Tote IE Review and Welcome Bonus

Full Tote Bookmaker Review

The Tote is iconic in UK pool betting, praised by both users and the OLBG team, especially for its “Tote” pool bets like Placepot, Scoop6 and Ten to Follow, and its Tote Guarantee ensures you’ll always get at least the Starting Price (SP) on win bets. It also offers a competitive welcome sign-up promotion (Bet £10, use code B10G50 to receive £20 Tote Credit + £10 Sports Bet + 2 × £5 Sports Acca + 50 Free Spins), plus live streaming on all UK & Irish horse racing and a full racing menu.

Verification at The Tote is efficient, with standard payment methods (debit cards and Apple Pay), instant deposits, withdrawals within around 15 minutes for some methods (Visa), and customer support via phone, live chat and email.

Tote is licensed with remote licence number 1016589, offering regulated protection for its customers.

Luke Bradshaw Lee

- Your Sports Betting Guide 👍

In this Tote review, I spotlight its pool betting strength, SP guarantee, generous sign-up bonus, fast payouts, and secure UKGC licensing. Along with the expert OLBG team, we'll assess Tote's strengths and weaknesses to provide a thorough, transparent review.

• Established in 1928

• TDCO Ltd

• Licence number - 1016589

• Payment Options include: PayPal, Debit cards

• Withdrawal Time: Instant in some cases

• Customer Fund Segregation Rating: Strong

• Mobile Compatible: ✅

• Customer Support: 24 hours

Advantages and Disadvantages

All explained in greater detail in this review, these pros and cons allow users to scan and understand where the strengths lie quickly.

First Impression of Tote

My First Impressions

Tote’s focus remains racing. The racing section of the site is its own thing, with the sportsbook – with all the other sports aside from horse racing – fall under the “Sports” tab. Once in the Sports part of the site it’s much like any other bookmaker in terms of product and style, but the Racing section offers far more than just standard horse racing betting.

- Luke Bradshaw Lee, - Your Sports Betting Guide 👍

Live Betting

This is very limited. At the time of review there is some in-play betting for tennis and cricket. At other bookies, at the same time, there’s football, baseball, basketball, cycling and plenty more. 

Live Streaming

You can watch all UK and Irish racing live on Tote.co.uk without placing a bet. You just need to log in to your account. In addition to that, and you won’t get this in many other places, you can watch races from the rest of the world – France, Italy, the US, Australia, South Africa and more – live on the site.

🏇 Horse Racing

The fact of the matter is, if you want a horse racing betting site, while you may have your favourite bookie app installed, and perhaps an Exchange account for laying or trading, you should also have a Tote account for all of the extra things it can provide that no other betting site will. Tote is a must-have for serious horse racing punters, bringing pool betting up to date for horse racing (and football).

Pool betting involves all bets placed on an event being “pooled” together, hence the name. The odds are then determined by the total amount wagered on each possible outcome, rather than being set by bookmakers. It’s important to remember that the more predictable the outcome, the more winners there will be so the lower the payout will be. For a full rundown head to our comprehensive guide to tote betting.

Promotions

Tote’s promotions are all horse racing based and are far more inventive than your general bookie promo stuff. Tote Ten To Follow is a season-long bet whereby you select a stable of ten horses, which can potentially score you points throughout the season each time they run. You are placed in a tournament table, which is constantly updated. You can check your stable’s progress, and even win monthly prizes for topping tables, as well as the jackpot for having the best performing stable at the end of the season.

Their Stayers Club rewards regular bettors. If you place six bets in a week you’ll earn a free Stayers Credit and receive exclusive offers.

⚽ Football Betting

You won’t find the same breadth of competitions here as most other bookmakers. There is international stuff, European competitions, and the English professional leagues. On top of that there is the top flight for the major European countries and some MLS stuff. So not nearly as much as most other bookies, but don’t let that cloud your judgement because if you head to a game you’ll find plenty of markets per match – the Champions ones I viewed had everything you’d want. 

You can see in the chart below, in greater detail, why certain bookies rank among the top for football betting sites, and what Tote is up against.

