that!). You cannot use your free bets to bet each way, on multiples, forecasts or tricast bets, or on any virtual event. You will need to use your free bets within seven days of receiving them, else they will be removed from your account.
As is the norm with free bets, if your bet wins you will only receive your winnings. You will not receive your free bet stake back.
Virgin Bet welcome offer | Offer description | Wagering requirement | Minimum Odds | Offer expiry | Min deposit |
£20 Virgin Bet free bet offer | £20 in free bets for £10 bet | None | 1/2 (1.50) | 14 days | £40 |
So, newcomers are well catered for at Virgin Bet, but what happens once you have become a Virgin Bet member and have used up your free bet? Let’s take a look at other Virgin Bet promotions for punters who’ve placed more than their initial wager.
If you opt-in to this promotion, you can earn yourself a free £5 bet every week to use on an acca. All you have to do to earn this reward is place four £5+ accas during the week (four or more selections, minimum odds 2/1). If you have qualified when Sunday midnight swings around, you will get your free £5 acca bet, valid for seven days.
Another promotion you need to opt-in to, this deal will hand you a £5 free bet as long as you stake a minimum of £10 on one single or Bet Builder bet when betting on football at the site. Note that this amount must be in full, so if you place two £5 bets, you won’t get your freebie. If you have achieved this at any time from midnight Monday to 23:59 on Sunday, then you will get your £5 free bet. Price-boosted or virtual football bets do not count. Free bets need to used within seven days.
Every week one horse race at the Virgin Bet UK site is selected for extra-special status. If you bet on this race and your selected mount does not win, then you will get your money back – up to £10 – as a free bet that must be used within seven days. Note that if your bet is an each-way bet you will only get back the win part of your bet, not the place part.
As well as these frequent deals, look out for free bets on top events such as the majors in tennis and golf, and betting on horse racing like on the Derby, the Grand National and at the Cheltenham festival. The site also offers extra places for each way horse racing bets on a daily basis.
We are now really getting into the meat and bones of our Virgin Bet review. You’ve been educated about how Virgin Bet came about, the welcome bonus and ongoing promotions, now it is time to take a deeper look at this sports betting site software.
Like most betting sites in the UK, there is a broad range of sports to place your wagers on at Virgin Bet. Top of the heap stands football, with horse racing a full length ahead of greyhounds, tennis, golf and cricket. The full A-Z of available sports here is as follows:
Those with eagle eyes will be looking at that list and noticing one blatant omission – and no, for once we are not talking about pesapallo. Can you see what it is yet? … well, congratulations if you spotted that snooker is not on the list. Weirdly, you cannot currently bet on snooker at Virgin Bet. We have absolutely no idea why.
Virgin Bet is a site that has not, as yet, joined the slow exodus of sites that have withdrawn ‘Best Odds Guaranteed’. This means that your horse racing bets are paid out at the better price – the SP or the price at which you placed your bets. At Virgin Bet all horse races in the UK and Ireland are covered, as long as your bet is placed before 10am on the day of the race. Sadly, it does not extend to greyhounds.
We took a look around the Virgin Bet site and found their odds to be competitive enough. Other sites have better odds but they perhaps do not offer the same benefits as Virgin Bet. To compare directly, we took the odds offered by Virgin Bet for the 2024 Euros and compared them to those offered by other leading sites. You can compare the Virgin Bet odds with the best odds which were offered at the time.
Team | Virgin Bet Odds | Best Odds |
England | 3/1 | 100/30 |
France | 10/3 | 4/1 |
Germany | 11/2 | 6/1 |
Spain | 7/1 | 9/1 |
Virgin Bet were close to the best odds on each occasion, but could not quite match them. In general though, the competitiveness of their odds is not something you ought to be concerning yourself with.
You can’t place a bet for less than five pence at Virgin Bet, but in our opinion that’s fine and perfectly reasonable. Maximum stakes depend really on maximum payouts. For once, maximum payouts at Virgin Bet are clear and easy to understand, so much in fact that we have replicated them below:
You will notice that in each case the payout is in a range, with lower-tier events at the low end, and higher-tier events at the high end. You can check the maximum payout of any event you bet on at the site.
In terms of deposits, the minimum is £5 and the maximum £20,000. When it comes to withdrawals, it’s a minimum of £10, and a maximum again of £20,000.
In-play betting stands out at Virgin Bet, and if you check the main menu at the site you can see the number of current live events, numerically specified in red. Click on the menu item to load all the latest live events. We think most medium-to-major events are covered, from football and tennis to badminton and volleyball. Live eSports are available to be wagered upon too.
