Ken Howells

About Ken Howells

Ken Howells is a family owned independent bookmaker that has been taking bets for more than 60 years (since 1963, to be precise).  For most of that time, they took bets at their shop in Carmathenshire, Wales, over the telephone (and later via WhatsApp) and via stands at their local racecourse Ffos Las and also at Hereford, Bath and Cheltenham.  Personal customer service is a very important part of their company culture as is pride in their Welsh roots.

Now, they have a website too; launched in 2025 and powered by EveryMatrix, it offers both sportsbook and casino.

Sports Betting at Ken Howells

Ken Howells’ roots are in horse racing and it shows; the first thing you’ll see when you go to the sportsbook are today’s races.  The list starts with races in the UK and Ireland and below that are races from all over the world including Brazil, South Africa, Japan and Australia.  You can filter by the country and also view races for tomorrow, the next day and further into the future.  Above the list, there’s a carousel showing the three favourites races that are taking place shortly.  All of this is complemented by a couple of ongoing promotions on UK and Irish horse racing which you can find on the site.  Clearly they want to keep their existing customer base happy.

New sports betting customers are kept happy too as there’s a wide range of other sports to bet on such as:

• Worldwide football including Premier League, Champions League, EFL Cup, La Liga, Serie A. Bet Builders are also offered here.
• Darts
• Greyhound racing
• Winter sports
• Motorsports including MotoGP, NASCAR, Indycar and Speedway as well as Formula 1
• Gaelic football and hurling

The esports selection is also impressive.  Counter-Strike, DOTA 2, e-tennis, FIFA, King of Glory, LOL, NBA 2K, Rainbow Six, Valorant and e-Ice Hockey are all listed as sports in their own right with plenty of markets to bet on.

The Live Sports part of the website offers in-play betting on both sports and esports. Cash out is available on many bets here and in the main part of the sportsbook.

Last but not least, there’s the Virtuals area where you can place bets on simulated horse and greyhound races, football matches and tournaments and other virtual sports.

Games at Ken Howells

The Ken Howells website has both a Casino and a Live Casino area. Let’s explore Casino first.

There’s more than 1200 games to enjoy here; a lot of them are by Pragmatic Play but other game providers including Blueprint, NetEnt, Fantasma, Booming Games and Wazdan are represented too.   There’s also EveryMatrix proprietary SlotMatrix games if you fancy trying something new and different.

The games are split into various categories, some of which are more useful than others.  New Releases, Big Bass Series and Megaways are clear signposts for players as to what type of games are in there, whereas the difference between Top Games and Featured Games isn’t at all clear (at least they are not the same games).

You can also use the search box to find games but you do have to know exactly what you are looking for as it only returns exact matches.  I couldn’t find any of the well known progressive jackpot slots but they do have some fixed jackpot games by Wazdan and Pragmatic Play offering the chance to win up to 2500x stake.

At the top of each lobby area there’s a Play A Random Game button. This is a nice touch, for those times when you just can’t decide what to play.

A few table games can be found in the Table Games section and there’s also an Instant Win section for tap cards, plinko and crash games.

The Live Casino part of the site has roulette, blackjack, baccarat and a few other card games and game shows, all by Pragmatic Play.  It’s slightly disappointing that there aren’t any other game providers here but it should be good enough for anyone whose main interest isn’t live casino.

Other Things To Consider

The promotions page at Ken Howells looks promising.  As well as the casino and sports welcome offers, there’s a weekly stake and get free spins promotion and a reminder (with a button) to opt into marketing emails to have promotions sent to you as soon as they are available.

Apple and Android apps are available for ease of mobile play.  You can download them by following the App Store and Google Play links on the Ken Howells website.

Customer support for website, app and account issues is done via email. There’s 8 different email links to use depending on what your query is about; these automatically generate the subject of the email and prompt you to include the necessary information for your email to be passed to the right department and dealt with promptly. The customer service department is open 10am till 8pm seven days a week so you’ll never have to wait long for a response.  You can access customer service even if not logged in which is nice to see (lots of online casinos only have it for logged in players which isn’t much use if your problem is with registration or login!)

The range of deposit methods is a little less impressive but at least there is one alternative – Trustly – for those who don’t want to use a debit card to deposit.

Final Thoughts

Ken Howells is an online sportsbook and casino combo that’s British through and through.  In a UK market that’s full of skin sites, the care they take with customer service really sets them apart.  It would be nice if there were some more jackpot slots and other payment options but apart from that, we can’t fault them and anyone who’s looking for a UK facing casino and sportsbook should definitely check them out.