What to Look for in an Offshore Sportsbook

Over the last few years, about half of the states throughout the country have legalized sports betting. As a result, a few dozen sportsbooks have set up shop right in the U.S.

If you live in a state where sports gambling has been legalized, you might want to consider using one of these sportsbooks to place sports bets. But you may also want to look into using one of the many offshore sportsbooks for sports betting purposes.

But before you do, you should make it a point to find one of the best offshore sportsbooks around. You’ll have a fantastic experience from the start when you choose the right offshore sportsbook.

There are certain things that you should look for in the best offshore sportsbook. We’ve put together a list of them so that you’re able to narrow the list of offshore online sportsbooks available to you to just one.

Here is what to look for in an offshore sportsbook.

History

When you’re looking around at different offshore sportsbooks and trying to decide which one you would like to use, you should pay close attention to how long they’ve all been around. Ideally, you want to give your business to an offshore sportsbook that has a long and storied history within the sports betting industry.

You’ll know that an offshore sportsbook like this isn’t going to up and disappear out of nowhere. You can’t always say the same thing for offshore sportsbooks that have only been around for a year or two.

It should be simple enough to figure out how long different online sportsbooks have been in business. This list of the best offshore sportsbooks will break it down for you.

Reputation

In addition to taking a look at how long different offshore sportsbooks have been around, you should also strive to read as many online reviews as you can for your various options. It’ll be important for you to work with an online sportsbook that has a wonderful reputation among sports bettors.

If you Google the name of an offshore sportsbook and the word “reviews,” you should be able to track down more than a few online reviews for it. These reviews will shed so much light on what it’s like to have an account with a particular offshore sportsbook.

If you discover that an offshore sportsbook has almost nothing but negative reviews, that isn’t going to be a good sign. You’ll instead want to focus solely on the offshore sportsbooks that have lots of positive reviews to their names.

Accessibility

For a long time, most offshore sportsbooks were more than happy to accept American customers. But since a lot of the laws regarding online gambling have changed in the U.S. in recent years, some of these same sportsbooks have started to stop taking customers from this country.

You’ll obviously want to keep this in the back of your mind when you’re searching for offshore sportsbooks. You may very well find that at least some of your supposed options won’t be willing to extend accounts to customers based in the U.S.

You might be able to get around these restrictions by utilizing a VPN. But why do that when you can just find an offshore sportsbook that will let American customers sign up for accounts? It’ll be a much better option for you.

Bonuses

The global online gambling market is worth tens of billions of dollars at this point. And it’s expected to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars within the next decade or so.

Because of this, there is no shortage of offshore sportsbooks scattered throughout the world. They’re all trying to compete with one another right now for a piece of the online gambling pie.

To try to set themselves apart, many offshore sportsbooks have started to give out bonuses to new customers. You should take full advantage of these bonuses when you sign up for an account with an offshore sportsbook.

You should also make it your mission to find the best bonus possible when you’re first signing up for an account. You might end up leaving money on the table if you choose one offshore sportsbook versus another without doing any research on their bonus systems.

You should also do more than just sneak a peek at how much bonus money an offshore sportsbook will give you. You should scroll through the terms attached to the bonuses available from offshore sportsbooks, too. It’ll give you some indication of what you’ll need to do to convert bonus money from an online sportsbook into real cash.

Promotions

The very best offshore sportsbooks will go above and beyond just dishing out bonuses to their new customers. They’ll also put special promotions in place that their existing customers can use to obtain bonus money.

For instance, an offshore sportsbook might hold a promotion around a holiday and invite all of its customers to earn bonuses on any deposits that they make. They might also hold a promotion around a big sporting event that will enable its customers to score free betting opportunities.

Far too often, people will fall in love with the bonuses that offshore sportsbooks offer to new customers without considering the other promotions that they hold. You will want to work with an online sportsbook that regularly stages promotions for all of its customers, regardless of how long they’ve had accounts.

Odds

Some newer sports bettors make the mistake of thinking that all offshore sportsbooks offer the same betting odds to their customers. But this couldn’t be further from the truth!

If you were to visit ten offshore sportsbooks right now, you would find that most of them would have different betting odds for the same sporting events. Each individual sportsbook is going to have different odds based on the bets that they’ve already taken on sporting events.

