Hippodrome Casino United Kingdom - Full Review

What Hippodrome Casino Actually Offers

I spent several visits at the venue and a couple of weeks on hippodromecasino.com, and the first clear takeaway was how much sits under a single licence. The building at 10-14 Cranbourn Street, London WC2H 7JH runs 24/7, entry is free, and nobody at the door asks you to become a member first. For central London, that is not common at all.

Online, the same brand stretches into casino games, sports betting and bingo, all under active UK Gambling Commission remote licences.

The legal operator is Hippodrome Casino Limited, incorporated on 4 July 2005 with UKGC account number 29471. Its licence package covers Casino 1968 Act Non-Remote (live since August 2011), Bingo Non-Remote (since October 2015), General Betting Standard Non-Remote (since March 2015), plus matching ancillary remote licences. Local premises licensing for the building is handled by Westminster City Council.

The UKGC public register does not show any enforcement sanctions against this operator. Data protection is registered with the ICO under reference Z3078892, active since March 2012. Both entries are open to anyone to check in the official registers.

Gaming Floors And Online Products

The land-based casino is spread across four floors. On the tables you get roulette, blackjack, baccarat, three-card poker and heads-up hold’em. Banks of electronic terminals and slots run through the different levels, and there is a dedicated PokerStars Live lounge. They market it as London’s leading card room; from what I saw, the way it is set up just about justifies that claim.

Poker in the PokerStars Live area runs on a fixed pattern:

1. Monday to Friday: 12:00 to 06:00
2. Friday through Monday: non-stop, 24 hours
3. Poker room phone: 0207 769 8888
4. Updates on Twitter at PSLive_Hippo

Online, the brand mirrors what it does on-site. Under the remote licences you can access casino titles, sports betting and bingo. When I went through the site, the lobby structure was built around product type - casino, sports, bingo - instead of grouping by software studio. Individual providers are not listed anywhere obvious. That missing line of information is a small transparency issue: if you like to know exactly which company’s RNG is behind a game, you will either need to ask support or do your own digging.

The bingo piece runs out of a separate licensed address called Crystal Rooms at 7-9 Cranbourn Street, London WC2H 7AG. It is still Hippodrome Casino Limited behind it, same UKGC account, just another physical space.

Getting Started On Hippodromecasino.com

Opening hippodromecasino.com is simple in a desktop or mobile browser. Registration follows the usual UK KYC pattern: you enter an email and password, add your personal details, and later on you may be asked for photo ID and proof of address so they can verify who you are. Nothing in that flow felt unusual or awkward.

After your account checks out, you go into the account area, then the Deposit section. You choose one of the available payment methods, type in how much you want to add in GBP, confirm, and after that the game lobby is effectively open.

One thing that might matter if you play on your phone a lot: I could not find any confirmed dedicated iOS or Android apps in the verified sources I used. The website works through a mobile browser, but native extras like biometric login or push notifications are not on offer here right now.

Placing A Sports Bet

Because Hippodrome holds a General Betting Standard remote licence, the brand is allowed to take sports bets online. I tried the sports side in a separate session. The actual process looked like this for me:

1. Log in at hippodromecasino.com
2. Go into the Sports or Betting section from the main menu
3. Filter events by sport or competition
4. Click on a market and then on the odds to move a pick into your bet slip
5. Type in your stake in GBP
6. Check the potential return shown on the slip
7. Confirm, then look in your account history to see the bet

I could not pull out details such as default odds format, exact minimum stakes, or how broad the market coverage is from the sources I used. What I can say is that the site operates under the standard UKGC Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice, which forces transparent pricing and fair terms as a baseline, even if the front-end does not spell everything out.

One practical thing that always applies: before you hit confirm, read the whole bet slip. Not just the odds. Fixing an error after the bet is accepted is usually much harder than people expect.

A Short Look At The Building’s History

The bricks and mortar side has a much longer story than the casino brand. The doors first opened on 15 January 1900 as a variety theatre designed by Frank Matcham and owned by Edward Moss. Around 1910 the place shifted into a music hall. At that time it hosted what is recorded as the UK’s first jazz concert by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and also one of the early UK performances of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

In 1958 Bernard Delfont took over and rebuilt the interior into the Talk of the Town dinner theatre. That format lasted until 1982. Across those years the room saw shows from Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett and Shirley Bassey. After Talk of the Town, Peter Stringfellow turned it into a nightclub that traded until 2005, when the licence expired and the Thomas family stepped in to take the lease.

Simon Thomas led the big redevelopment phase. The casino finally opened its doors in 2012 and, straight away, it was already the largest and busiest casino in the UK based on floor size and visitor numbers. Jimmy Thomas, Simon’s father, had been part of the core vision; he passed away in 2022.

In heritage records, the site shows up under “The London Hippodrome, Crown Public House, and 7-10 Cranbourn Street”.