Coral Review
Accredited status revoked - non responsive to player issues
By Casinomeister, Last updated Dec 17, 2023
Casinomeister's Verdict
Our Coral casino reviews simple: I cannot recommend them. We have complaints in our forum of non-responsive support staff at the casino, and their casino representative is not active either—caveat emptor.
Ethically challenged
First Impression
Coral is one of the largest online betting sites on the planet, and it was created in 2005 when Gala Coral merged with Coral Eurobet; back then, the company focused mainly on sports betting. Today, they have a strong presence in the United Kingdom, operating some 1800 betting shops and kiosks throughout the country as well as running one of the most popular online casinos.
Of course, as is the case with almost all of the big bookmaker websites, Coral Casino isn’t without its flaws – and while they used to be an accredited casino here at Casinomeister, they decided to go AWOL, which means we had no choice but to remove them from our Accredited section.
From there, it got worse. This company has been repeatedly fined by the UKGC for gross neglect of their player safety regulations. Therefore, we cannot recommend this casino to anyone.
Want an awesome UK-facing casino to play at instead? Lottomart is an award-winning casino at Casinomeister.
Pros
Huge massive company
Pretty colours
Can be found in the ocean and on every street corner.
Cons
Huge massive company
English Only
Asleep at the wheel
Top 5 casinos 
BONUSES AND PROMOTIONS
Surprisingly, given their size, Coral Casino doesn’t actually offer the most impressive selection of bonuses – and their lack of a VIP program is quite disappointing, we feel. Because of this, we’re going to look at the main welcome bonuses available to new players below, of which there are a few different types.
Bet $5 Get $20
This has, for a long time, been Coral Casino’s signature welcome bonus, and all new players who make a real money deposit of five dollars or more are then eligible to receive a free $20 bet which can be used in the sports book. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that this $20 free bet does not carry any wagering requirements, and this means that any winnings from the free bets are accredited to your account as real cash.
However, you do not get the $20 free bet back – so, for example, if you wagered the $20 on an even money shot and it won, you would win $20 – you don’t actually get the cash of the bet itself.
Welcome Offer
In recent years, Coral Casino has started to push the online gaming side of its operation more than ever before and to complement this initiative. They have started to offer a casino-specific welcome bonus. This is delivered in the form of a $50 free bet, and in order to claim this, you just need to make a deposit of $10 or more. You can then use the bonus money on pretty much any casino games you like, with the exclusion of certain casino table games and progressive jackpot slots.
The wagering requirements from the $50 bonus are relatively generous, and you only need to wager the bonus funds a total of 24 times before you are able to cash it out – but a lot better than what you typically see at most online casinos.
Poker Welcome Bonus
Coral Casino has also started to push their poker room, and while it is not yet up to the same standards as, say, PokerStars, it is pretty popular among players. If you are new to the site and want to claim a poker bonus, they offer $20 in free tournament tickets simply for signing up for an account and making a deposit of five dollars or more.
Once you have made your first deposit, the free tournament tickets will automatically be credited to your account. If you want to know more about the specific tournaments you can enter using these tickets – and the potential prizes that can be won as a result of it – to be head over to Coral Casino’s poker room, head to the promotions page and have a read through the full terms and conditions.
Mobile Bonus
Coral Casino has spent a significant amount of time, effort and money on developing its mobile casino app, and one of the ways in which they are trying to push new players to download this app is by offering a mobile-only bonus. If you are a new player to Coral Casino and choose to play through the mobile casino app, you can claim a $25 bonus simply for depositing $10 or more.
Like the main casino welcome bonus, this deposit bonus carries wagering requirements of 24X, and again, this is actually pretty good, ensuring you stand a relatively good chance of being able to convert the bonus into real, withdrawable cash.
Sign up screenshots
BANKING AND PAYMENT METHODS
Coral Casino offers a fantastic range of banking and payment methods for players to utilize. They accept all major credit and debit cards – although those in the U.K. can no longer deposit money using credit cards due to UKGC regulations.
