Popular online sportsbook Bovada has suffered a blow when their online website suffered an outage on Thursday, December 16th.
During this time, players were unable to bet, deposit, and withdraw. Customers were completely frozen out of their accounts.
The outage occurred during the NFL match between the Chiefs and the Chargers. This will have doubly dismayed punters looking to place wagers on the match.
During the outage, Bovada’s social media teams kept customers up to date with a series of Tweets which would have helped reassure customers their cash was safe.
But this would have been of little consolation to anybody with open positions on the Chiefs v Chargers match.
All-in-all, the downtime amounted to around 24 hours. Not great for an online sportsbook trying to compete in a competitive marketplace. After all, there is plenty more NFL betting sites out there!
With Bovada being an offshore sportsbook, they always seem to be treated with more suspicion than sportsbooks licensed and regulated within the USA.
So when their site goes offline for hours on end, customers with a lot of bucks tied up in their accounts may get a touch anxious.
In our view, they need not have worried. Bovada is an established and reputable sportsbook, you can check out our Bovada Sportbook Review for more information.
The offshore sportsbook is as reliable as any other in the marketplace. Bovada is a well-respected brand with a good reputation that makes decent profits.
There is little chance they are going to risk all of that and run off with customers’ money.
As Bovada is an offshore sportsbook, the search phrase ‘is Bovada a legit betting site’ is very common on Google.
As alluded to above, the answer is yes, Bovada is a legit betting site.
They may well fall outside of the US legislators, and they may push their luck with USA law enforcement agencies, but Bovada is a legit betting site.
At the time of writing, Bovada operates legally inside 45 states in the USA. This is down to their offshore presence, bypassing US laws.
The states that Bovada doesn’t operate in are Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Nevada.
More information about why they don’t operate in these parts of the USA is below.
If further proof was required about Bovada’s legitimacy, then look no further than their decision to block players from New York State back in May 2021.
The ban on New Yorkers came into force on June 21st, 2021. It was in the main down to state regulators tightening the rules on offshore gambling sites.
This was obviously a blow to the sportsbooks’ American operation and would also have been seen as bad publicity for the brand.
Add the recent outage to this, and you can see why it hasn’t been a great year for the sportsbook’s reputation in the USA.
Bovada also took the same decision to ban players in the states of Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Nevada. This was after similar laws were passed.
The Bovada sportsbook and poker site has long had a troubled association with the USA.
The brand remains legal as it’s based in Costa Rica. Therefore it has to abide by the rules of Costa Rica, which it does.
In the past, the USA federal government has voiced its disapproval of the online entity. But little has come of this.
There is no real way for US law enforcement agencies to do anything to stop Bovada from operating.
The only option open to them would be if anybody associated with the sportsbook entered the USA.
Any individual doing so, may run the risk of arrest. But even then, I envision there would be an almightly battle in the courts as to whether the arrested individual has broken any laws!
But with online gambling becoming more mainstream within the USA, would the online sportsbook consider trying to reach a compromise with the US government in order to access some of the emerging markets?
It’s difficult to see the US authorities climbing down and offering an offshore entity that has effectively been goading them for years an olive branch. Why on earth would they do that?
I would imagine the emphasis would be on Bovada to try and find a legal way into the USA.
Is it worth Bovada’s while is the next question I would ask?
The Bovada business model currently works well enough.
They already operate successfully in 45 of the states in the USA. So is there any point in them changing a successful business model to attempt to get a foothold on the ground?
Only the powers that be in Bovada can answer that question.
If the potential for being inside of America looks greater than staying offshore, I’m sure it will be investigated. Assuming it hasn’t already been looked at!
But for now, Bovada is doing well enough in the USA, and we still are happy to recommend them here at the Best Sports Betting Sites.
About the Author
Dean is primarily a fan of English football who regularly attends games, and combining his hobby with his job, he is now a full-time sports betting writer. Rather than going down the educational route into sports journalism, Dean learned his trade by writing for his English football betting website since 2009, where he now boasts nearly 15 years of experience. After writing about football daily for years, Dean has taken the skills he learned and now uses them to great effect writing for numerous affiliate sites across the internet. A general all-around sports enthusiast with a passion for English football and cricket, Dean is also well able to turn his hand to writing about golf, tennis, F1, boxing, snooker, darts, and North American sports. Combining his extensive knowledge and experience with British humor and wit, Dean has developed into a trusted voice within the sports betting industry.
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