Sports Interaction Ontario Review 2024 (SIA) - is SIA legal in Ontario?

Long-time sponsors of several CFL clubs, Sports Interaction has served all of Canada from their gaming jurisdiction in Kahnawake, southwest of Montreal. In 2022, SIA and its new owners, Entain, moved to gain their license to become one of several legal Ontario sports betting providers, in order to continue to serve their existing Ontario-based customers, and to attract new ones once the newly-regulated market opened.  The good news is that not a lot has changed in terms of the SIA sports betting experience for Ontario.  We take you through the basics, but know that the First Nations communities of Kahnawake still have a stake in this brand and players now get access to SIA on the Entain Sportsbook platform, which now has some improvements, but also some limitations compared to the old platform. 

Who can play at Sports Interaction Ontario?

As with any iGaming Ontario provider, players must be physically located in Ontario to play on SIA Ontario. However, if you are in AB, BC, SK, MB, QC or any of the Atlantic provinces or Territories, you can play at Sports Interaction's main website as regulated from Kahnawake (in Quebec). If you are in any of these other provinces, read our SIA review for Canada to learn more about their sportsbook offering, or read about the SIA Canada online casino. Both gaming types are available from a single player account.  

SIA Ontario Sportsbook experience: a light, quick site, new app

SIA has always operated its online sportsbook via a website, no matter your device of choice.  They now also have an app for users that prefer them.  Mobile apps can be leveraged by their publishers to access all kinds of user data as noted in their terms of use.  You don't need to worry about this at SIA as you can choose to use their mobile site.  With SIA Ontario, you get what you'd expect expect from a Canadian-only brand, all site terminology for sports are properly "Canadian" - no "Ice Hockey" or "American Football" on SIA - but rather "Hockey" and "Football", as it should be.  However, with the move from the old platform to the Entain platform, SIA now only has Decimal odds format for display, no American or Fractional formats, which will be a drawback for many.  Their new platform is also without any coverage of esports events.

What are the SIA Ontario payment methods?

Sports Interaction accepts Interac, Trustly bank payments, paysafecard and Visa / Mastercard credit and debit cards.  Remember that credit card payments are treated as "Cash Advances" toward betting sites - even in Ontario's new legal iGaming market.  This means that your card provider (not SIA) will charge you high interest from the moment of the deposit, plus a cash advance fee near $5. This is the case even if you always pay your monthly balance in full - so if you can, avoid credit card use, in favour of debit or transfer methods, which have much lower fees and are super quick and easy to use.  This credit card fee issue is the same, no matter the sportsbook.

SIA Insights are gone, on the new platform.

With the move to the Entain platform, SIA Ontario lost this feature which gave heightened transparency on the action being laid. With SIA insights, for every event, players could look to see exactly how all SIA customers have been laying their bets.  It was an interesting feature that let players ponder if they would like to wager with the wisdom of the crowd, or bet against it. No longer available. *frown face*

SIA Ontario sport coverage

SIA has excellent coverage from top to bottom.  When it comes to the most popular sports in Ontario, the "big four", plus various top soccer leagues, players get every typical betting market you could hope to have, plus numerous player and team prop bets.  For MMA betting, they cover it all, not just UFC.  For Tennis and Golf, you'll find all tours and tournaments, with match markets and Futures.  For Motorsports, they cover a full array of F1, NASCAR and Moto GP events. SIA also cover essentially all of the more "international" sports that might be more typically popular in the UK, Europe or India. So if you want to get bets down on just about any market for these, they will be available to you. Unfortunately, with the move to the new Entain sportsbook platform, esports events are not available for betting.

