William Hill Sportsbook Review
William Hill, which bills itself as “Britain’s favorite bookmaker,” has a history that spans over a century and has been marked by a number of highs and lows throughout that time period (the company was founded in 1934).
They recorded net sales of £1.6 billion in 2014, which is an increase of 8% from the previous year, and operating profits of £372.2 million in that same year. Things are looking great right now (up 11 percent from the previous year). William Hill is presently one of the largest internet bookmakers in the United Kingdom. The company has been operating online since 1998, and it has over 16,000 workers spread across three sites. Almost 3 million digital consumers place bets with William Hill each year (UK, Ireland and Gibraltar). They have been honored with several industry accolades, the most recent of which was the “Sportsbook Operator of the Year” award at the 2016 iGaming Awards.
WilliamHill.com is available in 21 different languages, and it receives a significant amount of visitors from all over Europe. In fact, Spain is one of William Hill’s primary markets in addition to the United Kingdom (the site is the primary sponsor of the Spanish La Liga team Malaga). The United Kingdom is unquestionably William Hill’s most important market, as it accounts for around 82% of the company’s total income. William Hill reportedly holds the largest market share in the online betting sector in the United Kingdom, according to Gambling Compliance (15 percent , although Bet365.com comes close with 14 percent of the market).
In order to become one of the most successful betting websites in the UK, you need to have a presence “everywhere.” William Hill is able to accomplish this goal in part by sponsoring many top-tier tournaments, including the England and Scotland national teams, the FA Cup, the World Darts Championship, “the richest greyhound race in the world,” which takes place at Wimbledon, and a few more.
Players from the United States of America, Germany, France, and Turkey are not allowed to participate.
Multiple Options Available for Adding Funds to Your Account
William Hill has a multitude of free deposit and withdrawal options, including credit and debit cards from Visa, Mastercard, and Maestro; e-wallets such as Neteller and Skrill; online banking services; pre-paid cards and vouchers; and so on. This is to be expected from a gambling site that is popular on an international scale. (I tallied a total of forty different payment choices.)
The majority of the banking alternatives have a maximum of £10 for deposits, however the limit to withdraw deposit is just £5. It may seem like a little point, but many websites have a minimum deposit limit of £10 and a minimum withdrawal limit of £20. Because of this, it is convenient that the minimum amount that you may withdraw is lower than the minimum amount that you can deposit.
Sportsbook
When I was conducting my study, I came across a lot of material, and because of that, I had really high hopes for William Hill (especially the sportsbook section of the site).
However, at first glance, the interface for placing bets appeared to be a startling amount of work. Because I’ve been accustomed to the filters being on the left side of the betting lines, it took me some time to locate the tabs that are located above the betting lines.
Although the sportsbook lobby seems to be difficult to navigate, you will quickly become accustomed to it.
William Hill, which is well-known in the United Kingdom and sponsors teams for both England and Scotland, has a significant customer base that is heavily invested in the sport of soccer. As you might expect, this is the case given that William Hill is a sponsor of both national teams for England and Scotland. They currently provide betting lines on more than 60,000 soccer games each year, so it doesn’t matter where you’re from; they’ve got you covered.
The overall popularity of in-play betting has been growing in the market for sports betting in recent years. William Hill has capitalized on the opportunity, since in-play games now account for about half of the company’s total revenue.
William Hill offers coverage of a large number of leagues and games from a variety of countries. Still, I was taken aback to learn that certain leagues, such as the Finnish hockey league (also known as “SM-Liiga”), were absent despite the fact that they are considered to be among the most prestigious hockey leagues in the world. The same was true for the “Veikkausliiga,” which is Finland’s highest level of football competition. Although William Hill has done an excellent job covering British sports (which is to be expected), I would not suggest that our customers from Finland check out this site.
There have been issues with the Poker Client.
William Hill Poker may only be installed on computers that run the Windows operating system. Because I have an iMac, I was had to utilize the instant-play version of the poker software. This means that I had to play the game through a web browser.
At the very least, they attempted to play.
Despite the fact that I have a 100 mb internet connection, the overall experience was too choppy for my taste, and the visuals did not look very well on the 27-inch Retina display that I use. That was not all, though; the poker client froze the second I received my cards (I could only hear the program asking me to act, but there was nothing I could do): I could only hear the software instructing me to act, but there was nothing I could do:
This screenshot is completely confusing to me because I have no concept what is going on. It is currently my turn, and I can hear the game encouraging me to take action; but, there is nothing that I can do about it.
Then, What Should We Think of the Casino?
I made up my mind to participate in the games that were similar to those found in Las Vegas. After selecting Wish Upon a Jackpot and clicking “Play Now,” I was surprised to see the following notification appear on the screen:
I can’t seem to break a losing trend, and I haven’t even begun playing the game yet!
