Special Bet 365 Bookmaker Review

Special Bet 365 Summary

Special Bet 365

• An eye-catching, colourful and well-designed sports betting site
• A massive variety of bets and loads of betting markets
• Plenty of value for money bets for all their sports
• An efficient and courteous customer services team

Bonuses? What Bonuses?

This won’t take very long at all… because there are none – not one! As tends to be the case with Blue Bird N.V sites, there are no promotions available for either new or existing customers. We contacted their customer services team to enquire and were told there will likely be some in the future – some already exist for the casino and poker rooms – but as things stand we are unable to report even a single bonus.

Well Worn Design, but Still Delivers the Goods

The lack of promotions and financial incentives were disappointing, but once you delve deeper into the site you find something that is actually pretty good. It has a striking design, which catches the eye through some colourful, slick graphics, and after only a few clicks you feel reassured that the whole thing is backed up by solid functionality. First impressions tell us it is going to offer the customer a pleasing betting experience.

Before we even enter the sports betting pages, the homepage sets the tone with a striking page-wide colour ad – for the English Premier League at the time of this review – and if its aim is to lure you into the site (which it is) then it does a good job. It also offers a one-click route through to the bookie, casinos, betting games and poker rooms.

Once inside the sports betting page – accessed by a click on the ‘Sports’ link – we find something that, for regular punters, has a very familiar look. They use the traditional three-column set-up, set against a black background with colourful graphics – a running theme throughout the site.

The left sidebar – as is now traditional – is used to list all of the betting sports on offer, with the numbers of markets available indicated against each line. The exact number and variety of sports and competitions is something we’ll come onto later in this review, but it’s a nicely designed column which, beyond the sport-by-sport listing, drills down to another one or two levels, depending on the sport.

If we take soccer, as the most obvious example, a click on the line opens a list (still within the sidebar) which is based on countries and continents, but also includes markets for international teams, international football, goalscorers, ‘special bets’ and specific competitions like the UEFA Champions League and the new UEFA Nations League.

But we’ll concentrate on the country-by-country listing, and a single click opens a sub-menu that lists all of the divisions available under that federation, sometimes even some amateur leagues. Only when you’ve drilled down to the base level does it fill the main body of the page with the betting data.

[Worth noting at this stage is Special Bet 365’s clever way of narrowing down the date of the match, or event, the punter wishes to bet on: at the top of the left sidebar is a gauge that allows you to choose the day of the week and also, if betting on same-day events, whether the start time is within one, three, six, nine or twelve hours.]

So, once you have selected a specific fixture, the main body of the page fills with all the betting information you would expect from an ambitious sports betting site. Each fixture is offered in a single line with some standard information – date of fixture, three-way bet, double chance, draw no bet and over/under 2.5 goals – with a number at the end of the line that indicates the number of different bets and markets available for that fixture (if clicked on it presents them all on the page). The odds are presented in decimal form, and on the same line is a stats icon that takes you to a Sportradar page where there are loads of statistics.

For live games, which are located via the ‘Live’ link at the top of the page, they offer just a single line of odds (with admittedly a huge selection available via a pull-down menu) but no stats, no match tracker, no graphics and no live streams to support the in-game action. While this is a little disappointing for those who love their live betting and is something of a rarity these days on betting sites, it is par for the course for Blue Bird N.V. sites.

The main body of the page automatically defaults to a listing of upcoming soccer fixtures, with what they see as the big game of the day presented at the top with a colourful graphic accompanied by a huge array of data and stats. It’s followed by games due to kick off later that same day in chronological order.

The right-hand column again follows tradition, with the betting slip at the top, which, after an in-house ad, is followed by a listing of ‘Latest Results’.

All in all, it’s a layout and design that we like – even if it does lack subtlety – but, most important of all, it’s intuitive and supported by some good, solid functionality.