In addition to all fees and MasterCard debit and credit cards, Coral Casino also accepts a number of EWallets, including PayPal, Skrill and Neteller. We are always happy when we see PayPal offered as a payment option at an online casino as a means that players can enjoy instant and fee-free deposits and withdrawals.
Deposits at Coral Casino are instant, and the casino does not charge any fees when you are making a deposit. The minimum deposit varies depending on which payment method you are using, but most of the banking options have a minimum deposit of just five dollars; PayPal, however, has a minimum deposit of $10, and if you choose to use instant banking, the minimum deposit is $20.
Coral Casino Withdrawal Speed
Coral Casino processes withdrawals in 12 hours. In many cases, players find their withdrawals processed in just a few hours – and when you are using an e-wallet like PayPal or Skrill, this means that you can access your funds almost immediately – it’s incredibly rare that you need to wait more than one working day to receive your funds.
Average Based on 2 real users
Responsible gaming
One of the things that the UKGC should be given credit for – at least according to most iGaming experts – is that they make their licensees stick to incredibly strict responsible gambling measures. These measures are designed to protect you, the player, from spending more than you can afford at an online casino like Coral Casino.
Responsible gambling at Coral Casino is taken very seriously. If you head to the responsible gambling page – linked to in the footer section of their website – you can find a ton of external resources, including links to gambling help charities and organizations that you can contact if you feel you might have an online gambling problem.
In addition to this, Coral Casino also offers all players the ability to set up a number of different responsible gambling tools and implement limits on your account – and all of these responsible gambling features can be set up on your own, which means you do not have to contact a member of the casino’s customer support team to get them set up on your account.
Without a doubt, the most common responsible gambling tool used by players at online casinos is the deposit limit – and this allows you to set an amount of money that you can deposit on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Once you have surpassed this limit, you will no longer be able to deposit any more money into your casino account until the period of time you set has passed – and this makes it very hard to gamble more than you can afford to lose, provided you have set a limit up in accordance with your finances.
Coral Casino also allows you to set a loss limit, and a time session limit – and if you feel that you need to take a complete break from online gambling, you can also choose to take a short timeout which blocks access to your account for between 24 hours and 30 days.
If you truly feel that online gambling is taking over your life and you have no control, you can also opt into the UK GAMSTOP scheme. This is a revolutionary new scheme that allows you to self-exclude from every online casino with a U.K. license – and it lets you block access to all online casino accounts you have, as well as those you may be tempted to create in the future, within just about 10 minutes. Be aware, however, that this is a non-reversible action, and once you do it, you will not be able to reverse it until the period of time you chose has passed.
Customer support
As such a large national brand, Coral Casino realizes the importance of offering players round-the-clock customer support, and that’s why their customer support representatives can be reached 24 days, seven days a week. There are a few different ways that you can contact customer support at Coral Casino, and the easiest way is to use the live chat system.
If you’ve read any of the other casino reviews here on Casinomeister, you will probably notice that we are big fans of live chat technology. Live chat allows you to quickly hop on to a special chat window and speak with a trained representative from the customer support team in real-time. It means that you can talk to a member of the Coral Casino team directly from your Internet browser in the same way as if you were talking to a friend on, say, Facebook messenger.
However, connecting to the live chat team at Coral Casino is a little bit trickier than most sites, as you do need to first head to the main support page and answer a few questions about the issues you’re encountering. Once you have done so, you will be automatically connected to a suitable member of staff, and you can then talk with them in real-time until your problem or query is resolved.
Coral Casino also runs a phone support system which also operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Calls made to the phone support system are free from U.K. landlines, although those from outside of the U.K. may end up paying for the call. To always be wary of this.
In addition, to live chat and phone support, Coral Casino also offers support via email. Of course, this is nothing special, and virtually every online casino in the world offers email support – although to give credit where credit is due, Coral Casino typically responds to all emails within 4 to 6 hours, so you rarely have to wait long for your email to receive a response.
