Most Trusted Betting Sites

The most trusted video game betting sites require two important features. First, we looked to make sure that these sites would not just rip off their players. Furthermore, we also looked into the different video game betting sites. Most cover League of Legends, CS:GO and Dota 2, along with a range of sports sims, but the top sports betting operators cover the likes of Overwatch, Call of Duty, Rocket League, PUBG, Fortnite.

• Most Secure Betting Sites
• Most Trusted Betting Sites

Reviewing Reputable Online Sportsbooks To Bet On Football

Domestic US sports betting is expanding to multiple states, proving that among Americans, sports betting is more popular than ever. And for American bettors, football is more popular than ever, too. No US sport turns a bigger handle than the NFL, and betting on football is how most newcomers start their wagering careers.

However, before you lay down your bets on the hottest NFL and college football action, there are some vital aspects of football wagering you should be aware of. Namely, it’s important to understand that the legal landscape in the US still favors legitimate sports betting sites located offshore over limited domestic options.

That said, not all football sportsbooks are created equal, so it’s crucial that you find an established bookmaker you can trust. To that end, we’re here to review the most reputable online football betting sites.

The sites you see listed here are among the leading football betting sites in the business. They all have competitive odds and lines, multiple wagering options, sophisticated security, and efficient banking suites with fast, guaranteed payouts.

So all things being (mostly) equal, Bovada is our #1 pick primarily thanks to their incredible reputation. Their parent company 'Bodog' has been in the online sports betting industry since the inception of online gambling, so they have a fantastic long standing reputation.

Aside from their generous $250 welcome bonus for new players, Bovada also offers live in-game betting, a mobile-friendly platform, accepts more forms of cryptocurrency than most other sportsbooks, and has lots of unique props on most NCAA, XFL, and NFL football games. All of these features make Bovada one of the safest sportsbooks to bet on football.

What Makes Football Betting In The US So Popular

Many people wonder what makes football so popular among US bettors in the first place. Well, first and foremost, it's the most popular spectator sport in America. The physicality of the players, the speed of the game, the highlight-reel scoring – it all adds up to some serious excitement. Because it's such a widely viewed sport, there are naturally lots of betting lines offered, including tons more props and live wagers than what other sports can support.

Because of this popularity, legitimate USA sportsbooks do their best to cater to US players interested in wagering on football. For instance, some sites will give you bonuses specific to football betting, timed to coincide with the beginning of the NFL or college seasons.

But even in the offseason, people can’t get enough football, and NFL futures betting remains one of the most active markets at any legitimate betting site. Still, there’s always a betting lull when football season ends, and to fill that void of action – and to give bettors even more to choose from – new football leagues like the XFL (which kicks off the week after the Super Bowl ends) are trying to get a piece of the massive football betting pie.

What a Good Sportsbook is Made Of

If you’re looking for the best online sportsbook for football betting, there are several items to consider. Here are a few things that a sportsbook needs in order to stand out from the others on the Internet. At a minimum, a truly great sportsbook must:

• Offer early, competitive football lines
• Provide tons of betting odds and additional betting options
• Offer lucrative bonuses and ongoing promotions
• Have a stellar online reputation among active users
• Offer lines on national and international sports in addition to their football selections
• Provide quality 24/7 customer support
• Offer a seamless user interface with great graphics
• Offer mobile-optimized betting boards for iPhone and Android devices
• Provide multiple banking options including Bitcoin

What to Look for in a Top-Notch Sportsbook

When you're in the market for a quality, legit sportsbook experience, you should always bear the above in mind. Remember: You don’t want to just throw your money at the first football betting site that pops up in a random Internet search.

Now, finding the perfect XFL, NCAA, NFL, or basketball sportsbook might take a bit of extra time and energy on your part, but we’re here to help streamline that process by weeding out the thousands of online betting sites that don’t pass muster.

The following tips should help explain the difference between a solid, reliable sportsbook and an operator to avoid like Bill Belichick in the playoffs:

1. Fair Football Betting Lines

Most football lines are set by outfits in places like Las Vegas, and these lines are periodically adjusted to entice action that's good for the house. Typically, this is a delicate balance with books playing for a respectable middle ground.

However, a shady sportsbook may tweak an over-under line to push all the action to a desired result. Thus, when the opposite hits, it's the operator that makes out like a bandit while the bettors take a bath. This is a risky practice, but then again, such illegitimate sportsbooks have little intention of paying winners out in the first place!

