Ladbrokes is to the world of betting and gaming what Asda is to global grocery shopping – far reaching and dominant but also great value with a focus on the customer.
The brand goes back to the 1880s as a UK sports bookie, but these days they are a worldwide gaming goliath with revenues well in excess of two billion pounds a year. This is a great option for anyone who wants a big online casino site with tons of features alongside a high-class sportsbook, and other innovative games products.
The casino lists games from too many providers to count with innovative features when it comes to searching, not to mention their exclusive range of slots. There are a huge number of payment methods including cash in person, high limits, and top regular promotions – exactly what you would expect from a powerhouse like Ladbrokes.
- Added Value – Able to offer plenty of promotions due to their size
- Goliath Of Online Gaming – Casinos don’t come bigger than Ladbrokes
- Payment Options Galore – Deposit using any kind of method even the cash in your pocket.
Software and Games
Like many of the really big operators, the Ladbrokes site is split into sections designed to make the process of finding your game easier.
This provides its own set of strengths and weaknesses, but in basic terms, Ladbrokes players can access over 1800 titles from most of the major software providers and lots of the smaller ones too. So, if scope and variety are key factors as to where you play that’s good news.
One obvious problem with this number of games is how on earth to display them all?
Browsing is a bit of a nightmare if we’re honest, so it’s not a place to scroll through looking for a game tile that takes your fancy. In fact, if you head to All Games and scroll too far the site might struggle to keep up there are so many to display.
That said, Laddies have come up with their own game browsing tool which is a great idea for anyone wanting to discover new games.
It essentially is just a progression of filtering options such as theme, game feature and/or mechanic, and volatility, but it does a good job for the user.
Other filtering options exist too, but these are broader, things like Exclusives, Live Casino, Megaways, etc.
The games themselves come from every developer you have ever heard of; Playtech, NetEnt, Microgaming, Yggdrasil, Playn’Go, Thunderkick… the list is endless and impressive.
You can’t search by provider though, which might be an option they could consider, as many people know the providers they can rely on.
Live Casino
Ladbrokes use Playtech, Pragmatic Play and Evolution to run their live casino games so it’s a triple whammy, and there is a great deal of variety within it.
I also really like the way the various live casino interfaces are put together. You can adjust all of your settings to suit your connection, the lobby is accessible in game, and there are lots of extra features to play with such as stats on roulette and the ability to pin your favourite dealers. Speaking of roulette, there are loads of tables to choose between and all have fairly low minimums, with the max stake I could find being £500. There are some fun themed tables too like live football roulette, Lightning Roulette, and a Ladbrokes exclusive table.
Blackjack fans have even more choice with minimum and maximum stakes to suit layers from all financial backgrounds. Again, there are lots of variations to play with too. There are also baccarat tables as well as poker, sic bo, dragon tiger, and hi lo games. You may have heard of the game show style games like Dreamcatcher by Evolution, and there are absolutely loads of them here – loads of fun to be had.
One thing missing is the ability to play more than one game at a time, but that’s hardly a deal breaker, and if you are like me you will prefer to immerse yourself in the game you are playing anyway.
Promotions & Offers
Ladbrokes provide a variety of daily, weekly and monthly promotions throughout their various areas, and they change all the time.
You can see what deals are available from the promotions tab, and it’s worth checking each time you log in so that you don’t miss anything. These can be specific to the live casino or to the games themselves, so even if you are quite specific in your gaming tastes, it is likely you will find something to fit your needs from time to time.
Examples of promotions that might be running when you next log in include daily jackpots, slot specific promotions, and seasonal bonuses. In the past, live casino hosts have even been given the power to give some great prizes away as they see fit – so be nice to them.
The promotions do tend to be fun and original, and they even include free to play games with real cash prizes, but for such a huge company it would be good to see a few more of them floating about for the casino as it feels like the sportsbook gets more attention.
The Ladbrokes Story
In the Beginning
Ladbrokes’ origins go all the way back to 1886 when the company was founded by two gentlemen named Pennington and Schwind. These two gentlemen acted as commission agents for horses trained at Ladbroke Hall in Worcestershire, UK, so the company’s roots are well and truly in horse racing.
