A few weeks ago, Betway announced the return of Virtual Sports to their servers after a short break away while the software
was tweaked and revamped to bring it more up to date and to improve the overall experience for the end user.
So the question now has to be whether that process has worked, so in order to gauge that, we are going to compare how Betway’s Virtual Sports offering compares with one of the very best on the market today, the Virtual Sports on offer at Bet365 Sport.
Let’s first begin by explaining the key similarities between the two sites.
The Key Similarities with Betway & Bet365 Virtual Sports
The first thing you will note about these sites is that they offer almost the same choice of Virtual Sports. Football, Horse Racing, Cycling, Greyhounds, Motor Racing, Speedway and Trotting are available on both sites, while on Bet365 you also get the chance to bet on Virtual Tennis.
Furthermore, the base software that powers each of the sites Virtual Sports is essentially the same as the graphics, commentary etc are almost identical on each of the sites. However, where each site does differ comes in terms of the presentation of each Virtual Sport and perhaps most critically, on the markets that it offers for punters to bet on.
In this article, we are going to focus solely on the Virtual Soccer offering on both sites and measure how each shapes up in a number of crucial areas.
- Choice of Competitions
- Bet365 Sport – 3 Competitions to Choose From (Premiership, Superleague & World Cup)
- Betway – 1 Competition (Randomised Matches)
Bet365 Sport organises its Virtual Soccer offering into three different ‘competitions’ although the games do not actually mean anything in the context of that competition. Premiership focuses on games between teams that are representatives of teams in the English Premier League, Superleague involves some Premier League teams playing against fictional teams based on famous teams from around the world and lastly World Cup focuses on international matches.
Betway simply offers a mix of these fixtures via its single offering.
The upshot of this though is that with Betway, you will get through a game of football once every five minutes including the time it takes to place your bets and to then run through the highlights.
At Bet365 Sport, the time between games is much shorter (3 minutes) and the start times of each of the three competitions are staggered so that there is one game starting every minute or so. This makes Bet365 Sport still the best option when it comes to wanting to bet on multiple games in a relatively short space of time.
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Presentation
One of the ways a site can personalise the software is by changing how it is presented and both Bet365 Sport and Betway have done this to different degrees.
Bet365’s presentation remains somewhat simple to follow, with the basics shown on a smaller sized screen than on Betway. All the basic information is there, but there is not a great deal beyond that.
However, Betway have really upped the ante when it comes to presentation of their games by offering a larger viewing screen and much better quality graphics and summaries of the different bets before, during and after the game. In terms of presentation, Betway certainly have the upper hand when it comes to how the game looks.
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Betting Markets
It is best to view the different betting markets offered by the companies simply by listing the different betting markets available in each:
Bet365 Virtual Sports Betting Markets (21 in total)
- Match Winner/Win Draw Win
- Number of Goals
- Correct Score
- Correct Score Group
- Double Chance
- Total Goals
- Handicap Result
- Asian Handicap
- Result/Both Teams to Score
- Both Teams to Score
- Home Team to Score
- Away Team to Score
- Home Team Goals
- Away Team Goals
- Winning Margin
- Team to Score First
- Team to Score Last
- Team Scorecast
- Half Time Result
- Half Time/Full Time
- Half Time Correct Score
Betway Virtual Sports Betting Markets (18 in total)
- Match Winner/ Win Draw Win
- Total Goals Over 1.5
- Total Goals Over 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
- First Half Correct Score
- Winning Margin
- Total Goals
- Home Team Total Goals
- Away Team Total Goals
What is apparent here is that Bet365 tends to offer a wider choice of markets to bet on when it comes to Virtual Football. Even in the markets it appears that Betway may have more choice (such as the Handicap 3-Way bets), in truth, Bet365 offer a greater choice of Handicap bets in their Handicap section, they just don’t have separate betting sections for the different Handicap applied, unlike Betway.
There is a significant overlap with the bets between the sites with all of the bets available at Betway able to be placed at Bet365 and so it seems that Bet365 still holds the advantage when it comes to offering the widest range of Virtual Soccer bets.
Conclusion
What can we gleam from reviewing both the Virtual Football offerings available at Betway and Bet365 Sport? Well firstly, there are many more similarities between the two sites than there are differences and both offer a very high quality Virtual Football service which, in truth, would be perfectly adequate for 99% of users.
However, for me, while Betway holds the edge in the quality of its presentation and its clearer views on a larger screen, the greater choice of bets available at Bet365 Sport, allied to the quicker processing of games and a choice of three different competitions, each with staggered kick off times, means that if you want rapid Virtual Sports betting on a slightly wider choice of markets, Bet365 Sports still comes out on top.
