SUMMARY
Sportsbet.io prides itself on three principles. Being fast, fun and fair. It's top notch in supporting the cryptocurrency enthusiast and the hardcore sports fan. Though there's certainly room for improvement, you'll enjoy the gaming experience at the end of the day.
DETAILED RATING
INFO
- Deposit Bonus Free bet. 3x times the first wager.
- Games offered Sports betting, live betting and a small selection of table games.
- Live Betting Lots of niche sports, but the interface is confusing.
- Coins Offered Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Tron. Several fiat currencies.
- Customer Ratings 4 out of 5 stars on Bittrust.org
- User Experience Clean website, fun promotions, lacking in live support.
POSITIVES
- Many digital and fiat currencies supported.
- Fast withdrawals.
- Many niche sports available for wagering.
- Simple welcome bonus structure.
- Competitive odds on games.
NEGATIVES
- Limited table game selection
- Several links to betting markets don't work.
SportsBet.io Review
Sportsbet.io is just like many of the Bitcoin betting sites we’ve reviewed here at CryptoRadar. Unhappy customers call the website a scam, but the happy ones keep coming back to place more bets. In this review will cover what sets Sportsbet.io apart from competitors both in a good way and in a bad way. Overall, while the site does offer some compelling points of difference and highlight certain strengths, we couldn’t rank it above other competitors just because it’s much smaller and not as proven.
SportsBet.io Overview
SportsBet.io scores major bonus points for one simple fact. The fact that the website allows gamblers to place bets in both fiat and cryptocurrencies. Don’t get us wrong, major sportsbooks with big-time advertising budgets and an established brand presence like Bodog and 5Dimes accept crypto and fiat too but the difference is they don’t display wagers in crypto format, and they usually don’t accept more than one or two different cryptocurrencies.
What also sets SportsBet.io apart is that the user interface is fairly simple in design and the options aren’t as cluttered, making the website easier to navigate for new users. One of the classic marketing strategies of sportsbooks and gambling sites is to make everything look loud and busy, offered tons of promotions and lots of exotic betting options. SportsBet.io deviates away from that. Their approach is different, though not necessarily better.
As this review continues, we’ll explore the different games, promotions and currencies supported by this up and coming crypto-friendly sportsbook.
Promotions
While the quantity of promotions currently running at SportsBet.io are scarce in comparison to many competitors, this site does score extra bonus points for offering unique promotions. As usual, they each come with their own benefits, terms and conditions. As we explore all of them, we’ll also talk about a unique partnership that has more to do with branding the site than it does getting players hooked on making wagers.
Welcome Bonus
Most crypto-friendly betting sites offer 100% or even 200% as a first deposit bonus. The benefit to that is obvious. Getting multiple times a bank roll is great, but players usually have to roll over their full balance 20 or 30 times in order to be eligible. SportsBet.io keeps things a little bit simpler. The welcome bonus isn’t technically as high as 100% or 200% on an entire bankroll, but the site does offer to triple up a new player’s first wager. Of course, this promotion does come with terms and conditions meaning one can’t just throw down thousands of dollars on a heavy favorite just to 3x gains. The promotion is only open to bets that meet specific guidelines, particularly where the odds offer at least a moderate risk of losing the bet.
Free Spins on Tuesdays
Sportsbet.io lets players earn free spins on Tuesdays if they play table games offered up by the publisher MicroGaming. The more players wager, the more free spins they earn. This is a classic promotion that requires wagering a minimum of 0.00010 BTC. That’s actually a low starting point for earning free spins compared to other Bitcoin betting sites. That said, 0.0010 BTC only gets a player 10 free spins. To earn 80 free spins, which is the maximum, players need to wager six times that.
American Streak Hero
This promotion rewards players with up to 100,000 SOC tokens (the All Sports Coin) or 100 mBTC each week for putting together the longest winning streak of bets between NFL, NHL and NBA games. It’s an ongoing promotion that continues every week throughout the entire season. It’s an interesting way to win significant bonuses just for playing and managing to win every day. However, anybody that takes sports betting seriously knows how difficult it is to win a wager every single day for seven days. Especially when considering some of the terms, conditions and rules that come with this promotion. Those rules are outlined below:
- Opt-in to the promo by clicking on the opt-in button. If you do not opt-in then your bet will not qualify for the promo!Opt-in is required only once during the promo period.
