McBookie

McBookie sister sites include Star Sports Bet, NE Bet and AK Bets.
McBookie (mcbookie.com) is operated by Star Racing Limited of Star House, 255 Old Shoreham Road, Hove, BN3 7GS, United Kingdom.

McBookie Sister Sites 2024

Star Sports Bet

It won’t have escaped your attention that McBookie belongs to a company called Star Racing Limited. Clearly, Star Sports Bet was named for the company that operates it, so that makes this the flagship of the McBookie sister sites. It’s also the only one of the operator’s sites that’s one hundred per cent owned and operated by Star Sports Racing. The three others are all held on a white-label basis, so there’s someone other than Star Racing involved in their operations. Star Sports is, like all the sites on this platform, a horse racing specialist. It’s a trusted source of news and tips for the horse racing world and always has special bets and promotions available for major annual events like the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National. There’s a casino attached to Star Sports Bet if you feel like using one, but the casino isn’t what draws people to the site.

AK Bets

AK Bets is the new kid on the block as far as the McBookie sister sites go, arriving on the Star Racing Limited platform in 2023. However, if you’re into horse racing to the extent that you attend in-person events occasionally, you might have come across the AK Bets name before. This fast-racing brand made its debut track-side at Killarney in July 2021, making a small loss on its first day of trading. Undeterred, AK Bets came back the next day and made a profit, going on to take more than seventy thousand bets within its first twelve months. That gave the AK Bets brand a sufficiently solid base to launch into the online world, and it hasn’t looked back since. It covers broadly the same ground as Star Sports Bet, but it looks a little more modern thanks to its black and burnt-orange colour scheme.

NE Bet

NE-Bet has been around since 2018. While you might be tempted to think that its name stands for “North East Bet,” it’s actually a play on words (or letters), with “NE Bet” meaning “Any Bet.” The idea is that this site will accept any bet you want to place, which isn’t quite true. It’ll take as many bets as any of the other McBookie sister sites, but it won’t let you place wagers on literally anything. The question of why it has an Illuminati-like symbol as its logo is a good one, and we don’t know the answer. We’re sure quite a few conspiracy theorists out there would be happy to take a stab, though. NE Bet doesn’t stick as closely to horse racing as the other brands on the Star Racing Limited platform, but it still offers plenty of racing coverage alongside dozens of other sports, including an unusually large collection of American sports.

Can McBookie Be Trusted?

★★★★★

McBookie is a 2-star trusted casino.

1. UKGC License	McBookie is listed on UK Gambling Commission licence 9177, as held by Star Racing Limited.
2. UKGC Fines	Star Racing Limited was fined £594,000 in April 2023 after breaking licence conditions that govern customer risk management and the prevention of money laundering.
3. Customer Service	No live support – only email or social media messaging.
4. Trustpilot Score	After over fifty reviews, McBookie has a poor rating of 1.9 out of 5.0 on Trustpilot.
5. Company Location	Star Racing Limited is based in Hove, England.
6. Visible Promo T&C’s	The promotions at McBookie have their terms and conditions listed properly.
7. Social Media Presence	McBookie stays busy and active on both Facebook and Twitter/X.com
8. Number of Sister Sites	The three McBookie sister sites are profiled above.
9. Games portfolio	McBookie comes with a casino, but is primarily a sports betting site and shouldn’t be assessed on game count.
10. Gamstop links	McBookie is a GamStop site, but the clickable GamStop logo in its footer is too small to be seen clearly.
Overall SCORE >	★★★★★ – 2/5 Stars

McBookie Review 2024

In its advertising, McBookie claims to be the betting site that puts Scottish sports first. There’s very little evidence of that in the material content of its website – it focuses on largely the same set of sports in the same order as its sister sites on the Star Racing Limited network. The site has been around since 2009 and reassures players who want to waste money that they can bet on the (retired) Andy Murray to win Wimbledon or Scotland to win the next World Cup. McBookie fails to offer the unique selling point it claims to offer, but does it deliver in other ways?

McBookie Welcome Offer

There’s a sign-up offer at McBookie, but it’s not one that you’re likely to write home about. New players who stake £5 on any sporting matter with odds of 2.0 or greater can claim £20 back in free bets courtesy of the site once their bet has been settled. The offer claims to be open only to players in Scotland. We’re surprised it’s legal to discriminate in that way, but we’ll take the site at its word.

Ongoing Promotions

If you want more promotions from McBookie, you’ll have to become a member of the Tartan Club. That’s a special VIP club that McBookie introduced in mid-2020 to encourage player loyalty. However, there’s no guaranteed way to become a member of the Tartan Club – the site specifies that entry comes via invitation only. We know that members get cashback coupons and regular free bets, but we don’t know how to join the part. Is this another promotion that’s only open to members in Scotland? We wouldn’t bet against it. We suspect that betting big and betting regularly is the easiest way to kick down the tartan door and join the club, though.

Pros and Cons of McBookie

Pros: McBookie strikes us as a good betting site for patriotic Scots. Everything on the site is dark blue and white everywhere you look. There are special promotions for Scots, and the site’s VIP loyalty rewards might be reserved for Scots, too. There are selected betting opportunities in politics, TV, special events, and sports.

