Bwin – Overview & Rating

Bwin gained worldwide prominence due to a long-running shirt-sponsorship deal with Real Madrid – but does the Austrian betting site match the market-leading status of the Spanish soccer giant? Let’s find out!

Bwin claims to offer the world’s largest sports betting platform, embracing more than 90 different sports. Bwin was founded in Austria, so its focus is a little different from bookies with British roots. In particular, horse racing is a relatively minor part of the offer, while tennis, basketball and volleyball feature more prominently. European football, not surprisingly, is the heartbeat of the Bwin site and, for many bettors, will likely be the first port of call.

Originally known as ‘Betandwin’, Bwin has offered online gambling since 1998, a year after it was formed in Austria. In 2001, via a merger, it effectively moved the bulk of its operations to Gibraltar and Bwin’s global licensing and regulation comes from the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner and the Government of Gibraltar. In line with British legislation, it is also licensed by the UK Gambling Commission to offer remote betting services for users in the UK.

Bwin is also the flagship of GVC Holdings. Based on the Isle of Man, it is listed on the London Stock Exchange. In 2019, GVC posted a £140 million loss, related to the acquisition of the Ladbrokes Coral business.

The Bwin Affiliate program is a part of GVC affiliate program. GVC is a parent company of such bookmaker companies as Ladbrokes, Sportingbet, Betboo etc. You can join the affiliate program on www.gvcaffiliates.com.

Layout

The site is – www.bwin.com. The Bwin site will then steer you to the appropriate page for your location. As befits a global operation, Bwin runs the site in 17 languages.

There aren’t many surprises on the Bwin homepage. A menu bar at the top of the page offer quick navigation to pre-game and in-play sports betting, plus the usual casino, slots and poker options. There’s also a link to the site’s current promotions. Immediately below, a second menu bar connects to the most popular sports on offer. Much of this is duplicated in a left-hand sidebar.

One thing that is not immediately visible is a means of switching between fractional and decimal odds. The UK version of the Bwin site defaults to fractional and moving to my preferred decimal listing was a frustrating process and only possible after registering and creating an account. The change can be made after some further clicking about via the ‘my account’ section.

The centre of the screen is where you’ll find the markets currently being promoted in Bwin, with promises of enhanced odds on selected bets. Below that you can scroll through the top coupons of the day to find the bets you want to get involved with, starting with Bwin in-play markets and continuing to cover the big events coming up.

The right-hand sidebar in Bwin has a small screen for live streams – football, tennis, table tennis, volleyball and handball on offer while researching this review – and a big, easy-to-use bet slip. Below that are links to mini-games and a multi-bet generator that is quick to suggest lavishly-priced (and frankly implausible) five-folds designed to part mug punters from their funds.

The Bwin apps are available from iOS and Android. However, information about this is not easy to find while using the desktop site. It was quicker to find the links via Google than on the site. Some users may be unhappy about making a small adjustment to the Android security settings to allow the Bwin app to be installed, but the product itself is well-regarded.

Services

The Bwin sports line includes about 30 sports, including common ones, virtual sports, Bandy, NASCAR, Politics and the “Special” market where you can bet on “Who will replace Pope Francis?”.

The Bwin sportsbook is very much the heart of the site and, as mentioned above, there are usually special offers on Premier League or European action. These normally take the form of enhanced multi-bets: on Oct. 31, offers included a boosted price about both Sterling and de Bruyne scoring for Man. City at Sheffield United and an enhanced acca on Hallowe’en wins for City, Liverpool and Chelsea in Saturday’s games. Build-a-bet options – single game multi bets at enhanced odds – are available on American Football and Basketball games as well as football matches in the top European leagues.

Some prices are up with the leaders: for the 12:20 at Newmarket, Bwin matched the top price on the two joint-favourites, although there was less value further down the card. In football, the site matched the best price on Bayern Munich to win at Cologne, although its first goalscorer odds were not attractive for the big-name strikers on display at the Rhein-Energie Stadium. Away from its core markets, Bwin was among the least generous in the big rugby match of the day, France vs Ireland. Whether Bwin punters favoured a straight money line or a handicap bet, there were notably better prices elsewhere.

The average size of the margin in prematch in Bwin is 7-9%.

Live

The Bwin in-play betting is big, with most games having several markets running live. Streaming quality, where available, is good and there are in-play stats available for games that can’t be watched via the site. Here, though, a lack number for possession and shots on goal is frustrating when trying to pick an in-play winner.