The company moved to London in 1902 and spent the next 50 years acting as a bookmaker and commission agent for particularly high profile clients from the aristocracy and higher classes mostly. Following the second world war, however, the business model began to break down due to the severe austerity of the times combined with new forms of competition and an ever decreasing client base. The company was acquired in 1956 for a sum of £100,000 by Mark and Cyril Stein. That’s about £2.5 million in today’s money – bargain.
Onwards and Upwards
It was the legalisation of off-course betting in the UK in 1961 that led to the rise of Ladbrokes as a leading British bookmaker. Cyril Stein invested a large proportion of the company’s assets into establishing a chain of high street shops, and Ladbrokes became the first bookie to offer fixed odds betting on football in 1963.
In 1966, ten years after purchasing the company, Stein floated Ladbrokes on the London stock exchange for £1,000,000, increasing its value 10-fold in as many years. The company grew and grew on the high street acquiring various other gambling and non-gambling operations along the way, and by 1993 Ladbrokes was worth over £2 billion.
The Modern Era
The company was one of the first to move online back in 1998 and in the last 20 years they have developed their online operation substantially, with profits in this area now outstripping their high-street business.
Back in 2009 the company moved their online gaming division to Gibraltar although they are still licenced in London, UK.
The Ladbrokes casino has over a million customers and is particularity popular in Ireland and Spain as well as the UK.
The company formed a partnership with Playtech in 2013 to deliver a re-designed casino service alongside their already very successful sportsbook.
Enter Coral
In 2016 Ladbrokes finally merged with the Gala Coral Group, after years of trying, and formed one of the world’s biggest gaming brands with over 230 years of shared heritage and experience. This has created a gaming operator with over £2,000,000,000 in revenue and over 3500 high street shops employing an army of around 25,000 people.
The brands are kept separate from a user point of view and this will hopefully improve both products further by sharing their already substantial resources and experience. What’s more, since March 2018 Entain plc (previously GVC Holdings) have been steering the ship, making the company more powerful than ever before.
Using the Website
Ladbrokes run a marmite casino; you will love it or hate it. The sheer scale of what they can offer makes it impossible for them to operate a clean minimalist interface as you might see elsewhere. If you want a simple no fuss casino then this isn’t going to be for you.
Saying that Ladbrokes have done an excellent job of condensing all of their various products and features into a user-friendly package – well, as user friendly as you could reasonably expect. For a start, every section of the site is searchable, so if you know what you are looking for, you’ll find it in one click.
If you do want to browse the site things become a bit more of a hassle because, although everything is split into sections they can’t be al things to all people, so you may find that none of the filtering options help you. That said, their slot finder tool mentioned above is evidence that they are trying to solve this problem.
Game tiles come in different shapes and sizes which breaks things up, and the whole site feels vibrant and alive but never leaves you wondering where to look next.
Managing Your Account
Managing your account and getting help shouldn’t be an issue as this will always display in the same place and in the same way, but you will often find three or four different menu bars on one screen as well as potentially other/floating icons, so there is a lot to take in. You can find yourself missing something that is right in front of you. Many of these options will open in a new window too, so try and do one thing at a time to avoid getting swamped.
Banking is a simple affair although it will cause a page reload, but that page is extremely helpful and well put together.
The only issue that does need attention is the loading speeds. New page loads can take up to 10 seconds even on decent internet connection, and while we get that it is a big site with lots going on, at the end of the day user experience is everything and this impacts it.
Gaming on Mobile
Ladbrokes provide a suite of mobile apps for their various products. This can be an annoyance to some people, but then when you consider the size of the Ladbrokes operation you really wouldn’t want everything in one application, it would be a nightmare to run.
It is very clear to see the level of development that has gone into the various mobile packages. The mobile casino appears to have pretty much all of the games that are available on desktop, and they feel more organised on the small screen somehow.
It helps that there is nothing else crowding the options here, whereas on desktop you have the rest of the site to contend with.
If you like to play all the time on your mobile or tablet then then Ladbrokes are a very good option.
The app(s) allows you to control every aspect of your account without the need to ever visit the desktop site if you don’t want to.
The Ladbrokes mobile products are also highly functional with a heavily optimised navigation panel and no heavy unnecessary graphics. This means the apps work exceptionally well on mobile networks and slow wifi connections.
Ladbrokes are especially good at updating their products. If they find a bug or issue they will sort it within hours usually. This is the kind of development power you can only really get with big operators such as these.
We found the app to be a little quicker than the mobile site, but not by much, and both allow you to switch to other products (sportsbook for example) in no time from the menu.
