Sports Illustrated Colorado Review

You all know the Sports Illustrated magazine, known for its famous magazine. But now they’re entering the online betting world by launching their own online sportsbook website.

It’s time for Colorado-Betting to check out whether this sportsbook will be as attractive to its customers as the models that once graced their front pages.

Whereas some different sportsbooks have been boasting some ludicrous promotions with thousands of dollars in free bets, Sports Illustrated is being more reserved. If you’re a new customer, you can BET $20, and WIN $100, and all you have to do is make your first bet of $10 or more.

This offer expires on December 31, 2022, and is only available for new customers who are 21 and over, and located in Colorado. There are also some more T&Cs that should be observed. Your qualifying bet has to be a minimum of -150 odds, and the free bet will only be credited once the original bet is settled. You’ll then have seven days to use it. Also, the free bet stakes are not included in your winnings.

There is one other promotion worth mentioning too though, and it makes up for the smaller welcome bonus they offer. It’s called the Perfect 10. A free game that has you predict the results of 10 games, that could be picked from any sport. If you correctly predict all 10 games, you win a share of $10,000. If no one else guesses all 10 correctly, that money is all yours. If you don’t manage it though, all is not lost, because you get $1 in free bet credit for every correct result predicted.

Signing up couldn’t be easier

It’s a simple as that!

The experience on the desktop wasn’t the best. Dark themes can look really slick, but the Sports Illustrated site was almost too dark. Also, it looks like this has been done to fill the space rather than have the content stretched across the screen to match the resolution.

The menus themselves though were nice, and easy to navigate through. It just looks like rather than centering everything. Sports Illustrated has tried to fill every space which was unnecessary.

For Sports Illustrated’s app, we explored the Android version, available on the Google Play store, but there is also an iOS version on the App Store. 

It was much more user-friendly than the desktop site because the display was pretty much the same, and because of that, it works better on a smaller screen. It was all very responsive, and incredibly easy to navigate. We also liked how you could check the rewards you have earned as well.

Sports Illustrated on Mobile

Mobile was better than the desktop version as well. It was very similar to the app, except a little less responsive. The text was at points too small as well, but fortunately, with the ability to zoom in, that wasn’t a major issue.

There are a number of payment methods available for both deposits and withdrawals at Sports Illustrated. Here are the payment methods that you can deposit from:

And these are the methods you can withdraw your winnings with:

For withdrawals, the payout times differ from method to method. And there is a maximum withdrawal limit, for those time frames. For amounts larger than those above, additional time may be needed to release funds.

As is becoming standard, you can protect your money using Deposit Limits, which allow you to prevent taking too much money from your accounts. A handy tool to combat problem gambling, and also prevents too much damage from being done if your account is ever breached.

Bank Transfer is the quickest, with the total processing and paying out time being up to three days. All remaining withdrawal methods take up to four days. A little strange as for most sportsbooks, PayPal is usually the quickest method.

There are currently 23 different markets available on the website and apps. These range from a number of popular sports to the rising category of eSports and include special events as well such as the Winter Olympics. 

There is also a category for SI SportsBoosts, these are special bets that have enhanced odds.

However, remove those two markets and that then leaves you with just 21 different sports to pick from, which is fewer than some of their competitors. However, it’s possible that these may purely have been picked based on the interests of their customers.

Customer support only seems to be available online via a contact form. It’s an easy way to approach them, but sometimes it is nice to chat to someone in real-time. Whether that be over the phone or on a live chat platform.

We did experience quick response times to queries though, so that’s one positive at least.

Odds seem pretty average, quite often hitting -110 on events that have a 50/50 outcome. The average for the industry is between -110 and -115, so they are at the better end of that average.

Their SI SportsBoosts do offer some great enhancements. The only issue is, these are predetermined bets, and no sportsbook is going to offer enhanced odds on something that is likely to happen. That’s not to say you can’t win with them, but there is usually one bet on there that could slip up.

One example of how much better these SportsBoosts are is how they have enhanced odds from +520 to +600 on the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, and Minnesota Wild all to win in 60 minutes. On BetRivers, that same combination comes to +500, which is worse than the initial odds offered by Sports Illustrated even before the boost.

Whilst Sports Illustrated is famous for its models, this is far from a model platform. It has some really nice features such as covering specific events and offering their free-to-play Perfect 10 game, but there are downfalls too. The user interface on the desktop site could use some work and clearly, the website isn’t updated regularly, and while the bonuses are good, they do fall behind the value of other sportsbooks out there.