An Extensive History of Betfred.com

Starting off as a single betting shop in the 1960s, Betfred has grown significantly over the past fifty years, as they now have more than 1,350 betting shops and over 10,000 employees worldwide. Betfred is one of the fastest growing online betting shops in the United Kingdom, especially when it comes to British horse racing.

This is probably partially due to the fact that they are known for having special bonuses and promotions that allure new customers to try out their site and for their innovative ideas when it comes to social media. If you want to know more about the history of Betfred and how their company has expanded over time, then please take the time to read through this article.

Fred & Peter Done

Fred Done, the man who is ultimately responsible for the development of Betfred, was born in Salford, England in 1943. Done’s interest in bookmaking started at a very young age when his father, who was a part time bookmaker, had him go to the local bars and factories to collect football bets for him.

After high school, Done became Ernie Peters’ assistant, as he was the most popular bookmaker in the city and Done wanted to learn from the best. Done worked side by side with Ernie for almost nine years before he decided that he was ready to set up his own bookmaking business.

Fred needed help to get his business off the ground, so he recruited his brother, Peter, to help him accumulate the necessary funds to make this shop a reality; he needed a little over $6,000. By the middle of 1967, they were ready to open up the first Betfred betting shop, which they strategically placed in the city they were born in: Salford, England. Most of their starting capital came from a bet that Done had placed in favor of England winning the World Cup that year.

Getting Their Feet off the Ground

Now that we know a little more about the founders of Betfred, we can dig a little deeper into the reasons why Betfred become so popular over the next several years. Done made his shop stand out among the other shops in England at the time, as he treated it as a formal business, always calling his customers “sir” and served complimentary drinks to them.

His hospitality helped Betfred expand in numbers but it also set a standard for betting shops in the future. By 1997, Betfred had over 100 betting shops across Europe and in less than three years, their number of shops nearly doubled. Done made sure that even as the company expanded that they still focused on what was most important: customer service.

Betfred was the first betting shop to pay their customers before the results of a competition were officially announced. In March 1998, Betfred paid all of their customers who had bet that Manchester United would win the Premier League prior to the game’s conclusion. This was Fred Done’s favorite team and he had confidence that they would win, which they subsequently did by one measly goal.

Continuing to Expand (Betfred.com is Born)

As the years went by, Betfred continued to expand, reaching over 500 betting shops by March 2005. In the meanwhile, Done saw a huge potential for growth in the online gambling market. He hired a group of professionals to develop Betfred.com, which all of his loyal customers who regularly came into his shops were excited to try out when it was officially launched in 2004.

Right from the start, Betfred has been dedicated to making sure that its customers are gambling responsibly and that’s why they posted this to their website,

“Our customer service teams are trained to deal with all aspects of responsible gambling and the following advice may be of interest. We can help you stay in control by setting deposit limits on your account either daily weekly or monthly. Please contact our customer service team to arrange a limit that suits you.”

With this they included a list of precautious one can take in order to prevent a gambling problem from developing.

Betfred.com offers anything you could ever need including an online casino including slot games, live casino games, in-play sports betting, bingo, poker, and much more. They also offer a live help feature that provides their customers with assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days of the year. Players can rest assured that any questions they have will be answered in a timely manner as Betfred makes that one of their top priorities.

One aspect to their site that was very unique is the Goals Galore Bonus coupon that they publish each week. This gives players an opportunity to pick which teams they think will score at no cost to them. According to a 2010 article from The Guardian,

“Betfred remains an innovative business, as demonstrated by the recent introduction of the highly popular ‘goals galore’ coupon, where punters have to choose five games where they think both teams will score.”

Two years after the Betfred website was launched, Betfred expanded into a mobile version of their site, giving players the opportunity to access their site anywhere on the go. Players use the same bankroll and are offered all of the same bonuses and promotion as they would if they were on their website.

Another way Betfred expanded was through purchasing The Tote in 2011, acquiring all of its 517 shops in the process, for just over $400 million. This expansion into the racing industry has proven to be very successful for Betfred.com, as it has attracted a completely new kind of sports bettors to their site. The Tote has actually been up for sale since the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until Betfred decided to significantly increase their initial offers that The Tote’s owners finally decided to accept them.

Relying on Social Media

Betfred can now be found on almost every social media website you can think of including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Twitter. Betfred actually has several different twitter accounts that focus on certain aspects of their site such as a page for bingo players and a page for golfing fans. They update players with the latest scoop on what’s going on in the gambling industry while also notifying you of special promotions that are going on at the time.

Betfred.com received the Best Innovation in Social Marketing Award at E-Gaming Review’s Operator Innovation Awards ceremony in 2013. Betfred.com was recognized for their dedication to social media to allure new customers to their site.

Sponsorships & Charities

Betfred is one of the main sponsors of the Sheffield and Kinsley Greyhound Stadium, Nottingham Greyhound Stadium, and the Owenton Stadium. They also sponsored the World Snooker Championship for four tournaments between 2009 and 2012. Although choosing to take a few years off from sponsoring them, Betfred decided to support them once again in 2015. Details on that partnership are provided for you in the section below.

Betfred’s official charity is The Injured Jockeys Fund’s “Jack Berry House.” The sole purpose of this foundation is to raise enough money to open a state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility for injured jockeys that will provide them with any medical services they need.

This rehabilitation center will have a gym filled with the equipment needed for traditional physical therapy and a swimming pool for hydro-therapy. They will hire specialists to run these facilities and provide training programs for any current or aspiring jockeys that want to learn more information about proper nutrition, injury management, sports psychology, and other subjects that will help prevent serious injuries from occurring in the future.

Betfred has also donated to several other local and global corporations including the Harley Slack Fund, the Killing Cancer foundation, Manchester Children’s Hospital, Northern Racing College, and the Retired Greyhound Trust to name a few.

Betfred in Recent News

In 2014, Betfred announced that they were partnering up with the Snooker’s World Championship, which will be renamed Betfred World Snooker Championship until at least 2017. This competition always runs from the end of April to the beginning of May at the famous Crucible Theatre in Sheffield with over $460,000 going to the first place winner. The company expects that this esteemed event is going to bring them much needed publicity, as this event generally reaches over 300 million viewers across eighty different countries.

Betfred has recently been recognized in the media for their Summer Sizzler bonus offer that’s new to their website. During the entire summer, they’re offering various deals that will blow players away on all of the hottest events coming soon this summer including the Ashes, the British Grand Prix Royal Ascot, and the US Open.

Players are also going crazy for the opportunity to win a weekend for two to Dublin whenever they play the Irish Lotto on the site during the month of July. It’s very rare that you hear of an online casino giving away luxurious trips as prizes, but it’s something that Betfred has really focused on in these past couple years. We certainly look forward to watching them expand in the future and we can’t wait to see what innovative ideas they come out with next.