Although race games may be far easier to produce a virtual game on, that hasn’t stopped 
developers moving into the ‘game’ related market of virtual sports and the only game-based virtual sport you will find on Betway at the moment is the innovative Betway Virtual Football.
Of course, there is a simple reason for this, which is that betting on football is one of the most popular forms of betting that there is nowadays, outstripping even betting on horseracing and greyhound racing and as such, offering the chance to bet on Virtual Football makes every sense if you want the virtual games to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.
The main problem for Virtual Soccer is how you condense what is essentially a 90 minute game into something that lasts no longer than five minutes for one game. The way that this is achieved is by the game only showing the key highlights from a match, initially from the first half and then from the second. The highlights package tends to last around half of the five minutes, with the betting period lasting the other 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Another aspect of Virtual Football is that there can be no more than four goals in a game which does limit the number of potential scores that can be created and as such, makes betting on these markets in particularly slightly easier than in real life.
One final thing, in Virtual Football there is no context to the game at present. Though some companies are working on a version of the game which will see teams compete in competitions and have their results recorded. For the Betway version, the games are simply selected at random and can comprise of club games (both English and international club fixtures) and international games.
It’s no mean feat condensing the game of football down into a Virtual Sport, so how does Betway’s Virtual Football offering stand up to scrutiny? Let’s take a closer look and find out for ourselves.
Betway Virtual Football
- Time Between Events – 5 Minutes
- Competing Teams – 2
- Types of match – 3 – International, English Club and International Club
- Venue – 1 – Olympic Park Lane
- Time Split– 2 min 30 seconds for betting – 2 min 30 seconds for the game highlights & results (approximately, times may be slightly different for each game)
Bets Available
- Win/Draw/Win
- Total Goals – Over Under 1.5
- Total Goals – Over Under 2.5
- Team to Score 1st Goal
- Both Teams to Score
- Handicap 3-Way (+1)
- Handicap 3-Way (-1)
- Half Time/Full Time
- Correct Score
- Double Chance
- Home Team to Score
- Away Team to Score
- 1st Half – Win/Draw/Win
- 1st Half – Correct Score
- Winning Margin
- Total Goals
- Home Team Total Goals
- Away Team Total Goals
- In addition, you can place several different types of multiple selection bets when making selections across different games such as Accumulator Bets, Full Cover Bets and Lucky 15, Lucky 31 etc.
Highlights
The Virtual Football game begins initially with a period of around 150 seconds (although it 
can vary by around 10-15 seconds at times) where you can peruse the markets for the game to place your bet or bets on it. One thing to note here, there are a lot more markets for Virtual Football than for other virtual sports and as such, you will need the extra time available to have a look through the markets, especially if you intend to bet on the current game, rather than betting on advance on any of the 14 other games you can bet on.
You place your bets on Virtual Football like you do in any other market on Betway, by adding them to your bet slip and then entering your stake and clicking the button. You can of course add multiple selections from different games to put together your own type of multiple bets, and the good news is that you can combine bets from different markets into multiple bets relatively easily.
Unlike other Virtual Sports Betting markets, when the betting section of the match is in progress, you don’t get a preview of the teams and players but instead, you are shown the kits of the two teams playing as well as some of the key betting markets of the match on the right side of them. This remains in place for the duration of the betting period.
Once the betting period counts down and ends, the highlights of the game starts and the first thing you will notice is that the graphics are actually rather good and certainly on a par, if not better, than some of the top console and PC-based soccer games that display matches. It is easy to distinguish the two teams and for each highlight of the match shown, you are provided with a commentary on the action on screen. While this commentary has significantly more variation than the virtual race games commentary, it still does get a little repetitive after a while.
For each highlight that is displayed, you see a time in the game when the highlight took place and you will see highlights for both the first half and second half (with the half time break also shown). The highlights you get to see on screen are typically as follows:
- Any goals scored in the game
- Any good chances missed or saved in the game
- Any fouls leading to a dangerous free kick or penalty
Games can finish any score from 0-0 up to 4-0 for either team. That only gives 16 possible score combinations for Virtual Football, which is considerably fewer than you can get in real life football matches. No game can have more than four goals scored in it. You get a quick break at half time which recaps the results of any half-time betting markets, together with the stats from the match.
After the highlights package finishes, you then see a recap of the major markets which were the correct bets for the game, complete with their potential payouts if you were lucky enough to bet on them. This remains in place until the next Virtual Football game starts.
Who will Betway Virtual Sports appeal to?
There is no doubt to me that if you enjoy any form of football betting, then Virtual Football is a hugely enjoyable way to enjoy a few bets. Of course, the key difference is that real football has a context and that helps punters formulate their bets, that is missing in Virtual Football but the speed of the games and the quality of the highlights packages does make up for that.
The big positive however is that regardless of whether you want to place bets of shorter odds, or bets of longer odds, you can usually find a bet in one of the available Virtual Football markets that suits your needs. There are so many markets and so many different bets available on each game, that finding a bet you like is relatively easy. That’s without even using any of the multiple selection bets available on Virtual Sports.
I think Virtual Football has massive appeal not just to football fans, but to all punters that enjoy any form of virtual sports betting entertainment.
What are my chances of winning on Virtual Football compared to other Virtual Sports?
It’s not easy to compare betting on Virtual Football to other Virtual Sports on Betway as Virtual Football is not a race and has a different setup, parameters and different bets available. However, there is such a wide range of markets available that you can find bets that will offer you a good chance of a win (such as the Win/Draw/Win bet or the Over/Under 2.5 Goals bet) as well as bets that offer considerably longer odds (Correct Score bet for example).