I had now attempted to play twice, first at poker and then at casino games, but neither attempt was effective on my part. If I were a regular client at William Hill and not someone who was intending to write a review of the company, I most likely would have quit up at this point. But here I was 15 minutes later, certain in my intention to do my review in grand fashion.
As a result, I went ahead and picked White King since, after all, I’ve always had a soft spot for lions. And…
… and it worked in the end!
It wasn’t easy, but I managed to prevail in the end. My prize is this magnificent triumph of 0.50 euros.
It just took a few seconds for the game to load, and then I was all set to play playing. Instantaneously, they requested that I enable pop-ups for williamhill.com, and I found myself wondering why this was the case, given that pop-ups almost never result in anything positive. The game appeared to work without any issues, but I couldn’t help but think it could have something to do with the way it really felt to play the game. Nope, it wasn’t even to give me a chance to spin the reel; rather, it was merely to inundate me with three different adverts.
Even after removing all of the advertisements, I was unable to play in the game. It would appear that the money was added to my poker balance rather than my casino balance; therefore, I was required to go to the website for my account and move the money from my poker balance to my casino amount. (By the way, I lost 0.05 euros during the poker game for not acting after posting blinds. Normally, I would leave that issue alone because it’s such a small sum of money; however, for the purposes of writing this review, I thought it would be best to see how the customer service were going to react to this issue; more on that later.)
After that, I was able to play playing for real. Take a look at these screenshots:
- A straight flush was achieved while playing Jacks or Better.
- The visuals of the roulette game are quite appealing.
- After numerous turns at the Incredible Hulk slot machine, I came away with nothing.
- The visuals in this blackjack game produced by Playtech are very stunning.
- The Spider-Man game was enjoyable to play.
The welcome bonus for new players at William Hill Casino is equal to the amount that they deposit, up to a maximum of £150. If you want to play roulette games, Casino Hold’em or Pai-Gow, the requirement is 80x. If you want to play baccarat, blackjack games (excluding Blackjack Switch and Pontoon), craps, or video poker, the requirement is 100x. The wagering requirement for the bonus is 20 times the deposit plus the bonus. However, this only applies to scratch cards and slot machines.
For instance, if you deposited £150 and received a £150 bonus for doing so, you would need to deposit a total of £6000 on slot machines or scratch cards before you would be eligible to withdraw any profits you may have accumulated from playing with the bonus money. When the wagering restrictions are taken into consideration, this casino stands out as one of the best available at online casinos. The casino bonus may be used during the first month after registering for an account.
William Hill has only just created an online casino that is modeled by Macau. Prior to this, the company already operated a “normal” online casino as well as a casino that is modeled after Las Vegas. It is without a doubt an intriguing addition; it allows you to get the feeling of being in Macau from the comfort of your own home by providing games that are distinct from those that we are accustomed to seeing online; yeah, and they have live dealers as well.
The foyer of William Hill’s casino, which is designed in the manner of Macau.
The live dealer casino features a maximum betting limit of 10,000 euros and a minimum betting limit of 3 euros.
Assistance to Customers
Do you remember when the poker client froze on me and I was unable to act after posting the blinds? That cost me 0.05 euros in the game, and it cost me the poker. As was previously said, this was an excellent chance for me to evaluate the level of customer care that they provided, and so here I was, in the queue for their live chat support:
I waited for the chat to begin for very close to three quarters of a minute and twenty-five seconds.
After waiting for Kim, the chat support representative, to resolve the issue for 22 minutes, I was getting increasingly frustrated. After making sure everything was in order, Kim announced, “Based on my review of your account, I can confirm that there are no games that have been broken.”
Because I still had the screenshot in my possession, which you had seen previously in this piece, I was able to tie it to the conversation as evidence right away. After waiting another 15 minutes, Kim confirmed that she was still present before vanishing again for another 5 minutes, till…
Kim’s conclusion was reached after a duration of half an hour.
It seems like Kim has found a solution to the problem. If it hadn’t taken us half an hour to complete, I could be satisfied with the result. Oh, and the fact that the money was not deposited into my account at any point. I simply did not have it in me to initiate a fresh conversation in the chat room.
You may call the customer support department of William Hill by live chat, phone, e-mail, or even Twitter, and they are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As you can see, being available in a variety of methods is meaningless if the actual customer service experience is poor. For instance, many people criticize Pinnacle Sports for only providing help via e-mail; yet, I do not have any concerns about this because they are so good at what they do.
Conclusion
Bettors located in the United Kingdom will find the most success with WilliamHill.com. The casino and poker room at William Hill provided me with an experience that was below par, and as a result, I would not advise someone to join the site only for those two features. This site has a long history of being a trusted gambling operator, and being one of the largest online bookies in the United Kingdom, they are continually under the public spotlight, so I would feel secure betting money here.
