Originally branded as Bet on Brazil in 2016 – named after their Brand Ambassador, former Scotland Football international, Alan Brazil – SportNation rebranded and relaunched back in 2017. Founded by their parent company Argyll Entertainment, SportNation was their first foray into the online bookmaking industry.
SportNation has been licensed by the Gambling Commission of Great Britain since May 2016 to offer Bingo, Casino and general betting services.
Known as “The Cashback Bookmaker”, SportNation are unique as they are the only gambling company where you can earn rewards on every bet you place, regardless of whether it wins or loses.
While you often find bookmakers logos on the front of Premier League or other major European teams, SportNation is the proud sponsors of National League club, Solihull Moors. As well as being the shirt sponsor, Solihull Moors’ stadium is also now called the SportNation.bet stadium, and SportNation also has exclusive access to film Solihull Moors throughout the season, providing a unique perspective into the inner workings and day-to-day management of a football club.
SportNation has an affiliate scheme through www.eegpartners.com where their revenue share commission pays a flat rate of 25%. They also say that their commission is lifetime, so as long as the customers generated from your affiliate account keep playing, you keep on making a profit.
There is no extensive list of countries restricted from gambling with SportNation, however, they state the onus is on the customer to ensure they are complying with gambling laws wherever they are based. When registering an account the only countries you can select are the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Design
The design of the site is vibrant and user friendly, the logo against a black background at the top of the website really makes the branding stand out. The font and illustrations make whatever areas they are promoting also stand out.
On the computer version of the site, a lot of the space is used to advertise their promotions. When you first type SportNation into your browser, before even accessing the bets they promote their welcome offer and then once you click into the betting, again you can’t miss the welcome offer promotion in the middle of the screen.
Down the right-hand side of the screen, they also promote other promotions such as VAR insurance and Pick A Pony. Above this is the betting slip which also shows a running total of the amount of reward points earned so far that day for all customers. Scrolling down the page, SportNation also promotes their live streaming service for the UK, Irish and International Horse Racing and a YouTube video explaining their reward system.
SportNation advertises down the left of the screen their most popular betting categories followed by a list of all the sports they offer betting on. In the middle of the screen, they have the next horse races advertised in time order as well as current in-play betting markets that can be easily switched to a menu of today’s games for any sport they offer betting on, making it convenient for the bettor if they have gone onto the site knowing already what they want to bet on.
SportNation can also be accessed from your mobile phone either on a conventional mobile browser or through their app. The layout of both is identical and are in-fitting with the computer version of the site.
Services
SportNation offers a wide range of sports betting with the usual suspects such as Football, Horse Racing, Rugby Union, and Darts as well as some more obscure sports like Bandy and Floorball.
With SportNation you can also bet in their Live Casino, Casino or on Virtual Sports.
SportNation’s Live Casino has 50 games to play including Roulette, Blackjack, Monopoly Live, Lightning Roulette and a few variations of Poker.
In the Casino, there are over 500 games to choose from including slots, table, and card games.
In the virtual games section, you can bet on Horse Racing, Football, Greyhounds, Tennis, Speedway, Velodrome and Trotting.
In the recent World Cup Qualifying match between England and Poland, SportNation had the best price for England to win compared to Skybet, Bet365 and William Hill, while also matching Bet365 for the best price for a draw. The price on a Poland win was considerably lower than Bet365 and William Hill but when offering the best price on two of the three selections, something has to give. Overall, with a margin on the 90-minute market of 4.29%, there was far more value than the other companies.
The average margin on sports betting is between 4-6%.
Live
Live betting is available in most sports. At any time of the day, it seems you can find in-play Football to bet on with SportNation. From English Premier League to the Algerian Under 21 League, SportNation has got you covered.
In addition to this, they also offer in-play betting on Tennis, Cricket, Baseball, Basketball, Darts and Futsal, among others.
Live streaming is available on an estimated total of over 40,000 Horse and Greyhound races per year due to SportNation’s deal with SIS, providing quality streams with commentary similar to what you would get inside a high street bookmaker.
If Horse and Greyhound racing streamed to you free is what you are after, then SportNation is the place to go. Unfortunately for fans of other sports, SportNation does not stream any other sports other than Horse and Greyhound racing.
The average margin on live betting is between 7-9%.
Freebies, Bonuses and Promotions
In SportNation’s current welcome offer you are required to place a series of bets in order to get up to £50 in free bets. You are not obligated to do all of the bets if you don’t want to, but to benefit from the full offer you must place the following bets:
Bet 1) £20 single gets you a £5 free bet.
Bet 2) £20 double gets you a £5 free bet.
Bet 3) £20 treble gets you a £10 free bet.
Bet 4) £20 4-fold gets you a £10 free bet.
Bet 5) £20 5-fold+ gets you a £20 free bet.
