What Are My Virtual Sports Betting Options At Bet365 Sport?

Have you checked out bet365’s Virtual Sports offerings recently? If not, why not?

While sports are undeniably popular, betting on real-life events can sometimes feel like a drag.

Outcomes can take hours or even days, officials’ decisions can ruin even the best thought-out bets, and events are only held at specific times. Sometimes, it can be difficult to fit in a sporting event to the time you are free to enjoy it and wager on it.

However, there’s now an exciting alternative at bet365 Sports available right now, or indeed at any time it is convenient: Virtual Sports.

What are Virtual Sports and how do they work?

Virtual Sports are computer simulations of a number of different sports which have been designed to work within certain parameters to allow for a semi-realistic outcome for the event.

Built around the sporting simulation is a betting service which allows you to place bets on the event. What bets these are depends on the event itself.

An event begins with a period before the start when punters can place a bet, or bets on the available markets. This lasts for approximately a minute to 90 seconds in length. Once the betting period ends, the simulation of the event starts.

When the simulation of the event starts, the viewer can see the sporting event played out ‘virtually’ on screen, with a rudimentary commentary and sound effects available to help bring the event some realism.

After around 1 minute to 1 minute 30 seconds of action, the outcome of the event is decided, the result and all the winning betting markets displayed.

After a short period, that virtual sport event finishes and a new one begins immediately with the betting period. Virtual Sports can therefore run for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

What Virtual Sports Games and bets are available at Bet365?

At Bet365 you can bet on a wide range of Virtual Sports, each with their own selection of betting markets.

The table below outlines the different bets available as well as each of the Virtual Sports available at Bet365:

• Horse Racing – Five tracks are available, Britannia Way, Victoria Park, Trentham Park, National Park and Festival Downs and you can bet on both flat and national hunt races.  The start times to these events are staggered so that there is at least one event starting every minute (one race takes three minutes to complete). The National Park track offers a replica of the Grand National while Trentham Park offers fast-paced 1 minute Bullet racing races.
• Greyhound Racing – Three tracks are raced over in Virtual Greyhounds, Bennett Park, Hillside Park and Goldenhill Park and once again, races are contested over the flat and jumps. Bennett Park offers 1 minute Bullet racing.
• Motor Racing – Virtual Motor Car Racing features 12 drivers competing around an Oval Track (similar to Indy Car Racing) at Mitchell Circuit.
• Speedway – Watch four riders race around the dirt track at Sterling Stadium as they attempt to win the race.
• Cycling – Join the latter stages of the Keirin race at the Franklin Velodrome as a peloton of seven virtual cyclists battle it out over the final two laps to be first over the line.
• Trotting – This interesting addition to the Virtual Sports suite is a trotting simulation where horses trot pulling carriages to see who wins the race at Etruria Gardens
• Soccer – Bet on matches across a range of markets from five fictitious competitions, Premiership (based on the English Premier League), Superleague (World and European domestic teams), Express Cup (1 minute bullet game), Euro Cup (based on the European Championship) and World Cup (International teams).
• Soccer Match Day – A relatively new virtual which simulates an entire 16-team season allowing a range of different bets on each of the games being contested over every game week. An entire season takes around 90 minutes to be completed.
• Tennis – Place bets on a number of selected tennis markets as two players go head to head on a grass courts at the Rockville Open over one tie-breaker game to decide the winner.
• Cricket – Head to the Clayton Oval for International cricket or Greenway Field for Premier League cricket in this one-over Virtual Sports game with Phil Tufnell as commentator.
• American Football – Choose from V-Play NFL Head to Head Virtual Football, NFL Alumni playing at Bradwell Field or the First-Down game at Queensway Park in this exciting recent addition to Virtual Sports at bet365.
• Darts – Head to The Gatehouse as a number of veteran darts superstars from the senior pro tour battle it out in a series of head-to-head matches!
• Basketball – Virtual Basketball fans can select from Baker Gardens, which offers US-based teams or thr Waterport Arena, for a range of bets available on both games.
• Baseball – Check out Brandon Field’s game featuring a host of MLB Legends, or the North Stadium for the Home Run Derby in these two exciting Virtual Baseball games.
• Golf – Select from Stone Field or Milton Manor for a competition of 1-hole matches between two players, with each event offering a variety of different betting markets.

As you can see, the bets on racing types of events are very similar, but for game-based events like darts, tennis or football, the bets available on these games are linked directly to the sport itself and are different to the other bets available.

How are the results of Virtual Sports decided?

For every Virtual Sports event, the computer software is designed to ‘weight’ each team either favourably or not favourably. This gives you your favourites and outsiders for each race.

Now of course, if every event followed these weightings, then favourites would win all the time. That would be no use as a betting game.

So built in to each event is a random element, which means that results are not simply a case of backing the favourite and that frequently, selections other than the favourite will win.

By combining these elements, you get a sporting world which mirrors what happens in real life. Yes favourites do win some of the time, but not all and the potential for a surprise win is always there. It is that which gives Virtual Sports its popularity as outside bets can and do come up relatively frequently.

How often can you bet on Virtual Sports?

Each virtual sport takes around three minutes to complete from start to finish. Bullet events take just one minute to complete. This means that you can bet on virtual sports very often and the results are known far more quickly than real life sporting events.

However, if you choose to do so, you can actually place more bets than that by betting on multiple virtual sports events, or betting on the same sport, just at a different venue (for horse racing, greyhound racing and football).

Virtual Sports is really catching the eye for sports betting enthusiasts who also like random chance games. They are essentially a sporting-based equivalent of a chance game, such as a scratchcard or slot game, but with a sporting feel and weighting to give the user a more natural sports betting feel.