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BoyleSports Information

Who are BoyleSports?

This will sound like a stupid answer, but BoyleSports is BoyleSports. The name of the company is the same as the name of the range of iGaming and betting sites that it operates. There are currently nineteen licenced BoyleSports betting shops in the UK, and there might be one near you. If you don’t know BoyleSports as an “in-person” bookie, though, you probably know it for the online aspects of the company’s operations, which we’ll go into full detail about a little further down this page.

BoyleSports has become a bigger name since the beginning of the internet era of gambling, but it was already well-established in the physical realm by then. In fact, it’s been accepting bets since the 1980s. How did BoyleSports get started, and what’s the company’s story? We’re about to tell you.

An overview of BoyleSports

BoyleSports is an Irish company, as you might be able to tell from the name. It was founded in 1982 in Dundalk, which is still where the company’s head office is today. However, if you want to write to BoyleSports about anything to do with its casino sites, you’d be wasting your time addressing your letter to Dundalk. BoyleSports is neatly divided in two, with the Dundalk office handling the BoyleSports betting premises and the physical retail side of the brand, and a satellite office in Gibraltar responsible for handling the operator’s websites.

It took BoyleSports quite a while to reach the UK after opening in Ireland, but as of the time of writing, we believe the company to have a little over 320 betting shops to go with its websites (or website – we’ll get into the finer points of that when we look at the BoyleSports brands further down this page.

The history of BoyleSports

We’ve covered the basics of BoyleSports’ history in the paragraphs above, but here’s a deeper dive. The first-ever BoyleSports betting shop was opened in Markethill, County Armagh, by John Boyle in 1982. Now you know where the company’s name comes from. John Boyle didn’t initially envision his business as a franchise or a chain, and so the company was slow to grow in its early years. It wasn’t until 1989 that a further five BoyleSports shops were opened in Drogheda. Even after that, the company didn’t expand any further until it opened a further fourteen shops elsewhere in Northern Ireland in 2002. Most of BoyleSports’ growth, both offline and online, has occurred since the turn of the century.

The advent of the internet and the decision to open fourteen more shops in 2002 seemed to spur BoyleSports into high gear. Barely two years later, the company had seventy-seven betting shops under management. Two years after that in 2006, the one hundredth BoyleSports shop opened. Having expanded significantly and with money coming in, BoyleSports began buying up its competition. Seventeen shops were acquired from Celtic Bookmakers following the collapse of that company in 2011, followed by a further fifteen former William Hill shops that were bought and rebranded as BoyleSports venues later that same year.

By 2018, BoyleSports still hadn’t made any significant steps online, and it was being left behind by other bookmakers. It had 250 shops by that point, but without a proper online presence, it was leaving money on the table. That changed in September of that year, with new CEO Conor Gray taking over the reins of the business from the retiring John Boyle and deciding to lead it in a new direction.

Breaking into Britain

For all of its growth, BoyleSports was still “just” a Northern Irish business in 2018, with no presence on the UK mainland. As Conor Gray continued to push for expansion, BoyleSports finally entered England in June 2019, buying up thirteen betting shops formerly owned by Wilf Gilbert in the Midlands. Northern Ireland remains its main priority in terms of opening shops, though, with a further thirty-three former William Hill shops added to its ever-expanding portfolio in January 2020. That move made BoyleSports the biggest retail bookmaker in Ireland.

The most recent big move made by BoyleSports was the November 2021 acquisition of Tully’s, which included all ten of the former Tully’s betting shops plus its telephone betting service. While it remains to be seen whether the company will continue to add additional shops, the 2020s have thus far seen the online side of the BoyleSports business rapidly gain traction and popularity.

Where have you seen the BoyleSports name before?

If you’re looking at the BoyleSports logo and thinking that it looks familiar, it might be because you’ve come across one of the company’s multiple sponsorships before. For football fans, the biggest of the BoyleSports sponsorships to date was that of Birmingham City. Sponsoring Birmingham City made perfect sense for BoyleSports, as the only English presence the brand has is in the Midlands, and when the deal was announced in June 2019, Birmingham City said it was the most valuable shirt sponsorship the club had ever had.

Since sponsoring Birmingham City, BoyleSports has also become the official betting partner of Wolverhampton Wanderers and the shirt sponsor of Coventry City. You’ll also find several BoyleSports sponsorships in the worlds of horse racing, darts, and greyhound racing. Famous sporting names who’ve served as ambassadors for BoyleSports include Steven Gerrard, Stan Collymore and Kevin Kilbane.

BoyleSports and the UKGC

BoyleSports has not one but two licences with the UK Gambling Commission; one that covers its British mainland betting shops (all nineteen of them) and one which covers its online operations. We’re a sister sites website, so we’ll focus on the licence that covers the BoyleSports website. It’s number 39469, and we’re sorry to note that it isn’t clean.

In October 2020, BoyleSports was handed a financial penalty by the UKGC and also had further conditions attached to its licence along with a formal warning. This came after the UK Gambling Commission reviewed the operator’s licence and identified breaches of licence conditions relating to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as further anti-money laundering measures aimed specifically at operators based abroad – which, from the point of view of the UKGC, BoyleSports is. BoyleSports is recorded to have “acknowledged the failings from the outset” and co-operated with the investigation, but that didn’t save it from a fine of £2.8m.