Are you a massive horse racing fan but get frustrated when there are no races to bet on? Well do not fear as there are plenty of virtual horse racing betting sites to keep you interested.
This innovative idea is offered at nearly all the larger online bookmakers who provide odds and form for all of the horses in the race, and it is up to you to pick the winner, just like any regular horse race.
Check out the best betting sites with virtual horse racing, their new customer offers and top features.
Virtual Horse Racing Punters Look Out For…
- Event Frequency and Duration – how often are the races staged and how long do they last. Will they fit in with the times that you are able to bet?
- Graphics & Sounds – the quality of the graphics and sound in virtual racing can vary from site to site and will affect how immersive and enjoyable the experience is.
- Betting Console – this is the platform and setting through which you will watch the races and bet on them so the more user friendly the betting console, the better
- Markets Offered – does a site offer only win markets or are there other betting options, which can enhance your enjoyment.
- Sign Up Bonus – how attractive is a site’s welcome bonus, bearing in mind all the associated terms and conditions.
Best Bookmakers With Virtual Racing
Virtual Racing Sites Compared
Bookmaker | Tracks | Frequency | Graphics | Rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
Betvictor | 3 tracks | 3 mins | 1080p | |
Paddy Power | 3 tracks | 3 mins | 1080p | |
Betfred | 1 track | 3 mins | 1080p | |
Coral | 3 tracks | 5 mins | 720p | |
William Hill | 1 tracks | 5 mins | 720p |
Best Virtual Horse Racing Betting Sites: Top 10
The following is a list of the best sites for virtual horse racing betting – clicking the bookmaker name will take you to our review:
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Bet365
What are they like?
One of the biggest names in the UK gambling business, it is no surprise that Bet365 also rates highly when it comes to their range of virtual sports, which includes a popular virtual horse racing section.
The Bet365 virtual horse racing platform shows races from three different racecourses: Festival Downs, Victoria Park and Britannia Way, and the set-up features coverage of the races themselves in the center of the screen and the details of runners, riders, and prices below.
Races are scheduled to start ever three minutes and each event can feature between eight and fourteen runners, offering plenty of variety. Each race lasts between 30 and 40 seconds, so following the action never becomes boring, there is a 15 second recap after each race, confirming the results. After this, the screen refreshes to offer an overview of each of the runners in the next race.
While the betting console is not flashy, the Bet365 virtual horse racing experience is smooth, and the races themselves are graphically sophisticated, with the right balance of action and time between races.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Betvictor
What are they like?
A bookmaker who has recently added a really impressive virtual betting offering to their all-around excellent online betting service, punters who head to Betvictor looking for virtual horse racing betting will not be disappointed.
Whilst not run quite as frequently as the virtual races at some bookies, Betvictor have a new virtual horse race starting around every three minutes, and keep the action coming 24 hours a day and seven days a week. What’s more, just like betting on real events with Betvictor, the bookmaker make placing virtual horse racing bets really quick and easy.
To round off what is an outstanding virtual horse racing betting experience, Betvictor also have a virtual animated stream for each race which they run and couple the visuals of those streams with commentary that will have you feeling like you’re really trackside.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Paddy Power
What are they like?
Rounding out our trio of top online bookmakers who excel when it comes to offering their punters virtual horse racing betting options, Paddy Power are another betting provider whose virtual service lives up to the high reputation they’ve developed for real sports betting.
Just like Betvictor, Paddy Power start a new virtual horse race around every three minutes and continue to offer up the action throughout the day and night. That action, too, is presented by way of an animated virtual stream, complete with realistic and informative commentary to add to the excitement.
For each of Paddy Power’s many virtual horse races, what’s more, punters can chose from either race winner, forecast or tricast betting options, and all of those different betting alternatives are typically offered with very competitive odds.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Betfred
What are they like?
Betfred offers one of the best virtual horse racing products we’ve come across, even matching Bet365’s much-praised virtual service.
It offers both scheduled and on-demand events, ensuring that punters can bet on a race whenever they choose. Punters can access on-demand races offered by the Rush Horses GO! technology, developed by Inspired, which provides for a wide variety of scheduled events accessible from the virtual sports page.
The races themselves feature a random number of 8 to 16 runners racing on tracks such as Birchwood Downs and Dash Valley and for both On Demand and Scheduled events, virtual horse racing betting markets are offered for Forecast, Tricast, Each Way and Winner betting.
