888sport Ontario Review 2024 - Is 888sport legal in Ontario

Yes, 888sport is on the list of legal Ontario sportsbooks and online casinos.  888sport was actually one of the first operators to receive their operator license from the AGCO. They are also one of the few legal online poker providers, but signing up for that type of gaming with 888 appears to be separate from their sports & casino products.

About 888sport

888sport is the main sportsbook brand for '888 Holdings' which is listed on the London Stock Exchange.  888sport is licensed to operate in several regulated geographies, including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy.  In the US, they partnered with Sports Illustrated to offer "SI Sportsbook" in several newly launched US state sports betting markets.  888 Holdings also recently purchased the non-US assets of William Hill, from Caesars.  888 Holdings though has not secured an Ontario license for the William Hill brand, even though it has significant history in the Canadian marketplace.

Does 888sport serve the rest of Canada?

Yes, 888sport serves Canadian provinces and territories outside Ontario from their international betting site as operated from their Gibraltar iGaming jurisdiction.  It is not among our recommended betting sites for Canada. Their Ontario platforms can only serve players that are physically located in that province.  Although players across the country would have to play on the Gibraltar-based dot-com version of their service, the fact of the matter is that their entrance into the Ontario market has improved the dot-com site for other Canadians in an important way: 888sport-dot-com now supports Canadian Dollar or C$ accounts.  

For many years, prior to the passing of Bill C-218 to legalise single-event betting, when 888sport was serving the entire country from the "grey market", they did so without supporting Canadian Dollar accounts.  888sport players in Canada had to set their accounts to USD, GBP or EUR.  Every time a player funded their account or made a withdrawal, they would have been hit with currency exchange fees, which are not insignificant, especially when so many reputable CAD sportsbooks were available. 

This is a main reason that we could never understand how 888sport was being promoted so heavily to Canadians, being ranked so highly by some sportsbook review sites that targeted Canada.  Would British bettors want to play in the Euro?  Would American bettors want to play in the Swiss Franc?  Of course not. 

When 888 moved to enter the regulated Ontario market, they were required to offer their platform in the local currency, so they simultaneous added the same capability to their broader dot-com site which serves the other geographies of Canada from their "off shore", "grey market" jurisdiction.  In other words, Ontario regulation has driven change to help all Canadians in this one small way.

888sport Ontario payment methods 

888sport Ontario payment methods include Interac e-transfers, Visa cards, Mastercard, Apple Pay, MuchBetter (which includes iDebit) and paysafecard prepaid cards.  These methods are also available for people across Canada that access their 888sport-dot-com site.

How are 888sport Ontario odds & margins on big events?

For the "big 4" leagues from a North American perspective, 888sport Ontario (and for the rest of Canada as per their dot-com site) has odds that are essentially middle-of-the road and in line with most other sportsbooks.  For spreads and totals in the NBA or NFL, these odds tend to look like 1.90/190 or -110/-110, which is a margin of just over 5%.  This is fairly common and what you want to see, at the very least, as some Ontario brands actually offer worse odds than this, with higher margins for these popular events and markets.  When we look at top soccer leagues and the main 1X2 match result market at 888sport, again we see odds around 5% to 6%, which is on par with most operators. 

Where odds value can start to go downhill at 888sport, is when you get outside the most popular betting markets and the most popular league events.  For example, for the totals in NCAA football or basketball (the over/under), a market that should yield the same value as the NFL at most sportsbooks, 888sport uses margins around 6.5%, so the odds are lower than the typical 1.90/190 or -110/-110 split. 

If you are thinking, "What's the the big deal between 5% and 6.5% margin, it's just a 1.5% difference."  No!  In this instance, 888sport is using a margin that is 30% higher than those that offer the typical 5%.  We cover this on our page that explains odds margin (aka "sportsbook hold") and how sportsbooks work.  In the end, if you like the platform that 888sport offers, just keep an eye on the odds value you are getting if you stray away from the biggest leagues and betting markets.

Does 888sport Ontario have a "Bet Builder" or "Same Game Parlays"?

Yes.  888sport offers a "Bet Builder" to create "Same Game Parlays" across sports, not just for soccer.  This is a positive tick for them as many sportsbook brands may only support this kind of feature within top soccer league events.  In trying to use their Bet Builder interface, we did find it somewhat cumbersome to use and we found the number of betting markets to be fairly limited compared to the top Ontario sportsbook platforms, that have more robust SGP features and capabilities.  This was especially the case on player prop bets.  If you enjoy the ability to create your own truly unique SGP with tons of available markets across all the big leagues, the best we've ever seen is at bet365 Ontario.  Others do it well, but theirs is the best in our humble opinion.

Does 888sport Ontario offer an early cashout feature?

Yes.  888sport tends to support the ability to cashout your bet early, before an event has reached its natural end, so that you may secure a partial win, or protect stake money.  Again, like the Bet Builder, there are sites and apps like bet365 Ontario and BetVictor Ontario that provide more robust features than 888 in this regard, where you can do a partial cashout.  A partial cashout feature allows you to secure an early payout for some portion of a given bet, while the other portion of your stake can remain on the original bet to see out the result.  bet365 ON even offers an auto cashout so you can set rules for when the system should automatically take a payout should the cashout offer reach the threshold that you've set. 

888sport Ontario desktop & mobile interface

Much like their odds, we find the 888sport interface to be middle-of-the-road in terms of the qualities that we look for in this way.  We found that they do not tend to push the most interesting events and markets to the home screen as some Ontario sportsbooks do.  Not everyone is always betting on the Leafs, Sens, Raptors, or Jays, but these teams do draw a significant proportion of the bets, and events featuring these teams just are not pushed to the fore in the way that we like to see.

In terms of speed of the site or app, for the most part, 888sport is pretty responsive as you navigate from league to league, or in and out of events and the related betting market menus.  There are a few spots or tasks where you will be greeted with a big logo of theirs as the background items need loading, which can be annoying at times. If you tap or click one of the sport icons to load all the related events, sometimes the order of the leagues that are displayed can be questionable.  If the order is not alphabetical, then one would think the most popular ones should be at the top, and this is certainly not the case.  If you find this to be the case, thankfully, you can click or tap the league name that is "in the way", in order to collapse all the events to get them off your display.  In the end, 888sport has an OK interface.  We don't love it, while it could certainly be improved, we don't hate it like some other Ontario brand interfaces.

Is 888sport Ontario linked to 888casino Ontario?

Yes. If you register with 888sport Ontario, although 888Casino looks like its own brand, with a different colour-scheme, your one account essentially serves both.  Once you are logged into 888sport and click the link near the top of your screen for 888casino, a new tab will open in your browser and it will naturally detect your account profile.  This is certainly unique, as most brands offer their sportsbook and casino games under the same brand umbrella. While 888poker is available in Ontario, it appears to be a completely separate account setup, and it really requires the use of their online poker client software.

888sport Ontario bottom line

888sport has a sportsbook platform that we would rank in the middle of all those brands that are now available within the legal Ontario market.  From our point of view, they just don't have best-in-class features or aspects of their service, when compared to several other brands in the market with superior platforms.  If you particularly enjoy their unique orange and black or charcoal colour scheme, who are we to tell you not to enjoy that?  They do cover more than the basics in terms of features and they are certainly significantly better in many ways than a number of licensed operators that we have reviewed and lambasted.  If you're inclined to try them out, we would not warn you off, but we would say that we think there are better options available to you, in our opinion.

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