Coral the bookmaker has been going for over 90 years and were first founded back in 1926. They may be more famous for their sportsbook but Coral actually run one of the largest and busiest online casinos in the world.
They have used their wealth of experience and enviable resources and created an all-encompassing betting site package with some immense casino games and features. It is a perfect all-rounder and has something to suit everybody.
The Coral casino mobile products are extremely powerful, and their range of titles is a benefit that smaller casinos just can’t match. Not to mention the fact that they have a major high street presence as well, which brings its own benefits.
- Brilliant all rounder – Especially good if your betting portfolio is diverse
- Excellent mobile offering – Their small screen products can do everything
- 2,000 strong instant play casino – Multiple software providers with numerous games
Software and Games
Since there are so many different gaming sections on the Coral site that it can be difficult to decipher where exactly you need to go to find what you are looking for.
The main casino is the place to start, as all of the other filtering options become available from there. There are around 2,000 games in total, with around three quarters of them being slots and the rest made up of a quality selection of blackjack, roulette, and poker variations. You can expect a lot of branded content in here, Playtech does this sort of thing very well, especially when it comes to jackpots, and they are a dominant provider on this site.
In terms of the other aspects of the site, you can count on a mixture of table games and even some exclusives from Corals in-house developer CR Games. These titles will not be available anywhere else.
That makes a good number of entertainment options for players to chew through, far bigger than anyone could expect to ever get through, and they come from a strong list of developers too. These include but are not limited to; NetEnt, Playtech, Cryptologic, IGT, Amaya Online, Blueprint, Merkur, and Electracade.
Live Casino
The live casino at Coral boasts loads of different tables and it’s all about blackjack, roulette, and baccarat with 35+ tables of the former and a good 15 or 20 each of the latter two. There are a handful of poker games too, but that’s it in terms of traditional casino games. There are some Coral exclusive tables too if this is something that appeals to you.
The good news is that table limits span the full range from a few pounds up to 20k per hand, so there should be something to suit everybody’s needs here.
There are some game show style games too, but this shouldn’t be considered a speciality at Coral. They are mostly wheel spinning type games but only a handful of options are included, so there are better places for this sort of thing.
It’s a Playtech powered casino but it’s a little different to how you might find it elsewhere. The live casino page on the Coral site itself serves as the lobby initially, but once you choose a game you will be in the live casino lobby proper, from where you can browse other games at the same time as playing one. The sooner they find a way to drop players into the live lobby straight away the better, as it can be annoying to have to select a game just to open it and then go to find the game you actually wanted to play.
Still, in terms of what is on offer you couldn’t ask for much more unless you are a poker player, but then Coral have a dedicated poker product for you guys.
Interface and Features
Coral have so many different areas that host games on their site that it is difficult to keep up. Aside from their main casino they also run a live casino, bingo and poker product from the main menu bar. Once you have selected one of these even more options await, and they are all very well chosen.
What they have done well here is given the whole site a through-line, so each individual section retains the look and feel of the last which helps with navigation and usability no end. Complimenting this, the secondary menu bar has filtering options such as Megaways, Jackpots, Tournaments, etc. which are useful, and a search option if you want a specific game with no faffing around.
This doesn’t save the age old browsing issue that most online casinos have – the fact that there are too many games to filter effectively – but it does a decent job given the circumstances.
Players can also add games to their favourites which allows you to create your own bespoke panel displaying only the games you want to see, and a list of recently played games exists too so you won’t enjoy something new and then never be able to find it again.
The interface is fairly quick to load initially but after that, it is very speedy. By not displaying too many games on the screen at the same time the site can really power through. The same goes for game loading times; going from one game to another is a pretty fluid experience – so long as you know where your next game is hiding.
Character and Design
Like many of the bigger casinos, Coral have chosen to stay away from gimmicks or 3D characters to represent the brand.
Instead, a plain blue background with areas of white provides a sterile environment to house the game tiles.
Unimaginative perhaps, but many players like the games themselves to deliver the experience rather than the website, and this approach is also sensible when your site is so large. Extra visuals could just add confusion.