2. Selection And Variety Of Odds

Like local black-market bookies, shoddy online sportsbooks don’t tend to offer too many different betting options. They might have basic lines (i.e. straights, spreads, and totals), but with such operators, you’ll be hard-pressed to find things like prop bets and live football betting.

Legitimate online football sportsbooks, on the other hand, offer standard lines, quarter lines, halftime lines, alternate lines, player props, team props, game props, futures, specials, and sophisticated parlay systems to combine multiple bets into single tickets. When it comes to football sportsbooks, settling for less means settling for less money – which is kind of like spiking the ball on fourth down.

3. Sportsbook Reputation Is Everything

As with most businesses, the reputation of a company says it all. When you choose a football wagering site to place your amateur and professional pigskin bets, you should avoid any operator that is untested or brand new (unless they’re owned by an existing trusted player in the industry). There are tons of fly-by-night sportsbook scams on the Internet, and trust us, you don’t want any part of that.

Fortunately, there are also a number of reputable, long-lived sportsbooks that continue to get rave reviews from millions of US customers. These are the books you want to choose, and they’re the only ones we recommend. Gambling can be great fun, but gambling on an unproven sportsbook isn’t ever worth it.

4. Mobile Football Betting Options

When you join an online sportsbook, one of the primary reasons for doing so is the convenience factor. Without mobile support for iPhones, iPads, Androids, and other devices, there wouldn’t be much point in wagering online in the first place. The vast majority of football bettors wager on their smartphones and tablets, after all.

The best and most trustworthy sites will always have responsive, slick mobile UIs for their customers, but lesser sites won’t make the investment to upgrade. If the site you’re considering joining doesn’t have a betting portal optimized for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and other top mobile browsers, that’s a major 404 error!

5. Trusted Live Betting Software

All the best NFL, NCAA, and XFL sportsbooks employ cutting-edge software to drive their boards and live betting options. Lesser football betting sites can’t afford this kind of infrastructure, which means live betting support is one of the quickest ways to tell exactly how legit your chosen sportsbook is.

Remember, live betting is technologically advanced and expensive to implement, but it’s also the most popular way to wager on football in the US. As a result, good books will make the investment to provide their customers with a seamless, mobile-friendly live betting experience, while weaker books will punt on the opportunity. Fast, lag-free live wagering is a must, and you get that at the top betting sites.

Our Process for Finding Reputable Football Betting Sites

There are many online gambling reviews out there, but most of them won’t actually help you find a respected football wagering website. In fact, most of the people behind these reviews simply do a quick Google search and then list out the top results – they don’t even gamble at the sites they recommend!

As a result, such reviewers don't actually put in the necessary legwork to ensure player safety and satisfaction, or to even see if payouts are honored in a timely, guaranteed fashion.

But we take a different approach to our services here. We're gamblers ourselves, not seedy salespeople trying to make a buck. So rather than seeing what's popular and then simply passing on some useless search results to you, we only promote the sites we use ourselves. That’s right – we're active members at all these sites, and we have been shopping lines with them for years. The day we stop gambling at these venues is the day we stop recommending them to you.

What You Can Expect To Find On Our List Of The Best Football Betting Sites

Because we're so detail-oriented when it comes to reviewing and rating the best football sportsbooks, we're not going to be listing off a dozen different operators for you to check out. In fact, there aren’t even a dozen good ones out there! If you ever come across a “Top 10 Football Betting Sites” list, you already know it’s a lie. Call BS, and then call an audible!

Instead of focusing on quantity, our focus is on quality. What we’re trying to offer are thorough, honest reviews on the best XFL, NFL, and NCAA sportsbooks we can find. This means that our list isn't going to be nearly as extensive as some other sites’, because when quality is number one, there are only a handful viable options.

When you're reading a review from Legitimate Sports Betting, you're not just reading some advertising puffery on the biggest names in the business. Instead, you're getting detailed information from actual gamblers to help you find the sites where betting on football is less Hail Mary and more First and Goal!

Football Betting Options Found At Every Site We Recommend

All of the sportsbooks found on this page offer the following options for betting on football games. Obviously, if you don’t see hundreds of lines and props per day of football action, your sportsbook isn’t a serious operator. Including live football betting, all of our recommended sites offer thousands of daily NFL odds, NCAA odds, XFL odds, and more.

