BetMGM online casino review

Look, BetMGM’s a huge name, and there are reasons why this casino’s doing pretty well for itself. It’s got one of the strongest welcome bonuses I’ve seen to date in the US market. 

That being said, watch out for wagering times. 7 days to bet your $25 1x shouldn’t be a problem, but 14 days to bet $1000 15x seems a little short. For contrast, SugarHouse gives you 30 days to wager $250, and that’s with a 1x wagering requirement.

The M Life rewards VIP program is pretty cool, I like that you can use your casino points to claim rewards at the brick-and-mortar establishments. 

What I’m mixed on are the other BetMGM casino bonus options for existing players. Let’s start with the (really) good point: There seem to be a lot of short-term ones updating quite frequently, which is fantastic — it offers variety that other places (e.g. SugarHouse) lack. 

However, I’m not happy at how specific many of these are. The Mystery Free Spins is only valid for one day, claimable on one game, and is randomly assigned, making it easy to miss. 

The short-term BetMGM casino promotions aren’t too different either.  Yesterday’s was a ‘Bet and Get’ on a particular slot game. Today there’s a more general ‘Seal the Deal’ – wager $50 on slots and get $5. I like that it’s not limited, but 50:5 is a dull ratio.

For comparison, one I did like was Unibet’s Live Casino Booster – it’s a bet $10, get $5, which can be used on any live casino game. You get freedom of choice, and you don’t need to risk as much cash. 

What’s exciting is the slot races. I actually prefer how BetMGM runs these to how places such as Unibet do it. The selected slot at BetMGM changes every hour rather than every week/month, which means it won’t be the highest rollers who win every single time.

Why the heck can’t you play demos? It’s so trivial among top casinos that I barely bother mentioning it when places (Unibet, Golden Nugget, SugarHouse etc.) do have them. I can’t offer an explanation or excuse — that sucks.

There also don’t seem to be any options for VIP-exclusive or high stakes games, but that shouldn’t affect most players. (If they’re really your thing, SugarHouse has high-stakes bingo for top VIP tiers).

The website’s also a little disorganized. One example:

There’s only 15 titles listed in the ‘jackpots’ section, but I’m spotting way more in ‘slots’, including IGT’s MegaJackpots series.

Apart from that, it’s good. With 37 exclusives, BetMGM’s list is on the larger side. Speaking of totals, BetMGM gets a top score there too. 1,600+ is top-tier in my opinion, few places break this mark. Unibet’s still trailing in the 600’s, and they’re a huge international brand.

More positives — all popular game types are offered, and even less popular categories are well-represented. Scratch cards, keno, and virtual sports aren’t on every online casino site, and BetMGM offers all three, alongside more popular options like online poker.

I really can’t stress how great it is that BetMGM online casino are offering live games from 2 different providers. We all love Evolution, but it’s nice to see something else now and again, even if it’s just to remind ourselves that other studios exist.

More highlights from the live casino, it runs 24/7, and is streamed from a brick-and-mortar casino, so you’ll be able to enjoy that classic feel.

It’s got a number of top providers, and while it doesn’t have all of them, I’ve yet to find the casino that does. It’s almost as if the best studios are expensive to host…

More to love? Hell yes — we’ve got Playtech over here at BetMGM! It’s a huge, award winning studio, and is nowhere to be seen in big casinos like Unibet, Golden Nugget and SugarHouse.

They haven’t got everything though — High 5 Games for instance, hasn’t shown up in my searching yet.

All in all, it’s a software thumbs up from me in this BetMGM casino review.

BetMGM is certainly near the top when it comes to offering customers variety in its payment methods. 15 different methods is on par with the crème de la crème. Unibet’s pretty solid and has 8. SugarHouse and Golden Nugget are leading casinos, and have 10 and 11 respectively. Seriously, great stuff from BetMGM.

Other cool things going on here:

– No fees from the casino.
– In-person options at the casino cage.

It’s not all rainbows and magic though.