There are a few unnecessary menu bars and game sorting options that clutter the place up a little without adding many benefits, these could do with being pared back or swapped out for something more effective, and the site is constantly showing you what else you could be playing via a scrolling advert banner which can be a bit distracting.
The games do take centre stage but they are given less room to show off than elsewhere.
Once a filtering option is chosen, Jackpots for example, the page layout does a little more filtering for you by showing the games in certain groups, which is fine and works better for some game types than others, but it at least keeps the site feeling consistent.
Consistent is a good single word description for Coral casino actually, it is consistent on many levels.
Mobile Casino
Coral have one main app that covers their entire online suite of online gambling products, so it’s pretty hefty and means you will end up with elements you never use unless you bet on sports as well, for example.
Integrated apps have a tendency to be overcrowded which makes them slower and harder to navigate as a result.
This is not the case with Coral, the app is correctly partitioned so that you can focus on the games you want to play but still move between sections freely.
The menu buttons play a big part in this, but understandably there is a lot more scrolling needed on the smaller screen.
Pretty much every slot, game, and jackpot is still available through the mobile app and in many ways it is a massively preferable experience on mobile. The scrolling menu lets you navigate between sections (new games, live casino, table games, etc) and is much more effective than the desktop site, and the mobile product as a whole will quickly become second nature after a few goes.
You can also handle all of your banking and account management to the point where you never need visit the desktop site again if you prefer not to.
All current offers are available on mobile with a few mobile specific deals that again make the mobile feature more of a draw. The lack of flashing promos and adverts means you can find what you are looking for in no time, going from opening the app to gameplay in less than 20 seconds. In general, performance is fast, but one or two functions felt drawn out, especially using the back button for some reason.
The app and mobile site are both very intelligent too, with certain features (the ‘back to top’ button especially) knowing when they might be needed and when to get out of the way. It’s a very responsive product and it works with the player rather than only working for itself.
Banking and Payment Methods
Method | Min Deposit | Min Withdrawal | Fees | Withdrawal Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
Debit Card | £5 | £5 | 0% | 4 hours - 3 days |
PayPal | £10 | £5 | 0% | Up To 8hrs |
Skrill | £5 | £5 | 0% | Up to 8 hours |
Neteller | £5 | £5 | 0% | Up to 8 hours |
Cash - Coral Connect | £5 | £0.01 | n/a | n/a |
Apple Pay | £5 | n/a | 0% | n/a |
PaySafeCard | £5 | N/A | 0% | |
ecoPayz | £5 | £ | 0% | |
Bank Wire | £5 | £5 | 0% | 2-5 Days |
You can deposit and withdraw using all major methods including debit cards, eWallets, pre-paid cards, and bank transfer etc. The Coral minimum deposit is just £5 for most methods with no set maximum deposit limit.
Maximum withdrawals have no inbuilt limit although if you are making a big withdrawal it’s worth contacting Coral and your payment provider in advance to give them the heads up so they don’t block it. Minimum withdrawal is as low as it can get at only £5.00 and there are no fees. If you abuse this, however, Coral retain the right to charge you a fee for wasting their time.
The longest you should ever have to wait for money to hit your account is 2-5 days, but it doesn’t usually take anywhere near this long, and there are plenty of ways to speed it up to.
Read on.
Coral Connect
Coral online casino has one huge advantage when it comes to banking with the ability to both deposit and withdraw in store. Playing with a casino that is land based as well means you don’t even need to register a bank car if you don’t want to.
Once you have signed up for a Coral Connect card, the money in your pocket and the money in your account are interchangeable, so you could deposit cash in store and use that money to bet on your phone, for example. Equally, if you win a few hundred pounds on a slot you can walk into your local Coral and withdraw that money in cash instantly.
Other benefits include exclusive in-store offers and rewards for being a Connect card holder, and it’s free to sign up too. It’s a bit of a no brainer really, especially if you bet on the sports as well.
About Coral Casino
The business was founded by Joe Coral in 1926, so it is steeped in history. Joe started his bookmaking career with a pitch at various greyhound and speedway tracks across the UK, but it was following the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960 allowing off-course betting that the Coral brand really took off.