KYC
As a UK-licensed casino, Coral Casino has to adhere to incredibly strict regulations surrounding customer identity checks. Due to new legislation brought in by the UKGC, all U.K. players that join Coral Casino are required to verify their identity before they are able to begin playing any real money games at the casino – and even before they’re able to deposit money.
If you are indeed from the U.K. before your Coral account is open, you will need to pass an identity check – known more commonly as a Know Your Customer check – and you will first need to begin by uploading proof of your name and address. Thankfully, Coral Casino uses state-of-the-art technology which can, in most circumstances, verify your identity automatically. This means the entire process can be completed within a matter of minutes, saving you from having to wait for a member of the team to manually review your documents.
However, the UKGC has also brought in even stricter regulations surrounding the source of your wealth – and this is a very controversial move that now requires online casinos operating in the U.K. to verify where its players are getting their money from. This means that after you reach a certain threshold – a threshold which, by the way, is not made public – Coral Casino can ask you to upload copies of your bank statements and even ask for you to show them your payslips to prove where the money you are gambling with is coming from.
Rest assured that Coral Casino are not running these source of wealth checks because they want to; the UKGC has been accused of being incredibly out of touch with online gambling, and virtually no players or operators are on board with these checks in the slightest. However, it is now the unfortunate reality of playing at online casinos located in the U.K. – so you don’t really have much of a choice.
Website Experience and Features
Desktop and Mobile Gaming
Coral Casino, as one of the world’s largest online gambling websites, has put a lot of time, effort and money into developing their desktop and mobile websites. When we were writing this review, we found both to be incredibly easy to use, easy to navigate and user-friendly.
The desktop version of the website is very fast, and it is easy to work your way around. Although things can get a little confusing inside the cashier area and my account section, we feel some modernization is needed in these areas.
When it comes to their mobile casino, coral has developed a downloadable mobile casino app which is available in the Apple and Google stores, and it is free to download. If you plan to play on mobile devices regularly, we would recommend downloading it as it offers a streamlined and enhanced gaming experience.
Brand games
Providers
In the past, Coral Casino was powered entirely by Playtech – although they have partnered up with other game developers to ensure that you can enjoy a more diverse range of Coral casino games and video slots. Below, we’re going to look at some of the most popular casino games you will find available at Coral Casino.
Slots
Video slots are, by far, the most popular type of casino game you will find at Coral Casino, and there are almost a thousand different slot games to choose from when browsing the casino’s game library.
Many of the video slots can be played for as little as $0.10 per spin, and this ensures that you are able to enjoy slots that fit your particular budget.
Live Dealer Games
There is a vast live dealer casino at Coral Casino that is powered by Playtech. While Playtech may not be as well-known as Evolution Gaming or NetEnt when it comes to Coral live casino dealer games, they do a pretty good job and allow you to enjoy a vast selection of titles, including everything from Roulette and Blackjack to wheel-of-fortune style games and other game show creations.
All of the live dealer games at Coral Casino can be found on the live casino page which has its dedicated tab on the main site navigation menu.
Table Games and Video Poker
You’ll find a small but sufficient number of casino table games at Coral Casino with many classics like European Roulette and Vegas Blackjack on offer along with some less common titles like VIP Baccarat, Tequila Poker and Sic Bo.
You can also play table games such as 101 Roulette and even access live games such as Live Blackjack and Live Baccarat.
When it comes to video poker, the site does a pretty good job of making sure that players can access whatever they want. You will be able to play everything from Aces and Faces, Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild to All American Video Poker and 2 Ways Royal.
Progressive jackpots
As a fantastic assortment of progressive jackpot games at Coral Casino, many of these games allow you to win millions of dollars – one of the benefits of playing at a major casino brand like Coral. Not only do you have access to these massive jackpot games, but you also don’t have to worry about getting paid out in small increments, as is the case at some of the smaller, shadier casinos.