As well as sports betting, there are ‘novelty’ markets on politics and entertainment. Casino lovers have an extensive choice of Bwin slots, jackpot games and table games across four separate offers: games, casino, Bwin jackpots and live casino. Bwin Poker tables complete the selection, but there’s no bingo here.

The average size of the margin in live is 10%.

Bonuses

For sports bettors, Bwin’s offer is firmly mid-table. The welcome bonus promises a free bet of up to £20 if your first bet loses. However, to qualify, you need to place a 3x acca with odds of at least 1.5 on each leg. It’s a nice way to get a free hit at a potentially large win – my conservative treble promised a pay-out of £95 from a £20 stake – but that kind of treble is unlikely to come off. The free bet can only be used on football, only used in a single bet (so no chance to place 4 free bets at £5 each) and will need to be backed with an insurance bet elsewhere to make it pay.

Once registered in Bwin, there are regularly enhanced accas on the football – usually based around a price boost about three teams winning on any given day. There’s also a best-odds guarantee on the horses, with punters benefitting from any increase in the odds when the runners come under starting orders.

The Bwin loyalty program, called “Rewards program”, only works for Bwin poker. For this program to work you need to select it at “Promotions” section in your account. You should produce $1 rake to get 1 point. You can earn up to $300 in exchange for the earned points.

Customer Support

Bwin has a help page, accessible from the menus at the foot of the site’s main page. It can take some scrolling to find it. From here, there is a basic FAQ selection, and selecting any of these provides some information plus a link to a more extensive help page. Bwin users are also asked if they need further help – clicking ‘yes’ brings up a new page offering access to a 24-hour live chat, phone (currently suspended due to COVID), email and Twitter contacts. The live chat opens quickly and is likely the best route to getting the information you need. However, none of this feels very user-friendly – customers have to do some exploring to get access to these services.

Registration

Registration in Bwin is a standard process. In order to create a Bwin account you should:

1. Click on the “Register” button;
2. Fill in the application form (name, email, password, address, postcode, date of birth etc).

In most cases, this is enough to open an account since an electronic checking process can confirm a user’s identity. However, some users may need to supply additional documents, such as scans of passports, driving licenses, or bank statements to verify the account. All users are asked to upload a scan of a piece of photo ID when making their first withdrawal from Bwin.

Financial Info

Payments in Bwin can be made using VISA, Mastercard or Maestro, as well as Paypal, paysafecard, Trustly bank transfer and MuchBetter. Note that not all of these payments are acceptable when seeking to activate the promo offer. Bwin also offers 17 currencies – the Argentine Peso, Bulgarian Lev, Swiss Franc, Chilean Peso, Danish Krone, Euro, Sterling, Croatian Kuna, Hungarian Forint, Mexican Peso, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, Romanian Leu, Russian Rouble, Swedish Kronor, Turkish Lira and US Dollar.

Minimum deposits and withdrawals in Bwin are £10 or equivalent.

Once into the bets, your minimum stake in Bwin can be as little as 1p, but there are various caps on maximum wins. Any Bwin individual player is restricted to a net win of £200,000 a week, and there’s a baseline cap of £7,000 per bet. This can vary, though, with individual sports offering higher caps. For the casual punter, it’s unlikely that these limits will cause problems.

Reliability

Bwin sets great store by its commitment to curb problem gambling. Bwin parent company GVC claims to be in the vanguard of moves to restrict TV adverts for betting sites during sports broadcasts and the Bwin site offers prominent information about help and support to ensure that people are fully aware of how much money they are using.

All of the licenses and regulatory requirements are robust – both Gibraltar and GB are well respected in this field. In addition, the Bwin site has solid security in place to protect financial transactions from hackers and other online concerns. Encryption technology is provided by VeriSign.

All funds deposited on the site are kept in an account separate from Bwin’s own money. This means that if the bookmaker goes bankrupt, there is some protection for Bwin clients.

What’s missing?

Bwin is a very solid and reliable bookmaker. The big plus point is the huge range of potential markets for bettors – if you can’t find a bet on your chosen game here, chances are you won’t find it anywhere. However, the lack of a Bwin loyalty program for sportsbook is a disappointment and in-play bettors would doubtless welcome a wider range of stats as their games progress.