Each event has its own menu and the latest state of play is clearly displayed. If you click on the event all the current betting options will be revealed. The markets react quickly here, with odds being updated where appropriate every 30 seconds or so.
There is a very good amount of live streaming at Virgin Bet. You can see everything that can currently be live-streamed at the site via the in-play betting menu. The second button along from the ‘Highlights’ button will filter out everything that’s not currently available for live streaming.
Every horse race in the UK and Ireland can be live streamed at Virgin Bet, plus nearly every horse race in the US, France and South Africa too. There’s a lot of tennis streaming too, particularly both the ATP and WTA tours. Other than that, it’s just a toss of a coin as to whether an event you are interested in is live-streamed here, although no EPL, EFL or top-tier European competition football matches are.
To watch a live stream at Virgin Bet you must either have a funded account, an active free bet or to have placed a bet on the event you wish to view.
That’s most of what this sports betting site can offer you, but there are a couple more things we need to mention before we conclude this section of the Virgin Bet review.
Virgin Bet Bet Builder
Virgin Bet does have a Bet Builder, but it is only available on football. If you view any top-tier match, then the site will suggest bet builders for you. Don’t worry if there is nothing that takes your fancy as far as what is on offer is concerned as you are completely free to build your own bets. Just select aspects of the same match to combine them into bet builder-style accas with impressive odds.
You cannot ‘cross the streams’ with the Virgin Bet Bet Builder. For example, you cannot combine ‘BTTS Yes’ for Man City v Chelsea with ‘Darwin Nunez anytime goalscorer’ for Liverpool v Man United.
Virgin Bet FIVES
Every day, Monday to Friday, you will be allowed to reveal your football player card at this site. If you manage to log in five times, once per day, you will receive the maximum five player cards.
Along with each reveal, there will be a cash bonus and a match. If your player scores during the specified match, then the cash bonus amount will be awarded to you. Note that own goals and goals scored during extra time or a penalty shoot out do not count. You can only ever receive your goal bonus once too. If you draw Erling Haaland and he scores five, you only get one goal bonus, not five.
You do have to hunt around a little for the Virgin Bet FAQs, but they are worth the search. Go to Home > More > Help & Information > FAQs. These FAQs should help you with multiple aspects of your account including banking, promotions, betting and technical issues. The site’s safer gambling section is available here too.
If you need precise help, Virgin Bet can be contacted via the following methods:
We were dismayed to find that ‘Virgin Bet live chat’ is an annoying bot. However, when you are presented with the options, click on ‘Ask something else’ then ‘Contact Customer Support’ to get to live chat with a real person. You have though to give your name and an email address (even if you are not yet a member of Virgin Bet) to chat, which added to our annoyance.
Creating an account at Virgin Bet is super simple, as the following walk-through sets out to prove. You can click on the following cunningly-placed button to set things in motion:
The first thing to do is visit the Virgin Bet site or download the Virgin Bet app, which is available on both iOS and Android devices. Information regarding the Virgin Bet welcome bonus is one of the first things that visitors will see.
Sign up at Virgin Bet by clicking or tapping on the ‘Join Now’ option. Doing so will open the bookie’s registration form. Here, new customers must enter their full name, gender, date of birth and email address. With no Virgin Bet bonus code being active, punters can complete the sign-up process by verifying their account via email.
Add funds to your new account. At least £10 must be deposited using a debit card or PayPal, as no other banking options are provided.
Place a bet of £10+ on a sports betting market of your choice at Virgin Bet. Minimum odds of 1/2 (1.50) must be met, with both win and each-way bets (win part only) qualifying. Qualifying bets must be placed within seven days of registering with the bookie.
If you have followed all of the previous steps correctly, then you will be awarded with £20 worth of free bets upon your qualifying bet settling. Customers will be rewarded with two £10 free bet tokens, which are valid for seven days. Only winnings made from free bets will be withdrawable, with the stake being returned.
Virgin Bet is not shy about its app as some betting sites appear to be. You can get the Virgin Bet app from the site itself by scanning the handy QR code. If not that way, you can visit the site on the device that you wish to install it upon and click on the buttons for the app at the Apple App Store or Google Play. Of course, you don’t even have to do that as you can just visit your OS store as appropriate and search for the app there.
The full suite of betting options is available from the app, and the site functions just as well on mobile as it does on desktop. Don’t forget that you can access the site on mobile devices too using a mobile browser so you don’t have to download anything if you don’t want to. You can even both bet in-play and watch the available live streams via the app too.
Full access to the Virgin Bet Five games is also available via the app, as are all of this site’s many promotions.
