Founded in the Philippines in 2008, Fun88 established itself across Asia before branching out into the European market.
Fun88 offers a sportsbook as well as Casino and Live Casino betting opportunities and are licensed by The Gambling Commission of Great Britain.
Their UK website is operated in partnership with TGP Europe Limited and headquartered in the Isle of Man.
Fun88 has had many ties with English Premier League clubs in the past decade. They were originally the shirt sponsor for Burnley Football Club from 2012 to 2015. From 2012 onwards they have been in partnership with Tottenham Hotspur as their “Official Asian Betting Partner” and from 2017 up to the present day, they have been the shirt sponsor of Newcastle United in arguably their most prominent sponsorship to date.
On social media Fun88 occasionally like to poke fun at Newcastle’s local rivals Sunderland and while this may not endear them to fans just 10 miles down the road, their social media strategy makes them stand out in much the same vein as the likes of Paddy Power, and this can only be good for growing the brand.
In their first few years of existence, they won nominations for Asian Operator of the Year in both 2009 and 2010.
While there is no Fun88 affiliate scheme advertised on the UK site, there is a scheme for anyone registered on the Indian version of the site. You can earn up to 40% commission, more information can be found at www.fun88.com.
There is no list of restricted territories within Fun88’s terms and conditions, but they do state they have systems in place to stop accounts from being accessed and operated within the restricted territories. However, Fun88 say the onus is on the customer to ensure they are gambling legally.
Design
The Fun88 design is fresh with the bright blue bar going across the top of the screen with a mainly white centre. The banner in the middle as soon as you log in shows that they are the shirt sponsor of Newcastle United and has a picture of Newcastle players, Miguel Almiron, Callum Wilson, and Jamaal Lascelles.
The Fun88 website is easy to navigate. They have featured links to popular bets such as top five European Football Leagues and underneath there all the sports they offer betting on in alphabetical order, apart from Football which is at the top of the list.
The search bar at the top of this column is very useful as if you have something in mind to bet on, you can just type it in, and the betting event should come up.
The website itself is easy to find and although they do not currently have a mobile app, you can log into Fun88 through your mobile browser.
Services
Fun88 offer betting on all the major sports including Football, American Football, Basketball, Boxing, Darts, MMA, Rugby League, Rugby Union, and Tennis. Though the list of sports offered by Fun88 is not the biggest, they make up for this in some respects with the depth of opportunities offered.
In MMA they cover not just UFC but also Bellator and some lesser-known organisations such as Legacy and Polish fight promotion, KSW.
In Football you can place bets in all the major leagues as well as a few other obscure leagues such as the Gambian GFA League or the Kuwaiti Premier League.
In the recent North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham, Fun88 were competitive with some more established bookmakers offering better prices about Arsenal or Tottenham winning than Skybet and giving the exact same odds on those outcomes as William Hill. Both Skybet and William Hill offered slightly better odds on the draw.
Fun88 also offers to bet on Virtual and eSports.
In the Casino section, Fun88 has 43 slot games available and in the Live Casino, you have the usual table games, such as Poker, Blackjack, Roulette. Fun88 also has Monopoly live which would interest almost anyone at least for nostalgic purposes, as well as a game called Football Studio.
Fun88’s casino offering may not be loaded with hundreds of games but the ones they do offer at least appear to be interesting.
If betting on the Sportsbook doing so on your mobile will be your best option currently as there are a couple of glitches when logging into Fun88 from a laptop.
When you try to place a bet after filling out the betting slip it says you need to log in and gives you a pop-up box. When you fill this in with your details it then says, “user already logged in” and then when you exit the pop-up you are back to where you started, making it impossible to place a bet.
There is nowhere on the screen where you can log out either.
Clicking the deposit button on the sportsbook does not work, you can, however, deposit through the Fun88 casino instead which works absolutely fine.
The average margin for sports betting is between 7-8%.
Live
On Fun88 you can bet in-play on most of the football leagues they offer betting on. On a Friday afternoon, there is live betting available from the Latvian Virsliga and Ukrainian First League to give an example of how deep their live offering stretches.
They also offer live betting on Ice Hockey, Basketball, Snooker, Pool, Tennis and Golf, among others.
Fun88 do not offer online live streaming on any sports currently.
The live betting average margin is about 10-14%.
Bonuses
Disappointingly, Fun88 does not provide welcome offers or free bets available to new customers at the moment.
In their features section, the only thing that comes remotely close to a bonus is the ACCA boost where you can get up to 50% extra on your winnings. This is dependent on the number of selections. The selections must be at odds of 1/2 or higher and there must be at least three selections.
