Virgin Games was started in 2003 as the online casino division of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire. The business was actually sold in 2013 and is no longer officially owned by Virgin Group although the branding rights were sold with it so it still looks very much like a Virgin product.
The casino features slots, table games and bingo all of which operate through your browser and can also be accessed via tablets and mobile devices. In this review we’ll take a look at the games on offer as well as the promotions available and let you know how Vigin stack up against the best online casinos around.
V Points is Virgins version of a VIP program. What’s unique about the program is whilst you are able to earn the standard bonuses and cash prizes that you would expect, you are also able to earn air miles for use on Virgin flights around the world, which is pretty cool.
But, where most VIP programs allow you to earn points for every £ that you stake, with Virgin you only earn points with money that you win, so there is no guarantee that you will earn points. Points are credited in the form if 1 for every £5 won on bingo or £20 won on any other games (casino).
The points can then be converted into cash at a rate of 1 point worth £0.01. Alternatively, you can cash in 1 point for a 1 mile of air miles from the Virgin Flying Club. It’s also worth noting that all points will only be accessible for 90 days and then after this point they will be forfeited and removed from your account.
The games are divided into three categories which are, slots, casino and bingo. Most of the games are powered by either their own proprietary Gamesys software, IGT or Wagerworks (the latter of which is now owned by IGT anyway) but they also have a small amount of games from NextGen Gaming and a few others. It’s fair to say that Virgin Games’ focus is on quality over quantity as with somewhere around 100 games in total they’re nowhere near competing with some of the bigger casinos on that front.
What they do have is a fairly large selection of unique Gamesys games such as The Godfather and Secrets of the Phoenix which is the casino’s daily free game. It allows you to collect treasure relics and if you can match them up before they’re cleared at the end of each week you have a chance to win large cash jackpots.
All in all there are around 70 slots to choose from, so it’s not exactly like you’re short of choice. Popular games like Starburst, Cleopatra and Rainbow Riches are all included as well as a few with big progressive jackpots such as Deal or No Deal and Diamond Bonanza, both of which boast jackpots well into the tens of thousands of pounds or even higher. It’s slightly annoying that you have to enter the game to view the jackpot rather than having it displayed along with the list of other games but you can at least sort games with high jackpots using the tabs under the main menu.
The table games selection is just labelled “Casino” and consists mostly of variants of blackjack and roulette which make up eight of the 11 games available including titles such as Vegas Strip Blackjack, 3D Roulette and High Stakes Roulette. Other games include Pai Gow, Caribbean Stud Poker and Keno.
In terms of bingo, which at Virgin is included within the main casino offering unlike at most rivals who have dedicated bingo sites, you have a choice of three games. There are Enterprise, Adventure or Voyage, with the price as little as 1p for the cheapest games and 10p for the most expensive. These games also have progressive jackpots sometimes up to £10,000 or more.
You can download a mobile app to play most, although not all of the games both for iOS and android devices. There’s also a mobile version of the site which you can access on any mobile device with a browser. The new version is definitely slightly more stable but it’s still quite prone to crashing mid game which can be a bit frustrating although these issues are more prevalent on the Android than the iOS version of the app.
Virgin Group is a massive business conglomerate founded in 1970 by entrepreneur Richard Branson. Their areas of business are many and varied including travel, leisure, health care and others but in 2003 they expanded into online gambling with the founding of Virgin Games.
As mentioned the brand (for purposes of the online casino) was sold in 2013 to Gamesys Group, and is operated by one of its subsidiaries, Nozee Limited. Gamesys is also involved in offline gambling as it runs poker tournaments in multiple locations in the UK and is rumoured to be looking to set up land-based Virgin Casinos in the future. Gamesys has masses of industry experience through huge gaming brands such as Jackpotjoy and Sun Bingo and had total group wagering of more than £4bn in 2012.