To gain yourself that Virgin Bet welcome bonus, or to acquire any bonus offered by this site, you do not need a bonus code. Promo codes are like online discount codes – you have to enter the code when you sign up or make a deposit in order to grab your reward. As no codes are offered by Virgin Bet, you don’t need to worry about a Virgin Bet bonus code when claiming a reward.
Sites do offer promo codes and bonus codes from time to time and we are happy to keep you abreast of the latest and greatest ones. You can see the best and brightest codes currently available below.
The Virgin Bet casino has always gone hand-in-hand with the Virgin Bet sports betting site, and indeed they were launched around about the same time. The casino at Virgin Bet is accessible via the left-hand menu, as is the live casino. You may also notice the ‘Daily Free Game’ here – this is another freebie in which you reveal symbols on a 7×7 grid. Winning symbols can grant you cash prizes up to £750 plus free spins for use at the Virgin Bet casino – up to fifty, in fact. All cash prizes and free spins winnings come without wagering.
The slots section at the Virgin Bet casino has over 600 of them, and from many big providers such as Big Time Gaming, Pragmatic Play and Gamesys. You may recognise many of these slots commonly found as side games at bingo sites. The casino side also comes with over two dozen versions of roulette and just under twenty versions of blackjack. Virgin Bet offers other casino games too.
The live casino is practically packed with Virgin Bet-themed games and other casino titles (including game shows) from Evolution. Included in the mix are roulette, blackjack, baccarat, casino poker, craps, andar bahar and teen patti.
Virgin Bet is not exactly bloated with payment options. If you really boil it down there are only two – debit cards and PayPal. You can add bank transfers for withdrawals. The site has the ‘Trustly’ logo but it turns out it does not accept Trustly payments from UK customers.
The minimum deposit is £5 for cards or £10 for PayPal. It does not matter which payment method you choose for withdrawals as the minimum is £10 across the board, At least there are no fees. The Virgin Bet withdrawal time for Visa debit cards is impressive though at 2-3 hours (so we can add Virgin Bet to our list of fast payout bookies), MasterCard withdrawals can take up to three days, and PayPal around a day although they can be speedier. A bank withdrawal is the slowest withdrawal method at up to five days.
Banking Method | Fees | Min Deposit | Min Withdraw | Virgin Bet Withdrawal Time |
Visa debit | None | £5 | £10 | 2 – 3 hours |
MasterCard debit | None | £5 | £10 | 1 – 3 days |
PayPal | None | £10 | £10 | 1 day |
Bank Transfer | None | Unavailable | £10 | 2 to 5 days |
It’s hard to believe it but we are approaching the end of our Virgin Bet review and we hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as we have enjoyed learning about this impressive sports betting brand. If you’ve skipped the odd section then have no fear, as we are here to summarise the review up in a few soundbites … what we liked best about this site, and what we feel needs improvement.
The Virgin name is both synonymous with success (Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic) and associated with failure (Virgin Vodka, Virgin Films, Virgin One) but we’re banking on Virgin Bet to continue to be listed among the latter. This is a top-class online betting establishment, with plenty of betting options, worthy promotions and that free FIVES game. If Virgin Bet becomes your sports betting site of choice, we think you’re not going to be disappointed.
Bet £10 Get £20 in Free Bets
Bet £10 Get £20 in Free Bets
No. There is no Virgin Bet bonus code available to punters in the UK right now, nor is one necessary. However, a generous sign up offer and ongoing promotions are still accessible, with some requiring that customers opt in and place qualifying bets. It remains to be seen as to whether the bookie will introduce promo codes in the future.
In order to claim your £20 worth of free bets at Virgin Bet, start by signing up for a new sportsbook account. Then, place a sports bet of at least £10, at min odds of 1/2 (1.50) or greater. Upon qualifying bets being settled, 2 x £10 free bet tokens will be awarded within just 24 hours.
Yes! There are plenty of ongoing promotions are found at Virgin Bet. Offering free bets, enhanced odds and cash prizes, such offers accommodate the Virgin Bet sign up offer nicely. With all offers, be sure to take into account the terms and conditions involved, which could impact your ability to take advantage of them.
Yes. Live streaming is available to both desktop and mobile customers at Virgin Bet. Major events from the world of football, tennis, horse racing, basketball and cricket are available to watch daily, with a small qualifying bet or funded sports betting account being needed to gain access.
Yes. There are no restrictions in place at Virgin Bet in terms of the payment methods that can be used. Some bookies state that only deposits made using a debit card will be eligible, however this is seemingly not the case at Virgin Bet.