You can place the bets in any order, the only stipulation is that each leg of a bet must have minimum odds of 4/5. Maximum winnings on any free bet are 20 times the free bet stake though, so bear this in mind before picking out a massive Saturday afternoon footy accumulator with your free bets. This offer can be found when you first log onto SportNation before you actually access the main website. It can also be seen on the front page of the main website.
While SportNation’s welcome offer is quite good, SportNation is without doubt one of the most generous online bookmakers out there when it comes to a loyalty program, as you can earn reward points on every bet you place with SportNation win or lose – accumulative bets are worth more reward points than singles. These points can then be converted into free bets, cash, other bonuses or even donated to charity through SportNation’s Virtual Store.
In addition to this, they also have other promotions such as VAR Insurance, where on selected Premier League matches if your team scores a winner that later gets disallowed by VAR you get your stake back as a free bet.
On Create Your Bet if you create a winning bet on the football at minimum odds of 4/1, SportNation will credit you with a free bet matching your stake up to a maximum of £20.
If betting £25 or more on the Premier League on a Sunday, if you opt into the promotion you will get 10 free spins on a game called Roo Riches.
These are just some of the ongoing promotions SportNation offer.
Customer Care
SportNation’s customer service is available via live chat and email. There is no phone number shown on their website for contact verbally.
The live chat is available 7 days a week from 10 am until 10 pm, they advertise their average response time as just one minute and based on our contact with them that is accurate.
For email they advise that their average response time is 48 hours, so live chat is the way to go if you want a very quick answer to your query.
SportNation also has an FAQ page if you want to try and search for the answer to your query yourself before attempting contact via live chat or email.
Registration
Registering with SportNation is easy, by clicking the orange “join” button in the top-right of the screen you will be presented with a form where you can fill in your name (this must match exactly to your ID or passport), date of birth and email address. On the next page, you are asked to provide your phone number and address, which according to the registration form must be in either the UK or Ireland. On the last page, you create a username and password, select your currency (Euro or British Pound), set your deposit limit, and create your account. They even give you 500 reward points just for opting into receiving their offers which equate to a £1 free bet.
After registering you may be required to verify your account by producing a government-issued ID such as a Drivers Licence or Passport. In addition, you may be required to provide a bank statement showing that the address given matches, as well as satisfying the new affordability checks put in place by the Gambling Commission.
Financial Information
The only currencies accepted by SportNation are the Euro and the British Pound and deposits can be made using either a debit card, Apple Pay or Paypal.
With SportNation the minimum bet that can be placed is 10 pence. The maximum bet varies and is dependent on the sport and/or selection. On the betting slip when you make your selection there is an orange “Max Bet” button which will show the maximum stake they’ll accept for your bet.
The maximum payout for SportNation also varies depending on the sport. Football has the highest payout at £500,000 though this is restricted to the likes of all English professional leagues, Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga, as well as a few others. For some other fixtures, the maximum win is capped at £100,000 so it is worth looking at the betting rules for clarification so that you don’t get caught out.
For other sports, the maximum payout varies. On UK Horse Racing for example it is £250,000, while Snooker is £100,000.
SportNation does not charge tax on winnings.
What may be a potential sticking point for bettors is that the minimum withdrawal for SportNation is set at £20. This could lead to customers who bet in small stakes continuing to bet to try to reach the £20 limit and then ending up with nothing.
Reliability, Integrity and Safety
SportNation is a safe site as it is SSL encrypted meaning your card details are protected. The site overall appears very safe, it does not show up as an unsecured site when typing this into your browser.
Looking at customer reviews of SportNation there are a lot more positives than negatives with 37% excellent and 34% great ratings, compared to 19% bad ratings.
The good reviews speak of the ease in navigating the site, good odds, good offers and rewards. One customer, in particular, highlighted the football odds as being “pretty favourable”.
The bad reviews mentioned that customer service was unhelpful, that they closed accounts without any reasoning and that it took eight days to respond to a golf query that had finished by the time there was a response.
There are a good number of reviews about not paying winnings in until verification has been completed, as well as withholding winnings indefinitely. As SportNation is licensed by the Gambling Commission you do have the right to complain firstly with SportNation before escalating to the Gambling Commission if still unsatisfied.
What’s missing?
SportNation offers a lot to the general bettor, from a decent welcome bonus to begin with, to be able to accumulate reward points on literally every bet you place with them.
However, SportNation would benefit from offering live streaming on more sports than just Horse and Greyhound Racing.
SportNation should also make their minimum withdrawal smaller than £20. For some customers who bet in small stakes, this might be quite a high amount to reach before being afforded the right to withdraw money.
While the maximum payouts are not the lowest seen on a betting site, SportNation would benefit from increasing this if they can. An increased maximum payout along with the fantastic rewards system in place and the user-friendly website would only lead to more business and allow them to take more of the online gambling market share from the big online bookmakers.
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