Coral Bookmaker

Coral Bookmaker is UK based and the third biggest bookie in the UK with 1488 betting shops; Coral Bookmaker employs 8000 staff. 2009 turnover was over £2billion. Coral are a big firm and part of what, in bookmaking terms, was known as 'the big three.' The Coral bookmaker website is too complex and less easy to use that its rivals. Coral bookmaker is obviously a sound company for its customers to bet with. There is just the feeling that, for the moment at least, they simply go through the motions.

OPINION: Coral Bookmaker's online site is tricky to navigate and is not recommended for the first-time user. Coral's paltry £10 free bet is also uncompetitive. Instead we recommend Bet365 as our No.1 recommended online bookmaker. Bet365 is a huge and highly-acclaimed independent and offers an unbeatable £200 (or currency equivalent) of free bets to new clients. The excellent Bet365 bet on more sports than anyone and has superb poker and casino sections.

More about Coral Bookmaker and Gala Coral: Some of Corals cutting edge of old seems to have temporarily dissipated. The company has changed hands many times, and is now owned by some faceless private equity firms whose sole purpose is ultimately to find the most profitable exit route. While its bricks and mortar betting shop business may have been competently managed, Coral have made some poor decisions where its online business is concerned and strangely has done little to remedy its past mistakes. They seem to have lost some headway in the betting lands of the world wide web. It now seems to have several unconnected online brands with no strong identity.

Coral was purchased by Gala in 2005 to form Gala Coral. It brought the bricks and mortar, land-based bingo halls and casinos of Gala together with the high street betting shops and online presence of Coral. Now Gala Coral are proud possessors of one hundred and eighty bingo halls and thirty one casinos and over one and a half thousand betting retail shops. In addition there are a couple of dog tracks (Hove and Romford). Gala Coral has not always looked the most adept company. Their online presence is split between a couple of brands, which need bringing together and their bricks and mortar bingo operations have been badly undermined by the rapid growth of online bingo. Ironically it has not been Gala Coral who have exploited this. As for Coral bookmaker, well it is all a far cry from the day in 1926 that Joseph Kagarlitis changed his name to the more palatable Joe Coral and set up his bookmakers trade at the racetracks. He was at the forefront of the shop revolution and set up his first off-course Coral Bookmaker operation in the early 1940s.