Finances
| Method | Min Deposit | Min Withdrawal | Fees | Withdrawal Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Debit Card | £5 | £5 | 0% | Within 4 Hours |
| PayPal | £10 | £5 | 0% | Up to 6 hours |
| Skrill | £5 | £5 | 0% | Up to 6 hours |
| Neteller | £5 | £5 | 0% | Up to 6 hours |
| Cash - The Grid | £1 | £1 | n/a | n/a |
| Apple Pay | £5 | n/a | 0% | n/a |
| PaySafeCard | £5 | N/A | 0% | Use bank transfer |
| Entropay | £10 | £ | 0% | N/A |
| Bank Wire | £10 | £5 | BACS Free | 2-6 Days |
If a broad choice of payment options is something that matters to you then you are in seriously good hands with Ladbrokes. As a business with plenty of money in the bank, they are also able to handle large amounts with ease – good news for high rollers.
Put simply, all major banking methods are accepted with a good deal of more obscure ones too. The minimum deposit can be as low as £5 for some methods and as Ladbrokes run over 2000 shops you can also deposit as little as £1 through the high street stores.
Withdrawal minimums are as low as they get at £5 and are fee free, while processing times to debit cards and eWallets are especially quick at just a few hours. Ladbrokes have a large team so they are able to process payments quickly, although not at weekends.
Withdrawal limits are staggeringly high at £250,000 a day (£5,000 if using cash in store), so if you hit a big jackpot you won’t be drip fed it. The limit is only really there to prevent fraudulent activities.
The Grid
Ladbrokes have one over on almost all other online casinos, in that they also operate thousands of high street betting shops. In an effort to link the online and physical worlds and to make life easier for their customers, they have come up with The Grid.
This is a card which allows you to instantly link your online funds with the cash in your pocket. You could, for example, win £200 on a slot machine on your phone, then walk to your local Ladbrokes and withdraw your online balance in cash. It works the other way around too.
It’s free to join The Grid and it’s worth doing, as it offers exclusive benefits such as machine bonuses and the chance to win prizes for points earned playing in-store games. If you also bet on the sportsbook there is even more to take advantage of.
Doing Their Bit
Ladbrokes got shot down a little in the early 2000s for not being careful enough in promoting their products and so since then they have gone in the opposite direction becoming one of the best operators for safe and secure responsible gaming. They were the first to promote responsible gaming on TV, one of the first members of an independent body established by bookmakers and they even have their own ‘ Social Responsibility Board Committee’.
The Ladbrokes casino will allow you to self-exclude for any period (short-term exclusion is termed cooling off), set deposit and session limits, and they are proactive in spotting unusual betting activity that may result from a gambling problem. See Gam Care (http://www.gamcare.org.uk/) for independent advice and for more information on safe gaming tools.
After a bit of a wobble, it’s good to see Ladbrokes leading from the front in this department these days.
Support Options
One aspect you would expect from a colossus of the industry like Ladbrokes is a comprehensive customer support department, and overall, they don’t let players down. You can get in touch 24/7/365 by post or live chat, and Twitter response times are very good indeed. In fact, there is an account set up dedicated to customer care which shows willing, and social media is their preferred contact option.
There is also a free phone number for UK gaming customers which is open from 8am to 10pm, and while this is not 24 hours it is dedicated to casino customers, and live chat is an option outside of these hours so you won’t be left high and dry.
Email is another route but I have a bit of a niggle with them on that front. One of the perils of dealing with such a huge company is that you can end up in an email chain with different people replying each time. After a while this can become really drawn out and confusing, so my advice would be to use live chat or the phone; at least this way you are speaking to the same person each time.
This is a big site and the help section is proportionally large. It isn’t as straightforward as some others but they do a good job of organising information so that it is easy to find, and the FAQ answers query’s as succinctly as possible. The live chat option is only available via the FAQ which I always think is a bit of a liberty, but I can see why they do it. I also wish the FAQ was searchable.
Licence & Getting in Touch
UK Licence Number: 54743
- Name: Ladbrokes Casino
- Registered Name: Ladbrokes Betting and Gaming Limited
- URL: www.ladbrokes.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: 0800 731 6191 for UK customers
- Principal Address: One Stratford Place, Montfichet Road, London, E20 1EJ
- Twitter: @ladbrokescare