You will find more than 50 different progressive jackpot games at Coral Casino and this includes both video slots and casino table games.
About the Team and History
Coral was established in 2002, and it is one of the U.K.’s biggest betting shops, coming in slightly behind Paddy Power and Betfred – although in terms of their land-based market, they dominate in the U.K. space operating more than 1800 betting shops up and down the country.
The online side of their operation is known as coral online, and the online casino is licensed in the U.K. by the U.K. gambling commission and also in Gibraltar by the Gibraltar authorities.
While Coral Casino used to be a Playtech-powered casino – and it still is today in some ways – the site has now expanded into other areas. It has partnered up with many other game developers meaning this is not some cookie-cutter bookmaker site with the same games as all of the others that we are used to seeing maybe 10 years ago.
Complaints and Track Record
As with most of the bigger online casino sites, Coral gets slated quite a bit in the forum – and below, we’ll show you what players are saying. Here’s Shadow123, who’s complaining about their withdrawal:
“Coral seems to be going backwards big time and seems to be doing everything to ignore responsible gaming. I may be wrong here, but up to a couple of days ago, withdrawals were processed within 12 hours.
They did a site revamp, and now on withdrawal, they send an email saying that they do internal reviews on all withdrawals, which can take up to 3 days, during which time the funds are reversible. The bank processing then takes another 1 to 2 business days.
In addition, they show a big banner if you have no funds when you log in asking if you want to deposit, and when playing a game, show another when your funds are getting low again asking if you want to deposit—made a withdrawal last night, which was still reversible at lunchtime. I was determined not to reverse but got involved in bloody monopoly mega ways and did end up reversing it, which in the end was a good move and have now withdrawn again. This time hell will freeze over before I reverse.
It’s time the UKGC clamped down on this shit, it’s just a cynical move to get players to reverse, and it’s been allowed to go on for far too long.”
And here’s a rather worrying post from Colinsunderland about Coral offering players lower RTP if they’re from the U.K.:
“Just a heads up, both these (and presumably Ladbrokes) are using the lower RTP settings on Red Tiger and Play N Go (only Coral have PnG). Play N Go at Coral are now set to the 94% settings. Last week they were at 96%.”
And here’s Bryan’s announcement when they were officially removed from the Accredited section:
“This week, Coral Casino was removed from the Accredited Casino section and transferred to the Grey Zone Casinos section. The reason for this was their non-participation in the forum by not responding to P.M.s. The thread is here: Coral Casino. Accredited Casinos are required to have an active rep in the forum who can answer questions, participate with the membership, or resolve issues if and when they pop up. When Anthony left as a Coral rep, the forum was placed on a lower priority task, and they had more important things to deal with. That’s fine, but if this was the case, I should have been informed – but then again – low priority.
Accredited Casinos that do not adhere to our standards disrespect not only the Casinomeister brand but also reflect a negative light on those casinos who bust their ass keeping an active role in our community. It’s a shame that Coral Casino has become a behemoth – community forums are just not their cup o’ tea.
Coral Casino is a pretty good casino – I have to say, but if you have difficulties with their customer support, you may have issues there.”
Casino Facts
| Founded | 2001 |
| Accredited at Casinomeister | Suspended |
| Jurisdictions | Gibraltar |
| Casino representative | Coral Support |
| Affiliate program | GC Affiliates |
| Is this casino certified at Casinomeister | No |
| Payout time | 24 hrs |
| Reverse time | 24 hrs |
| Payout limits | None |
| Weekend payouts | Yes |
| Locks withdrawals | No |
The man with the plan here at Casinomeister. Bryan Bailey has been running Casinomeister since its launch in June of 1998. He has watched the industry grow from its primeval stage to what it is now. The Meister has attended nearly 100 conferences in the past 20 years and has either been a speaker or a panel moderator for at least 60 events. He has always been an advocate of fairness and reason and is known to like German beer, a good Scotch, and astrophotography.
bryan@casinomeister.com