Cons: If you’re not Scottish, you’re not going to get much from McBookie. There’s no welcome bonus to you, and it’s possible there aren’t any ongoing rewards either. The quality of customer support offered by the site is poor, and withdrawal options are severely limited. McBookie hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the sports betting world in the past decade and now looks and feels dated.

Top Games at McBookie

McBookie has a casino attached to it, but the casino isn’t what the site is really supposed to be used for. You can tell that from the fact that there aren’t any casino-specific promotions available on the site. If you really want to play casino games here, then you’ll find that the top titles are things like 20p Roulette, Gold Horsey Winner and Wild Gods, but the range is a little limited and bland. If you’re here to bet on sports, though, things are a little more exciting.

All of the McBookie sister sites focus on horse racing, and McBookie doesn’t break with that trend. Big race meets will always be front and centre in the middle of the site’s homepage, with priority given to whatever’s about to start. In-play betting is also a speciality here, with its own dedicated section on the homepage. The only sports that get highlighted sections at McBookie are horse racing and football, with everything else consigned to a long A-Z list, which runs from American Football down to Volleyball. Gaelic sports are covered in detail, which might be as close as McBookie gets to fulfilling its “Scottish sports first” pledge.

Withdrawal Processing and Support

You’ll recall that in the “pros and cons” section of this review, we said that McBookie has fallen behind the times. Its withdrawal processing policy is a big part of the reason why. You can’t use e-wallets here, and you can’t use fast bank transfer methods like Trustly, either. You’re stuck with debit cards or old-fashioned bank transfers, and you’ll be waiting between three to five days in most cases. There’s no way of getting a same-day withdrawal out of McBookie. You almost certainly won’t get your money the next day, either. This isn’t a betting site for people in a hurry.

Customer Support and Licensing

The provision of customer service at McBookie is another area in which the casino falls down. We’re well into the 2020s now, and every betting site ought to be providing customer support instantly, whether that’s over the phone or through live chat. McBookie doesn’t do that. Instead, players are asked to either send an email to [email protected] or use Twitter/X.com, which isn’t much use if you’re not a user of that particular social media platform.

McBookie is covered by the UK Gambling Commission licence that its operator, Star Racing Limited, holds under account number 9177. The same licence also covers the McBookie sister sites, but it isn’t a clean one. As per the information in the table further up this page, Star Racing Limited was fined £594,000 in April 2023 for breaking the conditions of its licence. It was also given a formal warning for the same offences and now operates with extra conditions attached to its licence.

McBookie – The Verdict

McBookie was probably a good betting site when it went live for the first time in 2009. The problem is that the online betting world has changed a lot since then, and McBookie hasn’t kept up. It isn’t fast enough to provide withdrawals and doesn’t offer enough options to support those withdrawals. Customer service isn’t as easy to access as it should be, and the lack of promotions available makes it comparatively weak when you look at the biggest and best brand names in the UK sports betting market. Unless you’re Scottish and can gain access to the promotions, we don’t think it’s likely that there’ll be much available at McBookie to interest you.

What are players saying about McBookie?

Here are our condensed / reader’s digest summaries of recent player reviews of McBookie.

• 10-Feb-2024 by John:
  Watch out for the slots at McBookie, they’re a trap! No bonus rounds and a pattern of losses – it’s just endless spinning leading nowhere. – source: Trustpilot
• 16-Jan-2024 by Mark B:
  This site’s a total flop – betting limits are laughable! Only allowing £2.50 on tennis and £7 on football? You’ve got to be kidding me. – source: Trustpilot
• 09-Jan-2024 by Mark:
  Utterly awful experience – they cap bets ridiculously low. Why even bother? Took my money elsewhere. Definitely a site to skip. – source: Trustpilot
• 31-Dec-2023 by Hoo Kh:
  I didn’t even deposit, and I’m glad I didn’t after seeing their sketchy withdrawal rules! They demand identity proof only when you want to withdraw – that’s not how it should work! – source: Trustpilot
• 29-Oct-2023 by Sonia:
  A right belter of a site – McBookie’s got it all. Snagged a few wins, and the cash was in my account in no time. Top marks from me. – source: Trustpilot
• 16-Oct-2024 by Wayne:
  The blackjack’s a complete joke – lost nearly every hand. And don’t get me started on the slots or dog house – a total waste of time and money. – source: Trustpilot
• 05-Oct-2024 by Richard:
  McBookie’s spot on – navigation’s a breeze and the cash shows up fast. Won on Saturday, and it was in the bank by Sunday. Keep it up! – source: Trustpilot
• 21-Sept-2023 by Marcus:
  Just signed up and already got my account suspended after placing a bet. What’s going on, McBookie? – source: Trustpilot
• 10-Sept-2023 by Alan:
  Total cowboys – they snatch your money no problem but cry fraud when you try to take out fifty quid. Save yourself the hassle and stay clear. – source: Trustpilot
• 17-Aug-2023 by Whisper:
  McBookie or McCrooked? Spent a fortune and got nothing back. The slots must be tampered with because there’s no way they’re playing fair. This needs investigating – it’s daylight robbery! – source: Trustpilot