The individual Virtual Horse Racing events begin three minutes apart, with races typically lasting one minute, give or take a few seconds in either direction. The video feed shows race highlights and results for 30 seconds at the finish of each race before the start of a 2-minute break between races.
The Betfred virtual sports console, which also offers access to the site’s other virtual sports, including football and greyhound racing, presents the races against a grey background, and offers a clear, rich graphical presentation, making for one of the most immersive virtual racing experiences around.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Coral
What are they like?
As well as consistently rating as one of the best sites to head to for most real sports, Coral is also a great destination for virtual gambling. The bookmaker, after all, offer one of the most varied and comprehensive virtual betting offerings, amongst which is one of the very best virtual horse racing betting services.
Featuring not one but three different fictional racecourses, Coral’s virtual horse racing service sees a new race start basically every minute during the course of the day. That is by far the most virtual horse races run by any online bookmaker and is just one of a number of things that makes Coral up there with our favourite virtual horse racing betting sites.
Alongside having so many virtual races to bet on, Coral also feature a virtual stream to show the action of the race as it happens and twin the impressive graphics of those streams with entertaining and realistic sounding commentary. What’s more, as well as a race winner market, the bookmaker also allows punters to place forecast and tricast bets for each virtual race.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With William Hill
What are they like?
On their website, William Hill offers a virtual world of sports, although they are most known for racing. William Hill has been taking bets on horse racing for almost a century, and they understand what clients want in terms of virtual racing.
Like Betfred, they employ the services of Inspired for their broadcasts and races. Inspired specializes in creating virtual sports feeds and has some of the most stunning graphics you’ll ever see. Sometimes, it’s easy to believe you’re witnessing the actual thing.
Every minute or so, a race is held, with an equal number of flat, jump, and sprint races.
Hill’s is also known for its racing promotions, but these do only apply to real world races. They frequently run odds boosts, which allow you to improve the prices of your own bets.
The William Hill betting console is one of the most appealing of any virtual horse racing platforms, and it provides the perfect showcase for the Inspired graphics, creating the feel of a real-life horse racing broadcast.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Ladbrokes
What are they like?
The virtual horse racing options available at Ladbrokes outnumber those supplied by most online sportsbooks, with the exception of Bet365. With Ladbrokes, you can bet on two distinct types of horse racing: flat racing and jump racing and there is a particular focus on events such as the Virtual Grand National, which has its own area of the site.
Each virtual flat race is a loop around racecourses like Derby Downs and Chase Park with anywhere from 8 to 16 runners. Similarly, hurdle races involve 8–16 riders doing a lap around the Picket Fences racecourse, while Grand National races feature up to 40 horses competing at Laddies Leaps Lane.
Tricast, Forecast, and Win or Each Way betting markets are available in both virtual horse racing formats, just as they are in live events. Virtual Flat and Jump races are held at 3-minute intervals, with the period between starts broken down into a 1-minute pre-race line-up that includes a brief history of each horse’s performance, allowing bettors to make their selections and put bets appropriately. After the race, which lasts 60 seconds, race results are shown for 30 seconds, followed by a 30-second break before the start of the next race.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Unibet
What are they like?
Unibet is a newcomer to the virtual world, but they have a long history of providing high-quality sports betting online and a strong presence in real-life racing, so it’s no surprise they’ve quickly caught up with the virtual horse racing competition.
BetRadar, one of the largest virtual game creators, provides the feeds and streams for the Unibet site. Their product is presented in a very focused style, with an easy-to-use betting console that doesn’t require any scrolling and displays all of the information and video in one window. They also include more default choices, such as place markets, forecasts, and tricasts, all of which are displayed in the console.
The Unibet virtual racing platform offers both turf and all-weather tracks with between 8 and 14 runners in each race, so each way betting is always available. And, as with many bookies serious about virtuals, they offer regular free bets and prize tournaments as incentives to get involved with the action.
There is a lot to like about the Unibet virtual horse racing product, although we would welcome a higher frequency of races. The Unibet site states that races are offered ‘every few minutes’ which doesn’t compare well with some of the more frequent services offered by the other bookmakers here.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With Betfair
What are they like?
Betfair is of course known for its innovative betting exchange model, which has had a big impact on the gambling sector, and they have been relatively late to get into the world of virtual horse racing, which partly explains why they are not at the top end of this list.