Bet Builder 

There’s a bet builder option at Tote, and it’s pretty good. They could maybe add a few more options per game but generally this isn’t bad at all. There are match markets, goal markets, cards and a few more. Ideally I’d like a few more player markets because although there are goalscorer markets, there’s no foul committed, tackles made or assists.

🇺🇸 US Sports Betting

A full range of American Sports is available. We’ll check out the major leagues, but also look into the sports further down the pyramid and, as well as across the globe. 

🏈 American Football Betting

When you land on an American football section, you want to see game lines, with spread, total and moneyline markets right there. That’s exactly what you see at Tote. There’s no NFL games at the time of this review but it’s great to see plenty of markets to bet on still. There are odds on theNFL Draft, but in addition to that, outrights on pretty much every market possible, from outright winners, to player props, win totals and whether teams will make the play-offs.

It’s worth checking out our best NFL betting sites to see how Tote compares. 

🏀 Basketball Betting

There is a huge array of leagues on offer at Tote. Of course there is the NBA, and it’s good that there are some game odds already, alongside the outrights for Championships and Division winners, but on top of that there is a very good range in world leagues. Basketball punters can choose from matches in Sweden, Turkey, Colombia, Australia, Greece, Spain and a load more on top of that. It’s pretty impressive.

Keep tabs on the top basketball betting sites though, to see if they make it onto our list.

⚾ Baseball Betting

The MLB, understandably, is a big part of Tote’s baseball betting, but they also have markets for the Japanese and South Korean leagues. The markets, and the odds, especially on the outrights, appear to be really good. The MLB season hasn’t quite started at the time of writing, but there is an impressive amount of markets here, such as individual awards and the like. Keep tabs on the top baseball betting sites though, to see if they make it onto our list.

🏒 Ice Hockey Betting

The NHL takes up the majority of real estate here, as one would expect. But there are also some Danish, Polish, and Kazakh fixtures included, among others. I selected an upcoming NHL game and there is a really impressive number of markets available – more than pretty most other sportsbooks I’d wager. For the lesser leagues that reduces a bit more, which makes sense. Overall, I think this is impressive from Tote

🎯 Darts Betting

Matthew Edgar

- Your Darts Betting Guide 👍

Compared to the very darts betting sites in the country, Tote has some strengths and weaknesses. The outrights on future events are very good, but once you click through to the match ups, this then falls down a fair bit and there is no option for bet builders. Maybe they increase the market number and variety as it gets nearer to the time of the match, but I’d ideally like to see more earlier on.

Compare to the best darts betting sites.

Snooker Betting

Steve Madgwick

Editor-In-Chief

As with the best snooker betting sites, there are markets for a couple of different competitions, including the World Championships and the Champions League. At the time of the review we’re in the middle of the latter, which I can’t live stream unfortunately, but I do like the amount of markets per match up that are on offer here, and generally the odds are pretty good.

Compare to the best snooker betting sites.

🏉 Rugby Betting (Union & League)

By Luke Bradshaw Lee - This has pretty much every competition going – domestic and international – that I'd hope to wager on, which is brilliant. And that goes for rugby league as well as union. If I were being very picky it would be great to see the Japanese league here, given its emergence and big name players plying their trade there, but that is nit-picking because overall this is excellent event coverage. What lets it down, and seems different to other sports at Tote, is the market depth per game isn’t great. If there was more I’d absolutely see them making OLBG’s best rugby betting sites.

🏏 Cricket Betting

James Banting

Expert Guide

If there were anything in the way of cricket promotions, or if the odds were a little better, I could see Tote being one of our Top 10 cricket betting sites. Overall, it’s pretty nice because Tote offers all the competitions that I’d expect to see, plus a few more on top of that – not everywhere covers the Oman D10 League, for example. And I do love how many markets are available here for each game, but the value here is just okay.

We list the best cricket betting sites here.

🎾 Tennis Betting

By James Banting - At the time I reviewed their tennis section, Tote had 317 different tennis games to bet on – that’s very impressive indeed. These games obviously cover the globe, Grand Slams right down to smaller Challenger events. The odds are fine, but there’s plenty of markets, including in-play markets. There’s no live streaming, but the stats that feature are pretty good. See if they make it into the top tennis betting sites on OLBG.