The internal processing time of up to 5 days at BetMGM doesn’t do this casino any favors. 2-3 days is quite average for the US market, and SugarHouse claims to take under 24 hours. On the bright side, deposits are much quicker, happening instantly for VIP preferred and taking around 15 seconds with PayPal.

I also find it pretty limiting that you can only make withdrawals with most methods if you’ve deposited with them first, especially since there’s a mention of “within the last 6 months.”

Neteller and PaySafeCard are the missing ones – you can find those at Virgin and Mohegan Sun respectively, if they’re dealbreakers for you.

The legal safeguards like dedicated, responsible gaming pages and links to external orgs for players seeking help are all there, along with the self-control tools, making it a secure online casino.

Timed suspensions, spend limits and the like are all there. 2-factor authentication is available via opt-in, and I do recommend you turn that on.

One little complaint I have is that explicit info about fair gaming is hidden in the help pages, rather than being up with the responsible gaming pages.

Personally, I’m a little ticked off that the responsible gaming section is split into 7 different pages, but that’s a purely stylistic choice. I think it adds unnecessary hurdles to finding info, but another reviewer could easily say it’s a positive that BetMGM have a whole RG section as opposed to just a page. Your call.

Apart from that, all good. It’s a bonus that the casino is licensed in multiple states and is broadly well-reviewed online. The larger brand operates physical casinos too, and wouldn’t want to screw that up by neglecting their online operation.

One final thing I’ll mention is recognition. There’s a boatload of MGM awards — I doubt they’d be getting those if every other player was calling to say they’d been scammed at one of the casinos.

Look, no one likes dealing with customer support. On the whole though, this could’ve been way worse.

Bad news first; I had a bit of trouble with the night shift. (Yeah, I’m a writer — contacting customer support at 4:00 on a Wednesday is part of the charm.) One particular night agent gave vague and evasive answers to my questions, and disconnected from the chat while I was typing a clarification.

The other weird thing is how long it takes to get to the contact page.

If you log on to your BetMGM casino account and click the ‘My Account’ → ‘ Support’ button, you’d think that’d be it. But no, you’ve got to go through the FAQ pages, hit a couple of questions, and then answer yes to “Do you need any more help?”. That’s the quickest way I found to get to the support options.

Those hiccups aside, the rest is great. 24/7 support is a great perk that many casinos are unable to offer – SugarHouse is a top scoring casino that doesn’t manage to pull it off, and neither does Unibet.

Most of the agents I spoke to were extremely polite and accommodating, and answered even tricky and specific questions after some clarification.

They did ask to put me on hold while they checked information with the relevant departments, and often took a few minutes to get back to me. But that’s fair enough for tricky ones in my opinion — and they often managed to come up with the answers.

One really strong thing in BetMGM’s favor:

The help pages are some of the most detailed I’ve seen, and they even have info about some of the more popular games, including explanations of how to play and the like.

What I don’t like about BetMGM’s online casino interface is that it seems to commit to getting half the job done. The header with the sections and categories doesn’t stretch across the whole screen — it stops halfway, and you’re prompted to click ‘more’, just for three extra links that could easily fit onto the bar.

That problem’s not there on mobile at least, the full options bar is scrollable.

There’s no filters either, but again, there’s a halfway mark. If you go to the slots section, for example, the site shows some featured suggestions like ‘Top NetEnt games’ or ‘Megaways.’ But there are only a few studios and categories, and then you’re trapped with the writhing mass of the ‘all slots’ pile.

The obvious gloss here is Golden Nugget, which lets you filter your games by things like studio, game type, max payout, and even theme. Unibet’s nothing special, but they at least give an option to sort alphabetically, leaving the BetMGM site with some work to do.

Everything else is just fine. You’ll be able to find your favorite games with the search bar, and you can explore the categories in the header with absolutely no issues.

The slot races section is actually a great feat of organization — the timetable is scheduled way in advance, and you can opt in to your chosen competition with little more than a click.

Just about everything you’ll find on the desktop version is available for mobile, which is why BetMGM casino gets such a great score. Tossing in a couple of extra live games, even at the expense of one, is a pretty sweet bonus too.