Royal Panda Sports Review:

UPDATE: The Royal Panda Sport sports betting brand has stopped operating in the United Kingdom. It is uncertain if and when the brand will return to the UK market. For the latest updates on Royal Panda Sport’s availability and status, we recommend checking with the brand or relevant regulatory authorities.

Royal Panda first emerged back in 2014, with its casino built around its eponymous panda character. Over just a few short years, Royal Panda casino grew to become a respected player on the gambling scene, with players generally rating its performance pretty highly.

In 2017, Royal Panda decided to take things a step further, with the launch of their sportsbook, providing loyal Royal Panda players with an outlet for online betting. It’s clear that this is a cross-sell that works for Royal Panda, and if their online casino is anything to go by, the sportsbook has potential in bags. But how does it compare to the more established names on the market, and can you trust Royal Panda with your sports betting account? Read our Royal Panda Sports review to find out

Whenever you’re dealing with a brand new operator, there’s always an immediate question of safety and trust. While Royal Panda might be relatively new kids on the block when it comes to sports betting, their experience in the casino space provide that initial comfort that you’re dealing with a legitimate operator.

Royal Panda Sports is run through the same site as the online casino, and both are operated by a single, private company – Royal Panda Ltd operating out of the iGaming hub of Malta. In that sense, it’s an independent operator, rather than part of a larger group, but that’s no reason to doubt their veracity. The guys behind Royal Panda were already iGaming professionals when they decided to set up the company, so there has never been any question of inexperience or teething problems.

Royal Panda holds a license from the Malta Gaming Authority,  which provide layers of accountability and consumer protection that should help you sleep a little easier.

In terms of security, the site is Comodo Secured, independently verified as secure by one of the leading cybersecurity firms on the planet. That means military-grade encryption, to offer the utmost protection to their customers’ private details and financial information.

In a nutshell, Royal Panda is as safe and secure on paper as you’re going to find. In reality, that’s also backed by countless reviews from players at their online casinos, who give surprisingly good ratings of their experiences with the casino side of the business. There’s the odd gripe here and there but generally, feedback of their casino brands has been overwhelmingly positive and this is further backed up on the player led sites which give it the thumbs up.

The range of payment methods should be comfortable for the majority of players, with support for major credit and debit cards, as well as for a variety of common e-wallets, like Skrill and Neteller. Virtually all of the available deposit methods reflect instantly on your account. On the withdrawal side, timeframes do vary. They can run as quickly as 1 day for Faster Bank Transfers – a neat feature, especially for those who may have waited several days in the past for this type of withdrawal to be processed on other sites.

Withdrawals to supported e-wallets are processed instantly, pending the usual verification processes that are required for first withdrawals. While there have been a few isolated reports of verification difficulties and delays, generally Royal Panda has a reputation for quickly processing withdrawals, and for smooth banking in both directions. There is no evidence to suggest this doesn’t equally apply with the sportsbook side of their business, and that’s a real benefit when you compare Royal Panda to other sportsbooks with reputations for delayed payments.

Minimum deposits start at £10, up to maximums of £15,000, depending on the payment method you’re choosing. On the withdrawal side, minimums often start at £10, and range up to £100,000. One downside is a max withdrawal of £50,000 on credit cards (visa, maestro, mastercard)

Royal Panda hasn’t launched any betting apps at the moment. Instead, players can access the sportsbook from visiting the site in-browser. This is definitely a minus point in the Royal Pands Sports ledge as overall a good app experience is superior to a good mobile site experience. To their credit though they have done a very good jon in porting over the desktop site to tjhe smaller scree. Whether you’re on iOS, Android, Windows, or any other operating system or device, you’re going to be able to access the same range of markets in-browser.

Royal Panda doesn’t mess about with bonuses, and to their credit, they’ve come up with an equally good bonus for their sports betting platform as for their online casino. Unusually, they allow bonuses to be used interchangeably between both the casino and sports betting platforms, so there’s a flexibility here that casual bettors in particular will find appealing.

The welcome offer for sports is a free bet for first time depositors when they deposit and bet £20 or more at odds of 2.0 or over on the sports book. The welcome bonus offer for casino is 100% deposit match bonus up to £100, which comes with wagering requirements x35.

These are actually decent bonus terms, especially when you compare them to the standard for other sports betting bonuses. Usually, you’ll find bonuses are strictly limited, with Sky Bet for example, which offers a generous multiple at a very low maximum. Or you’ll find they come with a tight timeframe that makes it difficult to actually apply the bonus profitably, or wagering/rollover requirements that are impossible to match. Royal Panda clearly values their reputation, and that’s why they’ve drawn their bonus parameters in a way that is genuinely fair and attractive to bettors. 

Royal Panda isn’t striving to compete on the range of betting markets. If you’re serious about drilling down into specific betting options, or you like to bet on more obscure sports, this isn’t the site for you. Better head off to one of the betting first sites like Netbet or Betfair. There is a much slimmed down selection of sports to bet on, with an adequate selection of markets for each. Football, tennis, rugby, formula one, snooker,volleyball and a collection of e-sports are among the handful of markets represented, and Royal Panda is expected to add more to the fold in the months to come. One quirk is that there are no horse race betting lines, something common to quite a few Malta-based gaming operators.

While the selection could be bigger, the odds on offer are competitive with what you’d find elsewhere. On a snap comparison with in-play odds at William Hill, Royal Panda seems to be slightly less generous, but there’s not much in it. Especially if you already have an account with Royal Panda, or you’re looking to take advantage of their promotions, it’s not enough of a difference to be worth splitting hairs for.

Royal Panda is built around in-play betting, and the layout is geared around making this as prominent as possible. The left-hand menu shows the Live tab by default, which lists the events currently in-play at any given moment. You can also check in on any event that’s in play, and get live stats, animations of the action in almost real-time, and fluctuating odds as the action unfolds. The Event View menu in the central pane reinforces this view, and for those who enjoy in-play betting, this will be the view that you’ll spend the most time studying.

The Live Multi View menu is another cool feature, which allows you to set up your own custom selection of live events. This means you can create a birds-eye view of the events you’re betting on as they unfold, helping you keep an eye on your open bets at any one time. The drag and drop style makes it easy to customise the in-play options to suit your preferences.