518Bets Bookmaker Review

518Bets Summary

518Bets Features

• Nicely designed and some solid tech
• Lots of sports, lots of bets and decent value odds
• Some top-quality live betting on offer

Promotions and Bonuses Aplenty

There are plenty of bonuses and promotion available for customers old and new on 518bets bookmaker and, while we’ll deliberately not be too specific as they change from time to time, there is a cracking welcome bonus that has remained unchanged for some time. In their words, “Deposit up to €250 and we’ll offer you the same amount in bonus money. For example you deposit €10, we’ll match it then you’ll have €20 to bet. In order to receive the full €250 bonus you need to deposit €250 in one transaction.” In other words, a 100% bonus, which is as good as they come.

Among the others on offer at the time of this review, there was a 50% re-deposit bonus up to €100, a 100% accumulator bonus, a VIP bonus and a rebate bonus.

Loads of Sports … Hundreds of Betting Markets

518bets bookmaker, in line with other sites from the same group, offer their customers a great selection of sports – one of the biggest selections on the web – and alongside this wide array of sports, they offer an equally impressive range of betting markets. Listed below are the 34 sports available but in addition they offer markets for politics, TV shows & movies, the Oscars and a host of ‘specials’, as well as several markets for E-sports, including League of Legends and Overwatch.

Typically, football is by some way 518bet’s biggest sport , with markets in leagues and competitions from 31 countries, and these extend to some small footballing nations – like Mauritania, Israel, Algeria and Armenia – as well as Europe’s biggest leagues in England, Spain, Germany and Italy. And it’s not just the top pro leagues in these countries they offer markets for either. In England, for example, they offer as many as 16 different leagues and competitions, ranging from the Premier League to the Isthmian Premier Division!

The range of betting markets we mentioned earlier is every bit as impressive as the number of sports they list, and every sport in every category comes with choices aplenty. To stick with football as the example, at the time of this review they were offering 383 different markets for the upcoming Premier League match between Everton and Leicester

After football, their next two biggest sports are ice hockey and tennis, and while neither get close to the same number of competitions and markets, betting fans of both sports are exceptionally well catered for.

At the time of writing, 518bets bookmaker were covering tennis tournaments from nine countries and for upcoming matches were offering around 40 markets for each, and for ice hockey had markets from leagues in 20 countries, with the big NHL games having well over 100 different betting options.

Live betting is also a strength of 518bets and, in line with the other sites supported by the same software, they offer their punters one of the best match trackers available on the web. They don’t offer live streams, but such is the quality of the match tracker it really is the next best thing.

In addition to the eye-catching graphic, which gives a blow-by-blow account of all the action as it happens, there is also text commentary and a timeline that gives the punter a feel for the flow of the match and which team is in the ascendancy. And under the main graphic is a large selection of bets with up-to-the-second odds, which can be added to the betting slip with a single click. As always, we tested it – for an Algerian Cup match – and it worked very nicely.

The good news continued when we tested the odds offered by 518bets bookmaker. We sampled a range of bets on offer in the English Premier League and found them to be set fairly and competitively. To put it simply, a bet compiled to 100% gives the bookmaker a zero-profit margin and so the closer to 100% the odds are compiled, the smaller the margin and the better the value for the punter. It’s accepted in the industry that odds compiled to between 105% and 106% are ‘average’, and so for 518bets to compile theirs to around 106% was good, and significantly better than other sites from the same group.

Markets in leagues and competitions from 31 countries, from smaller footballing nations – like Mauritania, Israel, Algeria and Armenia – through to Europe’s finest

On the Move Bettor? No Problemo

There are no iOS or Android apps available for 518bets bookmaker, but they have created a site that configures nicely to either smartphone or tablet. And, as tends to be the case these days, the mobile version is as good as if not better than the desktop version. It can be accessed on a mobile browser using Google Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer.

Deposits & Withdrawals… Not a Bad Choice!

518bets bookmaker offer their customers a reasonable range of methods to deposit and withdraw funds. The options are listed below:

Deposits:

Payouts:

Unfortunately we were unable to ascertain the minimum and maximum amounts for either deposits or withdrawals, and are still awaiting a response for their customer services team in this regard.

China Facing but Not Just China

518bets bookmaker is a China facing site and therefore defaults to the Chinese language of Zhōngwén but also translates to 12 other languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, German and Swedish.

It accepts customers worldwide although there are some restricted countries which, at the time of this review, included customers from both the US and the UK. If you are thinking of signing up, we recommend you email their customer services team in advance and check if your registration will be accepted.

Safe and Secure but Customer Services?

We found 518bets bookmaker to be safe and secure during our review and were impressed with its robustness. In addition, we did an online search in case there were any outstanding issues highlighted by customers and found there to be none.

What we did find a little disappointing was our interaction with their customer services team, or rather the lack of it. While there appears to be no 24/7 live chat facility, which tends to be the norm with online betting sites, they do offer a direct email link for any questions or queries. In order to test this – and to try and find info around the depositing and withdrawing of funds – we logged a couple of questions but unfortunately did not receive a reply to either.

To us, a good customer services team is imperative for a quality bookmaker as there are naturally queries arising when using sites of this type, so the poor/non-existent response time was a major disappointment.

Our Verdict

518bets bookmaker is a site we actually quite liked, but it all fell a little flat when it came to dealing with their customer services team, or at least trying to. That shouldn’t however disguise the fact that what they actually offer the customer in terms of tech and design is pretty good. We also liked the bonuses and promotions, and the live betting service.

But, while we would not discourage anyone from using 518bets, it’s not among our top-ranked sites. If you want to see which ones are on our list, please click below.