Sports Interaction Ontario available odds value & formats

SIA Ontario now only offers Decimal odds format.  American and Fractional odds formats are not available. The strength for SIA Ontario for their odds margin comes with the biggest sports.  For the NFL, NBA, CFL, MLB and NHL tend to have margins at about 5% or sometimes toward the region of 4%. These will not be the most competitive odds margins out there, but at these levels, often times the side upon which you hope to bet will have very high odds among the array of legal providers.  So rather than 1.91 or -110 on either side, if the odds have broken away from parity on either side, you may get the benefit of a 1.95 or -105 value for your bet of interest. 

The previous potential drawback on odds value for SIA Ontario came in the futures markets for popular leagues.  Given that SIA is a Canada and Ontario-only brand, Canadians were their only customers.  Now that SIA is part of online gambling giant, Entain, they can spread their risk much better, meaning that Ontario players can get better odds home team favourites more often. While a disproportional number of bettors will be betting on Ontario's and Canada's favourite teams or players to win various leagues or trophies, Entain is so big that they can spread the risk among their global customer base for their odds. 

When you play at a sportsbook that serves Ontario, but also several of other geographies where Canadian participants are not the hottest bets, you may be able to find better value.  Imagine you are betting at a Canada-only sportsbook brand when looking for the odds on the Jays to win the World Series or for the odds on the Leafs to win the Stanley Cup. Given that these are heavily sought after bets in Ontario and broadly across Canada from a fan perspective, you can understand why these odds might get beaten down.  On the Entain platform, this is no longer really an issue for SIA.

It certainly used to be an issue for them, when they were "Canada-Only".  For example, before the Entain platform move, on September 28, 2022 as the Jays marched toward the post season, SIA Ontario had Jays World Series Winner odds of just 14.21 (+1321). We found other Ontario sportsbooks with odds of 19.00 (+1800) and 21.00 (+2000), which potentially paid out 36% and 51% more than SIA respectively.  Things can now be much more competitive in this respect at Sports Interaction.

Does SIA Ontario have an early cash out feature?

Yes. Sports Interaction offers an early Cash Out feature so you can protect stake money or secure a partial win before your event has reached its natural end. If your bet is available for the Cash Out, it will be in the "My Bets" section of their site.  

Sports Interaction Ontario customer support

Get customer support at SIA via live chat or via email.  SIA used to offer telephone support, but with the Entain changes, this was dropped.

SIA Ontario other gaming types: online casino & live dealer

For Ontario players, Sports Interaction continues to offers an excellent, top-tier online casino experience.  As an operator, they have always looked to provide their players with a wide array of exciting, oftentimes exclusive and branded slots games.  This continues with their new Ontario casino offering.  Beyond this, they also offer an excellent variety of live dealer games with several variations and options for fans of live blackjack, roulette, wheel games, baccarat or game shows like Deal or No Deal among others.  Read more in our SIA Ontario Casino review within our page about the top legal Ontario online casinos, or simply hit the SIA casino to see what's up.

SIA Ontario esports coverage

Sports Interaction Ontario previously offered esports betting, when they were on their old betting platform. As we reviewed their original esports offering, they had esports event betting on the main upcoming CS:GO, LoL and Dota 2 events. This was limited however to the most basic, match winner markets in most cases. They did also cover SC2 and RLCS events, again with the simplest markets.  Margins were not particularly competitive at around 7.5% to 9%.  However, with the move to the Entain betting platform, Sports Intaraction now offers no coverage of esports betting at all.  None.  If esports is a focal point for you, or you just want to get the occasional esports wager down, you should look to see our top Ontario esports betting sites.

SIA Ontario bottom line

Sports Interaction remains a solid option for Ontario players now that they are officially able to serve people located in the province.  We honestly preferred their old sportsbook platform. It was quicker, had all three odds formats and had unique insights for bettors. That said, their new platform will generally offer better odds than was previously available.  So the changes to the platform can be seen as both positive and negative, it just depends on your own preferences. If you're a "Decimal" format fan and you focus on the main sports from an Ontario perspective, you're probably going to be happy with the sportsbook platform shift.  If you're an American odds format player, or you preferred a really quick site, things are different now.

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