McBookie
McBookie sister sites include PricedUp, Star Sports Bet, London 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 2026
We have an important bit of housekeeping to do here. Technically speaking, not all of the sites below are McBookie sister sites. The only active brands left on the Star Racing Limited platform are Star Sports Bet and McBookie itself, with the rest having closed or moved to other networks. However, there are plenty of betting sites that use the same software platform as McBookie, which is supplied by Playbook Gaming. They’re as good as McBookie sister sites in that they’re virtually identical in terms of layout, and often come with the same features. Think of them more as cousins than siblings.
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 and departing in 2025 in favour of standing alone. 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 trackside 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.
PricedUp
Before you put a bet down with any bookmaker, you’ll want to ensure that they’ve priced up the odds correctly. PricedUp is so sure that it’s done so that it’s placed the concept at the very core of its identity. This site launched in 2024 under the banner of Off Course Bookmakers Limited, which just so happens to be based at the same office address as Star Racing Limited. If they’re not literally the same company, we’re sure they often wave at each other across the office. The experience awaiting you at PricedUp is so similar to the other McBookie sister sites that you might not even notice any difference between this and McBookie – except, of course, the lack of such a singular focus on Scottish sports. Whether that’s a positive or a negative probably depends on which side of the border you live on.
Bet Wright
Bet Wright, which is apathetic about whether or not there’s supposed to be a space between the “Bet” and “Wright” in its name, was another addition to the (loose) McBookie sister sites family in 2024, and was the first indication that Playbook Gaming was moving away from launching brands under its own banner in favour of making them for other people. On paper, Bet Wright belongs to Onyx Gaming Limited, which was also set to take several casino brands away from Grace Media before apparently changing its mind on the matter. What’s available here is more of the same again, but at least it’s more of the same stretched over a template that’s been proven to work at a very high level. The lack of welcome bonuses (or any bonuses at all, really) makes it a little unappealing compared to some of these other names, though.
London Bet
One of these days, people are going to get tired of the template that powers the McBookie sister sites. That hasn’t happened yet, though, and judging by the success of London Bet, it’s not going to happen any time soon, either. This London-centric brand landed in summer 2025 and immediately made a splash despite not appearing to come with any major promotional campaigns. That means that its popularity must be down to word of mouth, although we can’t actually work out why people would be giving it such high praise. It’s another decent Playbook-powered betting site, sure enough, but there’s nothing special about it that makes it a better bet than any of the other betting options we’ve named on this page. In fact, the lack of live customer support and its insistence on only supporting debit cards for withdrawals might even make it weaker than them.
Can McBookie Be Trusted?
★★★★★
McBookie is a 2-star trusted betting site.
| 1. Licenses and Fines | UK Gambling Commission licence, fine on record from 2023. |
| 2. Accepts UK players? | Yes, especially Scottish ones. |
| 3. Trustpilot Score | 1.5/5.0 (>60 reviews) |
| 4. Operator Name & Location | Star Racing Limited, Hove, England. |
| 5. Bonus Terms | Few bonuses, but generally no wagering. |
| 6. Customer Support | Email only. |
| 7. Withdrawal Speed & Options | Debit card only, 2-5 days. |
| 8. Number of Sister Sites | One. |
| 9. Games portfolio | Heavily sports-focused, but comes with a reasonable selection of slots. |
| 10. On GamStop? | McBookie recognises GamStop. |
| Overall SCORE > | ★★★★★ – 2/5 Stars |
McBookie Review 2026
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, which suggests that its “About Us” section could use an update. McBookie fails to offer the unique selling point it claims to offer, but does it deliver in other ways?
McBookie Welcome Offer
There used to be a very small welcome promotion at McBookie, offering £20 in free bets to anyone who staked £5 on a very specific set of circumstances after joining. It was better than nothing, but nothing is what players get from McBookie now. There are no welcome promotions at all, and very few bonuses in general unless you happen to be a member of its “Tartan Club.” What’s the Tartan Club, we hear you ask? We’ll cover that in the paragraph below.
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 a 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.
What are the 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 for 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 support@mcbookie.com 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 summaries of recent McBookie reviews from real players.
- 02-Aug-2025 by Trevor: I placed a £2 bet at odds of 66/1 on virtual racing and won, but they cancelled the bet instead of paying. This was the third time it had happened, and customer service offered no proper explanation. In my view, it’s the worst gambling site I’ve ever used and should be banned. – source: Trustpilot
- 14-May-2025 by Ian: I had a past self-exclusion and mistakenly entered my birth year wrong by one digit when opening a new account. They’re using this to refuse my payout, even though they initially said I’d be paid. I’ve taken the matter to IBAS and my solicitor. There are far better bookies than this one. – source: Trustpilot
- 28-Apr-2025 by Jessie: After two deposits, I withdrew £270 and still had £167 in my account. They then suspended me and stopped replying to my emails. I want my money and wouldn’t trust this company again. If I could give zero stars, I would. – source: Trustpilot
- 08-Apr-2025 by Finley: They’ve been holding on to my money for nearly a week without replying to my messages. I just want my funds returned without all this hassle. – source: Trustpilot
- 22-Jan-2025 by Mick: I backed an 8/1 winner that was later disqualified. Not only did they refuse to pay, but they also kept my stake. That feels like robbery to me, so I’d suggest using a different betting site entirely. – source: Trustpilot
- 16-Sept-2024 by Mike: I’ve used this independent bookmaker for a couple of years with no issues. Customer service is solid, and the markets are competitive, though don’t expect the same odds you’d get from the biggest names. – source: Trustpilot
- 30-Jun-2024 by Paul: The slots feel rigged, with endless dead spins and no bonuses. I wouldn’t recommend signing up as my experience was entirely negative. – source: Trustpilot
- 22-Jun-2024 by Saeed: This site offers poor customer service, unappealing odds, and a laughable sign-up bonus of a free £2 bet on the Euros. There are plenty of better options out there. – source: Trustpilot
- 01-Jun-2024 by Daniel: Easily the worst site I’ve played on, with no promotions, no welcome bonus, and poor-quality slots. There are no jackpot games either, making it all the more unappealing. – source: Trustpilot
- 10-Feb-2024 by John: The slots are dreadful, with no bonus rounds and at least 20 spins between even small wins. Every game feels the same, and the payouts are disappointing. – source: Trustpilot