🏌️ Golf Betting

By James Banting - Tote’s golf offering is a tad disappointing. There are only markets for the majors and the Ryder Cup, and those are just basic outrights. There are a few smaller tournaments happening right now, or due to start soon, such as the Phoenix Open, Astara Championship or Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, and none of these are listed in any capacity. I’d like to see a good bit more for me to consider using them consistently. 

🏎️ Motorsports Betting

Andy Powell

Expert Guide

The motor sports section here is great. Everything is it’s own thing, rather than housed under a “motor sports” banner, but I can see Formula 1, obviously, on top of Speedway and NASCAR racing. There’s nothing in the way of bikes, such as MotoGP, which is a little annoying, but, that said, I am impressed with the detail in the Formula 1 markets.

Compare to the best motorsport betting sites.

🥊 Boxing Betting

Frank Monkhouse

- Your Boxing Betting Guide 👍

There’s plenty of boxing bouts to get stuck into here, and the markets look dependent on how far in advance they are. Those this weekend and over the next few weeks have an okay offering, whereas the further away they get the less markets on offer. That’s fair enough, and I wouldn’t expect to find round by round and the like for fights that are months away, but I would definitely like more options for big fights happening this week, and that’s definitely limited based on my experience with Tote.

Compare to the best boxing betting sites.

Opening Process

A reassuringly easy process. At the top-right of the screen Tote has their “Join” button. Bettors just need to select this and follow the simple steps as guided through. You’ll be asked for the usual information – name, date of birth, address etc – and once complete be sent a verification email. Clicking this from your inbox will redirect you to the site, and then you’re free to get betting.

Navigation and user experience [desktop v mobile]

The navigation, and the general app design is very good. You can look at it two ways: as a complete betting novice, or as an experienced bettor who has accounts elsewhere. 

For the former, everything would feel intuitive. There’s a menu of sports down the left hand side, and offers down the right, with the main panel of markets front and centre. If you're struggling or lost at any point, there’s a search function in the top left of the screen that will allow you to immediately find where you’re going (or see that it's not there and stop your search).

For the experienced bettor, everything will feel familiar. There’s no attempt to jazz things up for the sake of being different – this is how you’d want it, and what you’ll be used to from a number of other sportsbooks.

Placing a bet

This section should only really highlight if there are issues, as the process is almost identical on every site. Within a few minutes of signing up to Tote I placed a couple of bets on different sports, one of which took advantage of the welcome offer, and I used their bet builder feature, which worked well. 

Managing your account

As mentioned above, the design really helps this along. On the desktop version, it’s stuff to the  left of the screen. On the app, it’s all at the bottom, with just the login at the top. I haven’t experienced any issues logging in, or finding customer service options, either. Overall, it feels like Tote has got this part nailed.

Responsible Gambling Features

You can set your deposit limit while you’re signing up; long before you’ve got close to actually making a bet. 

There is also a Settings tab at the bottom of the page, no matter what page you’re on, that allows you to make changes to limits, as well as odds formats, or odds change preferences/notifications.

There are the following measures within its functionality: 

• Deposit Limit

• Loss Limit

• Session Limit

• Wagering Limits

• Reality Check

• Time-Out

• Self-Exclusion

• Support Groups & Organisations

• Advice on Keeping in Control

• Parental Controls

• Self-Assessment

Bookie Review Expert Contributing Team

Opinion, research and data collection for this review by

• James Banting (Horse Racing, Golf and Tennis)

• Nigel Skinner (Football and Politics), 

• Matt Edgar (Darts)

• Frank Monkhouse (Boxing)

• Andrew Powell (Horse Racing, Ice Hockey and Motor Sports)

• Jake Ashton (Entertainment and Specials)

🛂 Fact Checked - Sam Darkens - Commercial Manager

✍️ Written by - Luke Bradshaw Lee - Commercial Content Manager

✏️📚 - Steve Madgwick - Editor-In-Chief