The Betfair virtual horse racing section offers the full range of sprint, flat and jumps races, and races are held every two minutes, which is twice as long between races as some of the other bookmakers listed on this page, so those looking for more frequent action may not be impressed.
The virtual racing itself is solid, featuring races from such colourful venues as Puntwell Park, Neighmarket and Nagsville, and the virtual racing console is one of the best we’ve seen, providing plenty of colour and detail, with the racing itself taking center stage and clear tables showing the odds on the current race, next race and the result of the previous contest.
While the Betfair virtual racing product isn’t as comprehensive as those on offer at sites such as Bet365, it is something of an underrated platform, and well worth checking out.
Virtual Horse Racing Betting With 888Sport
What are they like?
888sport is another brand with an impressive track record. 888sport launched in 2008, and the company itself had been in business long before that, providing a range of other gambling opportunities for punters, so they have been able to call on that expertise in designing their sportsbook.
Nowadays, 888 provides an extremely well-rounded sportsbook for players, with virtual sports being one of the many special features. Virtual horse racing fans will be pleased to find both regular racing and trotting included, which helps add a degree of uniqueness to their virtual product.
The betting console for 888 Sport has some similarities to that provided by Bet365, though the background, in this case, is black with orange trim, in keeping with the brand colours.
The virtual races at 888 Sport are available on a 24/7 basis and the graphics are excellent, providing an enjoyable horse race watching experience. That said, the three-minute wait between races is a little longer than ideal. We also found the black background to the betting console a little wearing after a while, and some users may find it hard to use.
Virtual Racing: Bet Type FAQ
Whilst there are now a great many online bookmakers who do provide virtual horse racing betting options and some of them – most notably our top three – do offer a great service, the types of bet available remain fairly limited. In fact, as things stand at time of writing only three different virtual horse racing betting options are available anywhere. To ensure that you’re fully informed about virtual horse racing betting, we’re going to run through those three bet types right here.
Race Winner – There would hardly be any point of offering virtual horse racing if you didn’t let punters bet on the race winner, so all online bookmakers will feature the race winner market. Some, but not actually all bookmakers, will also offer each-way terms for betting on their virtual horse races and those terms (regarding how many places pay and at what rate) will differ from race to race.
Forecast – Most of the best virtual racing sites will let punters place forecast as well as race winner wagers. Forecast bets are bets which require a punter to predict the first two horses home in a given race, rather than just the winner and come in two variations. A straight forecast works exactly as we have just described, whilst a reverse forecast involves placing a two part bet on a chosen two horses finishing in either order as the first two in a race.
Tricast – The third and final type of virtual horse racing bet which is offered by some online bookmakers is a tricast bet. These wagers work in exactly the same way as forecast bets, except that you must predict the first three horses to finish, rather than just the first two. As such, the odds offered for tricast bets tend to be longer than for forecasts and considerably longer than simple race winner bets.
Each Way – Each way is another popular form of betting, essentially consisting of two bets: one to win, one to finish among the places, and is most widely used on selections at bigger odds.
FAQ
What is virtual horse racing?
It is a virtual version of real horse racing featuring digitally generated horse racing action, made available to horse racing punters for betting – real money wagers can be placed on race winner, forecast, tricast and each way bets.
Is virtual horse racing fixed?
Virtual horse racing operates according to the outputs of a Random Number Generator (RNG) like slot machine games, and as a result includes a house edge but are not fixed on a race by race basis.
How do you beat virtual horse racing?
Unlike real-world horse racing, it is not possible to ‘beat’ virtual horse racing. It is possible to have short term wins but in the long term, punters will always lose, as with the majority of casino style games – odds offered are slightly lower than the true chance of the horse winning so the house has an edge long term.
How do you bet on virtual horse racing?
Betting sites provide a handy betting console that enables you to bet on virtual horse racing quickly and easily, clicking on the relevant odds on the racecard adds the bet to your slip where you then set your stake and click place bet to strike the wager.
What’s the best virtual horse racing betting site?
Bet365 is the best virtual horse racing betting site – they offer race winner, each way, forecast and tricast bets on virtual horses and have the biggest welcome bonus when compared to all other bookies. Virtual racing is also available via their mobile app as well as desktop website.
Where can I bet on virtual horse racing?
Many bookmakers offer virtual horse racing, including Bet365, William Hill, Ladbrokes, Betfair, 888Sport, Paddy Power and Unibet, but as mentioned above, we feel that Bet365 is the best – offering frequent markets, great graphics and the biggest new customer bonus.