Ladbrokes Review: A 6.26% Football Overround, A £30 Free Bet Offer, And How It Differs From Sister Brand Coral
Ladbrokes and Coral share an owner and a platform. We compare their prices, offers and apps, using a 6.26% Premier League overround and the £5.9 million fine on Ladbrokes Coral's record.
Our score
7.2/10Rated 7.2 out of 10
Verdict
Ladbrokes is a competent mainstream UK bookmaker that does a few things better than Coral: it has an exchange, takes £5 deposits and offers more payment routes. It does a few things worse too, with a slower app and a thinner promotions calendar in the comparisons we read. Prices on football are average, with a 6.26% overround in one sample, behind bet365 and well ahead of William Hill. Choose it for racing features and the exchange, not for the sharpest football lines.
Best for
UK racing and football bettors who want an exchange option and £5 deposits
Best price on the favourite in 5 of 10 Premier League fixtures in one 2026 sample
Welcome offer of six £5 free bets, with no wagering requirement on winnings
Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing, plus extra places and Placepot guarantees
Visa and Mastercard withdrawals reported under four hours, with no withdrawal fee
App rated 4.7 on iOS from over 92,000 reviews, with 2FA and biometric login
What held it back
Average overround of 6.26% on Premier League results, above bet365 at 5.54%
Weaker prices on draws and outsiders than on favourites in the same sample
FootballGroundGuide scores the app below Coral's and calls it slow switching markets
Free bets expire after 7 days and stakes are not returned
Ladbrokes Coral paid £5.9 million in 2019 over money-laundering and safer-gambling failings
Ladbrokes and Coral are the same company wearing two shop fronts. Entain owns both, they run on a near-identical platform, and the useful question is the one a punter really asks at the till: if I have to pick one, which?
First, how we know what we know. Ladbrokes' own site returned errors to our automated requests, so we could not capture its screens or place wagers there. What follows rests on published, dated tests and comparisons, each cited, and we say where they disagree.
Ladbrokes against Coral, category by category
FootballGroundGuide scores the pair in seven categories and gives Coral a narrow overall win. Ladbrokes takes two: sportsbook and odds (5 against 4.5) because it runs a betting exchange with back and lay bets, and payment methods (5 against 4.5) because it accepts £5 deposits and offers Apple Pay and instant banking. Coral takes ongoing promotions, site design, customer support and the app. The welcome offers tie, with a £5 qualifying bet and free bets valid for 7 days.
These scores are one author's opinion, not measurements, and that page contradicts itself on Ladbrokes' bonus (£20 in the text, £30 in the box). Read it as a direction, not a result.
The price on football
The most useful number we found comes from TNT Sports. On Matchday 38 of the Premier League (23 May 2026), across 10 fixtures, Ladbrokes' average overround on the result market was 6.26 percent. bet365 averaged 5.54 and William Hill 8.29. Ladbrokes had the best favourite price in 5 of the 10 games and led on no draws or outsiders.
The overround is the bookmaker's built-in margin. A 6.26 percent figure means that if you backed every outcome in proportion you would hand over about £6 in every £106 staked. On a typical match, Ladbrokes was between the best and the worst. The pattern is the usual one: keen on the favourite, stingier everywhere else.
TNT Sports' Ladbrokes review, which supplied the 6.26% Premier League overround sample
The welcome offer, and the offers that last
Bet £5 at odds of 1/2 or longer and you receive six £5 free bets, £30 in total. Deposit within 14 days; free bets last 7 days; stakes are not returned; there is no wagering requirement on winnings. PayPal, Neteller, Paysafe and Skrill do not qualify.
Every free bet is worth less than its face value: because the stake is not returned, a £5 free bet at 2.0 pays £5 profit on a win, and a fair price for it is roughly 50 to 70 percent of £5. So £30 of bets is worth perhaps £15 to £20 in expected value. Still a decent return on a £5 stake.
The longer-running list is where Ladbrokes earns attention from racing fans: Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing from 8 am, Extra Place Races, a Placepot guarantee of £50,000 on weekdays and £150,000 on selected weekend days, and Bet Builder Boost of up to 12.5 percent. Streaming of UK racing and SIS greyhounds is free with a funded account; other races need a £1 qualifying bet.
A UK review page for Ladbrokes, repeating the bet £5 get £30 in free bets welcome offer
The app, and getting paid
TNT Sports reports 4.7 stars from over 92,000 iOS reviews and 4.1 from over 27,000 on Android, with full parity with desktop plus biometric login and 2FA. Its reviewer found Android slow to load at peak times, though the session never dropped. FootballGroundGuide also finds the app slow when switching markets or placing live bets. We would not call it a deal-breaker.
Withdrawals are quick. Visa and Mastercard Fast Withdrawals take under four hours, and the reviewer's £25 Visa withdrawal cleared in about three. The minimum is £5, or £10 by PayPal, and there is no fee. Cash out is full or partial up to £50,000 a bet, though not on Best Odds Guaranteed bets.
FootballGroundGuide's ranking of UK betting apps, which includes Ladbrokes and Coral
The record
Ladbrokes has been trading since 1886, and has belonged to Entain since March 2018. On July 31, 2019, the Gambling Commission required Ladbrokes Coral to pay £5.9 million for money-laundering and social responsibility failings between November 2014 and October 2017. In December 2018 it paid £1 million to the victims of a problem gambler, conditional, according to Wikipedia, on their not reporting it to the Commission.
Wikipedia's Ladbrokes article, the source for the company's history and regulatory sanctions
That is old history and the company is now regulated more tightly, but it does explain the identity checks you will meet.
Who should choose which
Pick Ladbrokes if you want an exchange, £5 deposits or the racing extras. Pick Coral if you care most about the app and a busier promotions calendar. If football prices are your priority, neither is the sharpest book: the sample puts bet365 ahead on margin.
We rate Ladbrokes 7.2. Betting carries real risk of loss, so only stake what you can lose. This review is not financial advice.
