Colossus Bets

Colossus Bets is one of many great football jackpot products launched from around 2011 onwards, they themselves going live in 2013. Whilst many other similar products are offered by mainstream bookies and football betting sites, Colossus is unique in that they are a standalone football jackpot specialist. This means that – as well as offering the biggest jackpot of them all, the eponymous £10m Colossus – they also offer the widest range of games and jackpots, making them a great option for those who like the concept in general.

Football jackpots are brilliant for people looking for the chance to win big from small stakes and some of the lottery-sized prizes available at Colossus certainly have broad appeal, especially given the changes made to the National Lottery in October 2015. Those modifications massively increased the odds against winning the jackpot and so if you are looking for an alternative Colossus Bets may be a great choice, even if you wouldn’t normally bet on football.

As with all football jackpots, knowledge of the sport and an ability to predict the results certainly doesn’t hurt. However, there will always be a large slice of luck when trying to predict correct scores, especially several of them, and so even if you don’t know ANYTHING about football, Colossus Bets is still well worth playing. Their Smart Pick facility is a little like a Lucky Dip and many big prizes across the whole range of football jackpot companies have been won by similar selections, so don’t feel you have to be a football anorak to get involved.

Colossus Bets is a really easy site to use so read on for more about the company itself, the different jackpots they offer and how to play, as well as some of the amazing prizes on offer that really could change your life for ever.

Who are Colossus Bets?

As said, Colossus Bets went live in 2013 and the company was founded a year earlier. Founders Bernard Marantelli and Zeljko Ranogajec felt that the existing football pools and jackpot products were too cautious and that they could offer a bigger and better version with truly huge payouts.

In their short lifespan they have already won a number of industry and technology awards, including for innovation in sports betting software and digital gaming innovation and this is indicative of the fact that they are a genuinely original addition to the world of sports betting. And a very welcome one at that!

Based in London they are regulated and licensed by the UK Gambling Commission, probably the most respected regulatory body around. This, and the fact they are a pools-based gambling company that cannot, in theory, lose more money than they bring in, means we are more than happy to vouch for the safety and security offered by Colossus Bets and, most importantly, that if you land that HUGE £10m Colossus you don’t need to worry about getting paid.

What Games and Jackpots can I Win at Colossus Bets?

As said, Colossus Bets offer a range of bets meaning that there is something for everyone, whether you want to bet just a couple of quid in the hope of hitting the big one or are prepared to risk more cash for a smaller, but far more likely, win.

Colossus Bets started out purely as a football-based betting company but have since branched out to cover a wider range of sports. As well as betting on the scores or results of football matches from the best leagues such as La Liga, the Premier League, the Bundesliga and the Champions League, pools fans can also win huge jackpots on other sports from around the globe, including AFL and NRL in Australia and the NBA and NFL in America. Colossus even intend to launch a UK greyhound pool in the near future.

The £10,000,000 Colossus

Despite these newer sports pool betting options, Colossus Bets remains very much football orientated and for many fans the £10m Colossus is what they are all about. The main football pool on offer here is the biggest guaranteed payout in the world. To win the top prize you need to correctly predict the score in the seven featured games and then correctly forecast the score in the single bonus game that follows at a later date.

If you are the sole winner of the first stage of the Colossus you will land a cool £5m, with a further £5m available should you also nail the bonus game. As with most games at Colossus Bets, the base stake is £2, making this genuine competition with the National Lottery in terms of the cost and jackpot available.

Pick 6 Millionaire

The Millionaire product works in just the same way as the main £10m pool but you just have six games instead of seven. The first part of the jackpot is worth £1m, with a further £1m available via the bonus game.

Pick 15 Jackpot

The Pick 15 Jackpot game is slightly different from the two pools mentioned above in that you only have to predict the match result, as opposed to the correct score. Naturally this makes things a lot easier, although on the flip side of that you have 15 games to predict. This one is worth a minimum of £1m though and is a great option if you think calling the exact scores is too tricky.

Pick 5

Colossus Bets have lots of different football pools options but at the opposite end of the spectrum to the games mentioned above is the Pick 5, which has a jackpot of £2,000 guaranteed. Obviously that’s small fry compared to the £10m Colossus but as you would expect, winning is a lot easier. In order to land this one you just need to predict five match results.

Other Game Options at Colossus Bets

As said, there is a wide range of football pools on offer here but in essence you are having to do one of two things: either make correct score predictions or match result forecasts. The number of games involved varies and, as you would expect, the more games you go for, the bigger the jackpots. The smaller pools, such as Pick 5 or the £30,000 Pick 4 (correct scores) don’t have the additional bonus match, whereas the biggest jackpots do, with half the jackpot being won in the main phase of the round and another half added in the supplementary match (which is only open to the winner or winners of the first stage).

How to Play

Colossus Bets has loads of great features that make playing easy, more flexible and more fun. First of all, let’s explain a little more about how to actually play the games.