Plenty of Depth, Detail, and Sports on Offer

Special Bet 365 offer their punters a good range of sports but manage to avoid the trap of trying to cover every single sport known to man (some do). By limiting their scope they allow themselves to concentrate on a select group of sports in far greater depth, in terms of detail and variety. In total, at the time of the review, they were offering 18 sports:

Soccer, Tennis, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, Football, Cycling, Handball, Boxing, UFC, Snooker, Darts, Motorsports

Within those selected 18 sports they go big, and offer their customers some quality in-depth betting coverage, encompassing all the big events and competitions you’d expect, but also fixtures from lower-level competitions that many fans won’t have heard of until they pop up as a betting option. To use soccer as the most obvious example again, they cover all the well-known competitions – UEFA Champions League, English Premier League, Spanish Primera Division, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1, Italian Serie A etc – but also many of the lesser known leagues, for example in Bosnia, Estonia, Bolivia and Venezuala.

They also offer some excellent betting options for the top American Sports – NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL – and do the same for the world’s top tennis competitions – the US Open, Wimbledon, French Open, ATP tour, WTA tour, Davis Cup etc. In addition they also offer some fine in-depth coverage of basketball and ice hockey beyond the famous American leagues, and lots of handball betting – a big European sport.

In terms of odds and value, with the industry standard being generally recognised as odds compiled between 105% and 106%, the fact that Special Bet 365 compile theirs to around 107% – a tad higher than is standard for the Blue Bird N.V. group – is still pretty good.

Phone Attached to Your Hand? Not Even a Problem

Unsurprisingly, Special Bet 365 is a fully optimized mobile site and anyone who prefers to bet on the go – either on smartphone, tablet or phablet – will find an excellent configuration that displays the same information as the desktop site, and which translates perfectly to English. It works equally well for both iOS and Android and generally offers a good betting experience in terms of both navigation and responsiveness. There were no apps available at the time of this review but given that the mobile optimization works nicely this is not a major problem. They can be also accessed via Facebook and Twitter.

Depositing? Withdrawing? – No Worries

Cash-out is an automated process on, so in the normal scheme of things they operate at the acceptable end of the scale – pay-outs generally being processed within 24 hours. At the time of this review, there were no negative comments to be found online – which is always a good sign.

Deposit Methods:

Payout Methods:

NOTE: The maximum withdrawal limit is 10,000 euros per month.

Italy Focused Maybe but Still Available to All

The site is aimed at the Italian market, hence why it defaults to Italian, but it’s also available to the European and worldwide market, with generally few restrictions. Their customer services confirmed that if a punter can access the site and provide all of the information required to set up an account, then they can bet on the site, and that includes punters from the US and UK. It uses the Euro as its base currency.

Safe, Secure and Responsible – a Fine Combination

A good gauge of a site’s reliability and security is an online search, and so we are happy to report we found no negativity at all when we searched Special Bet 365. Also, there was nothing to suggest the site was anything but a safe and secure place to bet when we did our review, and we felt throughout it was a site to be trusted.

Our dealings with their customer services revealed an efficient, knowledgeable and courteous team. We contacted them through the simple live chat facility and all our queries were answered accurately and swiftly. There is also an email address (info@bluebird-nv.com) where customers can send questions and queries.

In addition, as is consistent with sites from the Blue Bird N V group, we were happy to discover that Special Bet 365 do take seriously their responsible gambling duties and devote a section at the foot of the site to the subject. They reiterate how they want their customers to have fun with their betting but always within safe parameters and urge them never to stretch themselves beyond their financial means.

They encourage the use of gambling limits, which their customer services team are happy to help enforce, and ask that anyone who believes they could be showing signs of problem gambling to contact them as soon as possible.

Our Verdict

We were disappointed by the lack of bonuses on offer but felt this was compensated for by some good value odds. With their odds being compiled to around 107%, there is some good value to be had on Special Bet 365.

The site itself is a good one, with a nice design and good functionality that we found to be both intuitive and quick. The lack of a live match tracker was a bit of a disappointment.

Special Bet 365 isn’t a poor site by any means, but if you want a good welcome bonus check out our best bookmakers instead.