With this in mind, you’re going to want to try to gauge which offshore sportsbooks extend the best betting odds to customers. It’ll ensure that you’re able to get access to great odds every time you go to place a bet.

Types of Bets

For many years, moneyline bets and point spread bets were really the only two types of bets that most offshore sportsbooks offered. But in 2022, these same sportsbooks now offer so many more types of bets that sports bettors can place.

For instance, offshore sportsbooks will offer people the chance to place:

• Parlay bets
• Total bets
• Teaser bets
• Prop bets

In a perfect world, you’ll want to create an account with an offshore sportsbook that’s going to give you the opportunity to place lots of different types of bets. It’ll enhance your sports betting experiences and make betting on sporting events so much more fun than it would be otherwise.

Betting Limits

If you’re only planning on making modest sports bets, you might not need to worry too much about the betting limits that some offshore sportsbooks will impose. But if you consider yourself a high roller, you might not want to get stuck having to deal with betting limits.

You should try to get to the bottom of what kinds of betting limits offshore sportsbooks have in place. If these betting limits are on the lower end of the spectrum, they might prevent you from putting in the big bets that you would like to place.

Betting limits can also stop you from scoring the big payouts that you would like. Some offshore sportsbooks will stop sports bettors from being able to put in parlay bets that come with massive payouts. You’ll want to shy away from signing up for accounts with sportsbooks like this.

Deposit Options

When you first sign up for an account with an offshore sportsbook, you might be able to get away with only using bonus money to place bets. But eventually, you will need to deposit some money into your account—and you’ll need to have an offshore sportsbook on your side that offers at least one deposit option that will work for you.

Thankfully, most offshore sportsbooks offer a plethora of deposit options. They’ll allow people to put money into their accounts using:

• Credit cards
• Cryptocurrency
• Bank transfers
• PayPal

You should scroll through the different deposit options that you’ll have through an offshore sportsbook and see which ones might work for you. If you can’t find any, it’ll indicate that you should sign up for an account with a different online sportsbook.

Withdrawal Options

If you’re lucky enough to win money while betting on sports through an offshore sportsbook, you will want to take out some of your winnings at some point. It’s why you’ll need to have an offshore sportsbook in your corner that has attractive withdrawal options.

There are some offshore sportsbooks that are going to make you jump through hoops to withdraw money from your account. Their withdrawal options will be few and far between, and they won’t guarantee that you’ll be able to transfer money to your bank account.

If you notice that an online sportsbook doesn’t have many options in terms of withdrawing money, that should be a sign that you won’t want to work with them. You should also be wary of signing up for an account with any sportsbook that has earned a reputation for not paying customers in a timely fashion. They’re going to be more trouble than they’re worth.

Customer Service

When you have an account with an offshore sportsbook, there will no doubt come a time when you’ll have questions and concerns that you would like to express. To do this, you’ll need to be able to touch base with a sportsbook’s customer service department fast.

You’re going to find that not every offshore sportsbook will have a great customer service department. Some of them will have customer service departments that take forever to respond, while others will have customer service departments that are hard to reach.

You should be able to contact the customer service department for an offshore sportsbook in a variety of ways. They should give you the option to:

• Call them
• Email them
• Live chat with them

They should also go out of their way to respond to you as quickly as they can. It’ll get you answers to your questions in a hurry and guarantee that you don’t have to wait around for a long time waiting for your concerns to be addressed.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to put the customer service departments for a few offshore sportsbooks to the test. Send them a message with a question in it and see how long they take to respond. This will show you which online sportsbooks take customer service seriously and which ones are going to leave you hanging when you need them the most.

Which of the Offshore Sportsbooks Are You Going to Choose?

The good news for those who are in the market for offshore sportsbooks is that you won’t have any issues finding options. There are seemingly a million and one offshore sportsbooks waiting to help you place sports bets.

But the bad news is that you’re going to need some research to find the best offshore sportsbooks of the bunch. You’ll want to work your way through the steps we’ve listed here to find an offshore sportsbook you can trust.

Read through some of the other articles published on our blog to get additional sports betting tips and tricks.