Like many early days bookies, Joe was often on the wrong side of the law, and not just when it came to his business. An immigrant from Poland, Joe and his brother were fined £20 for failing to register as ‘aliens’ resident in the UK until 1924, 12 years after coming here. That was a lot of money in those days.
He also had run-ins with Darby Sabini (of Peaky Blinders and Brighton Rock fame) the gangland boss, over his involvement with London racecourses. Coral saw off this threat, which was relieved for good when Sabini moved his interests to Brighton. Coral was only a slight man, but he managed to defend himself and hold his own for a long time during a dangerous period.
He stayed active in the business for most of his life despite the company changing hands frequently, but he eventually developed dementia and finally passed away from lung cancer in 1996.
Coral Get Passed Around
Coral was one of the first operators to set up shop in Britain in 1961, quickly growing to tens and then hundreds of shops boasting nearly 700 licenced premises by the 1980s when the company was acquired by Bass, the brewing company.
Bass provided an injection of cash that allowed the business to grow to thousands of shops by the ’90s. Coral were particularly famed in the early days, and still today, for their willingness to take large bets and high stakes wagers. By the late 1990s, Coral were fully established as one of Britain’s biggest high street bookmakers, in the same league as William Hill and Ladbrokes, with over 1500 shops.
Following a failed buyout by Ladbrokes, Coral was sold to a private equity firm who merged the brand with an online gambling group to create Coral-Eurobet – one of the first online betting sites – all the way back in 1999. Coral were eventually merged with Gala in 2005 in a deal worth £2.18 billion pounds to create the Gala-Coral Group, who amongst their portfolio run over 30 land based casinos.
Coral were finally merged with Ladbrokes in 2015 although the brands remained as separate entities. Despite moving the online brand to Gibraltar, the company still employs over 11,000 people in the UK across nearly 1800 shops. In 2018 GVC Holdings PLC (now Entain PLC) took the reigns of Ladbrokes Coral.
Coral Go Online
With Coral moving online so early in 1999 it gave them a real run on their competitors, to this day the likes of Ladbrokes have been trying to catch up – which may explain why they have bought Coral out. This means the online casino and sportsbook, which are run separately to the shops from the British dependency Gibraltar, has been honed into one of the most user-friendly sites in the market place.
The Coral casino has maintained a top 5 place in the biggest online casinos since their online casino product was launched in 2001. Coral boasts one of the biggest active customer bases in the world and this is a testament to the brand’s ability to move with the times, provide what players want, and reward loyal customers.
Customer Support
Coral score well in this area but there is room for improvement. For example, the phone line is free to call but support is only available from 8 am to 11 pm, and for such a huge company this really should be a 24/7 service.
Live chat is another option and is accessible through the help centre. There is no direct contact option for this but if you work your way through the Help Centre/FAQ you’ll get to it eventually. Emails promise to get a reply within 24 hours, although in reality it is usually quicker, and there is also a dedicated Twitter page or a Facebook messenger option. Coral clearly embrace the modern age, and they seem to push for customers to use these methods of contact where possible.
If you don’t embrace the modern age yourself you can always post them a letter, but taking this route will slow down solving your issue in a big way.
Despite the limited opening hours, Coral do offer a top-notch service, with agents who are refreshingly knowledgeable and come with a dollop of common sense plus one of the quickest live chat features I have used once you manage to find it.
The FAQ and the help centre are one and the same thing, and the available pre-written answers are numerous and written in the plainest of terms so you should be able to solve most issues yourself really. If only it was searchable.
Contact and Licence Information
- UK Gambling Licence Number: 54743
- Name: Coral Casino
- Registered Name: Coral Interactive (Gibraltar) Ltd
- URL: https://gaming.coral.co.uk/casino
- Phone: 0800 44 00 11 (Freephone)
- Email: [email protected]
- Address: Suite 711, 1st Floor Europort (6-7) Europort Road, GIBRALTAR, GX11 1AA
- Twitter: @CoralHelp