Within the features page, there are other bets highlighted such as the Power Bet. This is available in-play and you can bet on a goal to be scored in a football match in the next 30 seconds, one, five or 10 minutes. The earlier the goal the more you can win.
Fun88 also advertise the cash-out and build your own bet features which most other companies have, and also the Add2Bet feature where you can add selections to an open bet – the stake of the new bet is equal to the cash-out value of the original bet.
Customer Care
The options available for Fun88’s customer service are live chat, email or you can go old school and write them a letter. There is no call centre service available.
The live chat icon is in the bottom right corner, however, when attempting to open a chat, it said they cannot chat right now and gave a box to put your email address in and type up your message. From sending the message to getting a response, it took two and a half hours.
This happened on the few occasions this was attempted at various times, so we are unsure whether this is what always happens or whether we have caught Fun88 during particularly busy times.
Registration
As you would expect with a company that have sponsorship ties to a couple of English Premier League teams, you can register with Fun88 from the United Kingdom.
Some customers are automatically verified and therefore do not need to provide any identification to Fun88 upon account opening, and can even withdraw winnings without providing ID. However, Fun88 does reserve the right to ask for further evidence of identification if they deem it necessary. This can be in the form of a government-issued ID such as a Passport or a utility bill linked to your address.
Creating an account with Fun88 is simple, you click the sign-up button and from there you are asked for personal details, such as Name, Address, Date of Birth, email address, phone number. You must also confirm your country here as well. So, while there is no exhaustive list of restricted countries anywhere on their site, if your country is not listed this should be taken as a presumption that you cannot open an account. The United States is not listed for example.
You then create a username and password, confirm Fun88’s Terms and Conditions and the account is created. At this point, you will either be told via email that your account is successfully verified and can be used, or you may be asked to provide some identification.
An account opened and verified electronically takes less than five minutes to set up. Accounts, where identification is required, will of course take a longer period before you are able to bet.
Financial Information
Fun88 accepts the British Pound, US Dollar, and the Euro. Deposits and withdrawals can be made by Visa or Mastercard debit cards, Skrill or Neteller. The minimum deposit denomination is 10 of whichever currency you use, and the maximum is 2000.
The minimum bet is 5p and the maximum bet can vary depending on the sport or the number of selections. On the betting slip, there is a “max bet” banner which you can click, and it will tell you the maximum they will take on your particular selection.
The maximum win across the Fun88 Sportsbook, Casino and Live Casino is £50,000. Virtual Sports is lower at £10,000 and novelty events such as eSports or Politics betting is £5,000.
Reliability, Integrity and Safety
As Fun88 are regulated by The Gambling Commission of the United Kingdom you can be assured that as they are regulated within one of the biggest gambling markets in the world that this is a safe site. Any disputes or complaints you may have they will investigate and try to resolve, if you are not happy with their resolution you have the right to go to IBAS for their adjudication.
Customer reviews on Fun88 are mixed on Trustpilot with 40% excellent reviews and 60% bad.
The good reviews are based on instant deposits and withdrawals taking a maximum of 24 hours to go into the bank. The Casino is also highly rated on some of these reviews.
The bad reviews are related to various issues, such as poor customer service, account closures without explanation or for withdrawing small amounts of money.
One particular complaint is regarding Fun88 asking to see evidence of where he gets the money from to gamble.
The website appears safe though the couple of glitches mentioned earlier are not great. Fun88 even has a section explaining what SSL certificates are and how this makes your experience with Fun88 safe and secure.
What’s missing?
Whether the technical difficulties mentioned earlier in the review are intermittent or constant, this is something that needs to be fixed as it may put many customers off gambling regularly with Fun88.
Fun88 could do with expanding the number of sports they offer betting. They have no Horse Racing whatsoever which for a website operating in the UK is a massive gap to have in your Sportsbook.
To also raise their potential profits, we would suggest that Fun88 raised their maximum win to a lot higher than £50,000. Some sites now offer maximum payouts of £2 million so £50,000 is very small in comparison and would put off a lot of customers who just put the fun bets on hoping they get lucky and win life-changing money.
Bettors who know about bookmaker margins and how to calculate these quickly would be put off by Fun88’s high margins – especially on in-play betting. We would recommend these are looked at as there are many other bookmakers offering far better value.
At the time of writing, there are no welcome bonuses available to new customers. One of the main methods of attracting new customers is to entice them in with welcome offers. Without this, prospective players will just go to the many other gaming companies offering welcome bonuses.
Comments