- Place as many bets as you can across any NBA (including preseason), NFL and NHL matches with minimum odds of 1.50.
- Only the first qualifying bet placed on each match will count for the promotion.
- Only Pre-Live single bets will count. Bets can be placed on any market. Only qualifying bets that have settled between Sunday 00:01 GMT and Friday 23:59 GMT will count.
- Minimum stake to qualify is SOC 1,000.00or equivalent in accepted currencies.
- First-place finish every Friday will guarantee a win of SOC 100,000.00!Note: Winnings will be converted and paid out in the user’s currency.
- If you lose a bet your counter will reset to zero and you can try again!
- Check your progress from the leaderboard below. Leaderboard is updated once per hour. NOTE: Leaderboard displays TOP 50 streaks. You can also check your streak from the My Bets page.
The Edge of Space
This promotion applies to slot machines run by provider Pragmatic Play. Players who bet at least €0.50 have the chance to win €150 just for participating from now until December 10, 2019. This is probably one of the simpler promotions with the fewest number of rules and regulations that we’ve encountered here at CryptoRadar. It’s too bad this promotion is in euros and not cryptocurrency.
An Instagram Follow Campaign
That’s right! Sportsbet.io is rewarding players just for following and liking the site’s Instagram page. The site promises to award 0.0005 BTC for every 50 new people to like the SportsBet Instagram page. That doesn’t mean every user gets 0.0005 BTC though, it means users are entered into a draw to win. Check out the full rules.
Price Boosting Promotion
Every Saturday and Sunday bettors can wager on English Premier League soccer games and swing the odds in their favour by up to 4%. This is probably one of the more unique promotions we’ve founded in scouring the web for the most popular Bitcoin betting sites. A gambling site can give away all the free spins it wants and all the randomly drawn cash jackpots it wants. What players really want more than anything else is a better chance to earn a higher profit on their sports bets. This is probably the most popular promotion the website has outside of its welcome bonus.
Tesla Model 3 Giveaway
This promotion involves three popular slot games at SportsBet.io. Bonanza, Extra Chilli and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. All of these games come courtesy of Big Time Gaming. The top players in each game will be entered into a draw to win three different prizes of $1000, a Samsung forte TV, or a Tesla Model 3. SportsBet is dishing out the big bucks on this one.
Watford FC Sponsorship
This is probably the most unique promotional angle we’ve seen from a Bitcoin betting site. SportsBet.io routinely gives away jerseys and uses the image and likeness of the EPL’s Watford FC club in its promotions. It’s unique because even with sports betting becoming increasingly legalized throughout the United States and thus money being taken away from offshore websites, gambling sites are still slow to use pro sports teams as promotional vehicles. This sponsorship is definitely good for fans and gamblers as they benefit from SportsBet’s partnership and are getting access to exclusive content and contests related to the team.
The Sportsbook
SportsBet offers fantasy sports betting, believe it or not. The thing is the link to it is dead, so it’s hard to tell how often that option becomes available for gamblers. The virtual sports betting and player props bets are equally intriguing, but also seem to be unavailable most of the time.
Exotic options aside, the site still offers a lot of the same sports that competitors do. This includes major leagues like the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and EPL. Of course a wide variety of soccer leagues are available outside of the EPL, because who doesn’t love the most beautiful game in the world?
More niche sports available on SportsBet and most other sites include snooker, cricket, badminton volleyball and e-sports.
Live Betting
All of the above sports seem to be open to live betting, though the interface doesn’t seem to display odds moving up and down as a game goes along the way competitors do. The cool thing about SportsBet’s live betting though is that the site dives pretty deep into niche sports. For example, an avid sports bettor can wager on volleyball games in six different countries and any scheduled international competitions.
To go that deep into a sport most people probably aren’t able to watch live on television is pretty impressive. What’s just as cool is the fact that SportsBet allows users to wager on golf, table tennis and water polo, three sports that most other sites don’t look at.
While the variety of sports bets available on live games is impressive, the interface needs a little bit of work. It’s hard to know what’s going on at any given moment.
