The Gala-Colar Group owns colar.co.uk (their online betting presence), thousands of live gambling locations throughout the UK (betting shops, bingo halls and casinos), and has been in the bookmaking business for 90 years.
The Gala-Colar Group owns colar.co.uk that offers sports betting, casino games, bingo, and even online poker, in addition to eurobet.com, galabingo.com and galacasino.com (Gala Bingo has partnered with the likes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale).
The Gala-Colar Group realized the potential of the online gambling market a few years later than many of their biggest competitors – to their credit, they’ve catched-up to the competition in the past couple of years. The re-launch of the online betting interface in 2012 was big step forward and they’ve since kept making significant changes and updates (the live dealer section of the site being the latest to get a facelift).
The company’s betting operations are still located in the UK (London, to be more specific) which makes them rare breed in a world where most of their competitors have moved elsewhere for tax reasons. They have more than 19,000 employees.
Colar prohibits players from Australia, the U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and many other countries. Here’s a list of all the accepted countries:
Banking Options
Coral’s deposit methods are Visa (credit and debit), Mastercard (credit), Maestro (debit), Paypal, Skrill, Neteller, Ecocard, Paysafecard and Connect. All the deposit methods are instant and come with a minimum deposit limit of £5 (except for Paypal which has a £10 minimum deposit). To qualify for any of Coral’s deposit bonuses, you must make the deposit with a credit or a debit card.
Here are the available withdrawal methods:
Sportsbook
Customers from United Kingdom and Ireland qualify for ”Bet £5, Get £20” promotion which is exactly what it sounds like: make a win or each-way bet of at least £5 at odds of at least 1.5 within 14 days of registering the account, and you’ll get 4x£5 free bet tokens, which must be used within 7 days of receiving them.
You can withdraw the free bet tokens and you must bet all of them within that 7-day period. You spend the free tokens on single, double, treble, 4-fold and upwards accumulator, forecast and combination bets.
Coral stands out among other online sportsbooks for having few maximum limits to their bets (although, beware, there may be maximum payout limits). They’re prices are generally good (not great, but good) and they’re a legitimate operator, meaning there’s little to fear in terms of rip-offs and scams. They cover all U.K. sports and horse races comprehensively.
Online Casino
Casino customers from the U.K. get a ”Deposit £5, Get £10” bonus for making a £5 credit or debit card deposit. This bonus comes with a 50x wagering requirement (you have to bet a total of £500 in order to withdraw your winnings), and the 50x requirement applies to slot machines, scratch cards and arcade games only. If you want to clear the bonus by playing roulette (excluding Key Bet Roulette), keno, sic-bo, craps or blackjack (excluding Pontoon, Blackjack Switch, Blackjack Surrender, Lucky Blackjack, Stravaganza and Video Poker), you’re suddenly looking at a 250x wagering requirement.
Games like Casino War and Casino Holdem have an even larger wagering requirement (1000x), meaning you’d have to place bets worth of £10,000 to clear the bonus using with these games.
The casino is powered by software from almost 20 different software providers such as NetEntertainment, Playtech, Cryptologic, WagerWorks and Evolution Gaming. You can play each game on the browser and they’ve also created a high-quality mobile casino which works on both iOS and Android devices.
With a such stacked line-up of software providers, you can play a wide variety of some of internet’s biggest progressive jackpots (although not the biggest since they’re provided by Microgaming casinos) such as Gladiator Jackpot (£1.4 million at the time of writing), Ghost Rider (£485,000) and X-Men (£485,000).
The casino features a bunch of other all-time favorite online slots (Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Monty Python’s Spamalot, and Thor to name a few).
Financially, the best blackjack variation to play is Blackjack Switch (99.86% return) while Blackjack Pro is the worst (99.56% return) – suggesting you play according to optimal blackjack strategy, of course.
The live dealer casino went through a major overhaul in winter 2015 – now it both looks and works like it should. You can play live dealer blackjack, roulette, baccarat, hi-lo, and hold’em. The live dealer search engine is a nice touch (it’s weird that other gambling sites haven’t implemented the same) and allows you to browse through a variety of games, game variations and available dealers.
Online Poker
Colar Poker is a part of the iPoker network, currently a top-3 online poker network traffic-wise among non-US poker networks. Since the #1 and #2 sites don’t share their networks to others (PokerStars and 888Poker), Coral has made the best possible decision by joining iPoker (which is owned by Playtech, a respected casino software provider).
Other well-known sites on iPoker are Bet365, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, William Hill and Titan Poker – as you can tell, Coral is in good company.
Most online gambling sites demand a minimum deposit of £10, £15 or £20. Coral accepts £5 deposits, too, so even those with the smallest of bankrolls are welcome. They have set no maximum deposit limits.
Customer Service
Coral does its customer service the right way by being easy to reach. You can chat with them, e-mail them or call them, and you can even send their your phone number and get a call back.
Conclusion
Coral.co.uk is a classy gambling site but extremely focused on the U.K. market. There are no bonuses for customers outside of the U.K. and Ireland, for example, and they haven’t put as much effort into setting-up payment methods for non-U.K. customers.
And, of course, they cover UK betting markets more comprehensively than others. Then again, they really take care of their UK customers. I recommend them to our U.K. visitors but I think there are better, more friendly options for players outside of the U.K.