Once you’ve joined Colossus Bets and taken advantage of whatever welcome bonus they are offering at that time, you’ll need to pick a jackpot to go for. These are shown on the left hand side and can be filtered by a range of criteria, including the biggest jackpots and also the sport. The different pools are also listed by day, making it easy to see games that are coming soon and those that have already started. You can enter any game right up until kick-off in the first match of that pool and leaving it late so you are aware of potentially crucial team news is often a good idea.

When you play a correct score game, such as the £10m Colossus itself, you are given a slight helping hand in that as well as the most common scores, you are also given the choice of AOH (Any Other Home), AOD (Any Other Draw) and AOA (Any Other Away). For draws this means that any draw from 2-2 upwards is grouped together, so if you fancy a high scoring draw, for example, 2-2 or 3-3, just pick AOD and even if the game ends 4-4 you’re a winner. With the home and away results, any result involving a 4 is grouped together, such that if you fancy a big win, you can go for AOH or AOA and if your side wins 4-0, 4-3, 5-2 or indeed any score where they have scored at least four, you are deemed to have correctly predicted that match.

That makes things a lot easier on the correct score front and another nice bonus is that if nobody wins a given prize, the stakes rollover onto another game. This means that the prizes can get even bigger than the advertised amounts, although the Colossus Bets guarantee means that they will never fall beneath the minimum levels, even if there are relatively few players taking part.

So, you’ve picked your game, made your selections and you know what prize is up for grabs – now what? Well, you’ll need to decide a stake and this is just another way in which Colossus Bets make things nice and flexible for their customers. The basic staking unit on which the advertised prizes is based is £2 but you don’t have to wager the full amount. For example, if you’d rather just play for £1, that’s fine, but instead of £10m on the Colossus your maximum win would be £5m, with the jackpots and prizes always proportional to your stake and the £2 base figure.

Colossus Bets Features

Colossus continues to make things simple by making it really easy to keep tabs on your games and they even allow you to take early profits. Both of these are assisted by the excellent Colossus Bets mobile site which means you can keep abreast of things on the move, no matter where you are. The mobile version of the site is intuitive and well designed and gives you access to all the important features from the main desktop version of the site.

Check Results

Checking results of finished games and those in-play is easy at Colossus. Just click the “Tickets” tab and you’ll be able to see all your live and upcoming tickets. Unshaded selections are yet to settle, green results are winners and red colouring indicates you didn’t predict that match correctly. You can also see Pool History for tickets that are in-play and this will show you how many other players are still in with a chance of winning as each result comes in, as well as how those live tickets are spread over yet-to-be-settled results. This means, for example, that if you are down to the final leg you can see how many players have the same score as you and consequently how much you stand to win (as the jackpot would be shared by those players if your final prediction was a winner).

Cash Out

Cash out is a brilliant feature of modern betting and Colossus were right in at the start. With such huge jackpots on offer, cash out can play a key role in Colossus betting and Colossus cash out offers are very clearly made. Cash out offers will be made at full time and half time whenever you have at least one winning selection (and of course none that have already lost). Colossus also offer partial cash out, meaning you could sell half your ticket to guarantee a profit but still keep half live to try and get a bigger overall win than if you had fully cashed out,

Smart Pick

Smart Pick is the Colossus Bets version of a Lucky Dip and is a great option for those that don’t feel confident with a certain league or match, those that are in a rush or those that simply want to leave things to chance. However, the great thing about Smart Pick is that is uses stats to rule out highly unlikely scores. Of course, football and sport are unpredictable and even the highly unlikely will sometimes happen, but Smart Pick won’t, for example, pick an away win when the home side is a clear favourite. Another great feature of Smart Pick is that if you don’t like the suggested scores or results you can click again to bring up alternatives or alter individual legs manually whilst leaving other Smart Picks in.

Consolation Pools

Consolation Pools are a great way of rewarding players who otherwise would be ruing the old adage, “close but no cigar”. A Consolation Pool win is a little more like “close, have a small cigar anyway for doing quite well”, which is a much more charitable approach in our eyes! Consolation Pool will be clearly shown alongside the main jackpot and, for example, on the Millionaire game you may get £2,000 for getting five out of six and £1,000 for getting four out of six. Okay, that’s not going to buy you that new Porsche you wanted, though it is far better than nothing but a hard luck story.

Perms

If you thought a perm was a dodgy 1980s haircut that only looked good on Kylie in Neighbours then think again. In betting terms a perm is a way of covering multiple options in a multi-leg bet and as with everything at Colossus, perming a number of different results is really simple.

Imagine you’re doing Pick 5 (match result) jackpot pool and are confident about four results but can’t decide between a home win and a draw in the final match. Just click to select both results and you’ll now win if either of those final outcomes occur. This will cost an extra staking line but this will automatically be calculated and added to your ticket cost. If you’re unsure about other matches just add extra results there too, although note that in the example above your total bet goes from £2 to £4 but goes much higher if you then add other results to other games.