Casino Games
SportsBet does a good job of separating casino games from its sportsbook. There is no scrollbar or menu tab for casino games until a user actually clicks Casino. By comparison, the sportsbook is on full display right away. Like Nitrogen Sports, SportsBet clearly caters to the sports fan first. This means the site offers more sports, but not nearly as many casino games as competitors.
Still, it does offer many of the classic table games people are used to like BlackJack, Baccarat and Poker. Roulette and slots are also available at SportsBet. There is also an option to play at live tables with a human dealer checking in via video. Yes, they do accept BTC for wagers. In the early days of online gambling, playing with a live dealer was seen as an added bonus or cool gimmick. Nowadays a site that doesn’t offer that is behind the times.
Maximum Bets and Limits
Betting at SportsBet starts from as little as 0.00001 BTC. That’s incredibly low. It means the minimum bet is worth no more than a few dollars, like literally one or two dollars. It doesn’t get much lower than that. In the terms and conditions of the website it says that the upper limit for high rollers is 500 mBTC. That’s half a Bitcoin.
We’ve got to dock SportsBet a few points here because many other competitors will allow full bitcoins to be wagered on a single event. 0.5 BTC doesn’t even come close to highroller status, although it is referred to as that on the website. Serious gamers who want to wager more than that will be better off choosing one of the other bitcoin betting sites reviewed here at CR.
Supported Cryptocurrencies
SportsBet accepts the following cryptocurrencies for wagering:
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Litecoin
- Tron
- All Sports Coin (SOC)
No other Bitcoin betting site offers Tron and All Sports Coin as deposit options. What’s even cooler about SportsBet is that it also accepts traditional fiat currencies and we are not just talking about the US dollar here.
The site also accepts Thai Bhatt, Chinese Yen, Indian Rupees, the Canadian Dollar, the Japanese Yen and many others. If there ever was a reason to rank SportsBet.io first place in a particular category, the number of supported currencies is certainly it. As noted earlier, we wouldn’t consider SportsBet.io our number one choice, but we’re cool with giving credit where credit is due.
Customer Support
As readers can see when clicking the link the section above to find out more about supported cryptocurrencies, the frequently asked questions section of SportsBet is quite robust. However the customer support leaves much to be desired. Every other prominent Bitcoin betting site on the market offers life support, but that doesn’t seem to be readily available at SportsBet. That’s a red flag! To be fair there is a message icon on the lower left hand side of every page, but it doesn’t seem to be working right now. Players who choose to deposit and register an account without consulting with customer support first are definitely subscribing to a “at your own risk “policy.
That said, SportsBet does have some good reviews on customer rating websites, including a 4 out of 5 stars on Bitrust.org.
SportsBet vs. Other Bitcoin Gaming Sites
We’ve already got over the fact that SportsBet excels in terms of its promotions and its wide range of sports betting offerings. It’s also clear that the site is and does focused on table games as other competitors are.
SportsBet also does very well when it comes to supporting a wide range of both digital and fiat currencies. We figured the chart below might help show readers how SportsBet.io stacks up against the competition.
Criteria | Sportsbet.io | Other Bitcoin Betting Sites |
---|---|---|
First-time Deposit Bonus | 1 free bet up to 3x the player's first wager. | 100%, up to 5 bitcoins. |
Number of Games Available to Play | Only 10-20 table games but more niche sports than most competitors. | One or two competitors offer more sports, most offer more tables. |
Deposit & Withdrawal Limits | No deposit limits. Minimum wager is 0.00001 BTC. Maximum is 0.5 BTC | Various limits on withdrawals, some better than SportsBet |
Customer Ratings | 4 out of 5 on Bittrust.org. | Other sites have more reviews but few rate better. |
Should You Use SportsBet.io?
Although the lack of customer support on this site is a little bit concerning, it is pretty cool that a player can log onto SportsBet and decide to play in Bitcoin or Indian Rupees if they want to. There really is no other gambling site that accepts both of those along with several other international currencies and altcoins.
The bonuses and promotions at SportsBet are also fairly straightforward in comparison to competitors, and players don’t have to wager 30 times their balance in order to receive a small bonus. From that perspective, SportsBet.io is a little more engaging than most of the competition.
But once again. We can’t rank SportsBet.io as the top betting site because it only really ranks while in two categories, currencies supported and promotions. Still those promotions might be worth dipping your toe in the water.