• NFL betting lines
• College betting lines (NCAAF)
• XFL betting lines
• Quarter lines
• Halftime lines
• Spread bets
• Straight bets
• Totals bets (over/unders)
• Player Props

• Team Props
• Game props
• Futures
• Specials
• Parlays
• Teasers
• Pleasers
• Live bets
• Mobile bets

Helpful Links For Football Enthusiasts

NFL.com - Features the latest in news stories, scores, stats and more. The most popular go-to resource for all things NFL.

ESPN College Football - ESPN is the number one site for all things NCAAF. With detailed team bios, up-to-date rosters, and advanced stats, ESPN is the home of college football.

It’s crucially important to stay safe when betting online. In fact, it should be priority number one when assessing a site to bet on.

We’ve done most of the hard work for you by searching the web, reviewing hundreds of potential betting sites, and separating the worthy sites from those you should avoid.

Check out the sites listed in the table above. All of these passed our security checks with flying colors.

Of course, we don’t just expect you to take our word on it. That’s why we’ve outlined how we made the decision to include these below if you’re interested.

The safest gambling sites are inevitably found in the countries where it is legal and regulated. These sites have to pass quality checks and comply with strict regulations to get a license from the authorities in these countries. This is one of the factors we consider when assessing a site.

How We Decide if a Betting Site is Safe

There are literally tens of thousands of potential betting sites to choose from. We’ve visited, bet on, and reviewed thousands of them. Over time, we have developed criteria for assessing betting sites.

Each site listed in the table above passed the following tests:

It Must Have a Valid Gaming License

If a site doesn’t have a license issued by a credible authority, that’s a warning sign that it might not be safe. It’s even worse if it once had one but lost it. That means it violated the issuing authority’s rules.

There are lots of gaming authorities in the world, but the following are the ones we rate highest.

This is widely considered the gold standard of casino gaming licenses. The UK is a highly regulated market and there’s a zero tolerance policy towards cheating and scheming. If a betting site has a UK license, it’s almost guaranteed to be safe.

Malta is a Mediterranean island nation and an iGaming mecca. Lots of online casinos and software firms operate out of Malta. The Gaming Authority, therefore, takes licensing issues incredibly seriously and is quick to clamp down on anything considered unfair.

Geographically, Gibraltar lies off the tip of Spain. It’s actually a British overseas territory, though. While it governs its own affairs, gambling regulations stem from the UK Gambling Act (2005), making a Gibraltar license just as worthy as a UK one.

This small island nation in the Caribbean is home to thousands of remote eGaming operations. A Curacao license is generally held in high regard, and although the regulations are a little more flexible than the UKGC’s, for example, a betting site with a Curacao license is still considered pretty safe.

So, that’s a quick look at some of the top gambling regulators. Our recommended sites always have a valid license. You can double check these directly on the websites listed above.

It Must Offer Fast, Reliable Payouts

There’s more than one way for a site to be unsafe, but without a doubt, the most common sort of betting site scam is when you deposit and don’t get your money back.

Some sites also put up major obstacles to allowing you to withdraw, such as by asking for unreasonable verification documents or by putting in minimum withdrawal clauses which far exceed the deposits you have made.

We check the terms and conditions of each site we recommend and avoid recommending those with anything we think is ‘funny business.’

Ideally, we want to see same day payout for e-wallet withdrawals, and we want to see a maximum 3-5 business day wait for credit and debit card withdrawals.

Despite how some players feel, we actually like it when a casino asks you to verify your identity. As long as the process isn’t too complex or time-consuming, this means the site cares about fraud prevention and identity theft. When it comes to looking for safe betting sites, that’s a big plus.

It Must Run on a Secure, Encrypted Connection

Does the idea of advanced encryption make your head spin? Don’t worry, we feel you on that.

There’s no need to have a deep understanding of this issue to make use of it. That’s why they pay IT professionals the big bucks. All you need to know, as an online bettor, is that you want to bet at sites with https:// at the beginning of the web address.

That means the site runs on an SSL encrypted connection. Without getting into boring details, this makes it virtually impossible for hackers and criminals to steal financial and/or personal data on the connection.

If you take a look at any of the sites listed above, you’ll see that they run on secure connections. We don’t take risks with your data safety, and you should avoid any sites which aren’t encrypted.

On most browsers, a little notification will appear beside the address bar telling you if a site is not secure. Pay attention when this happens. It could be a costly mistake to ignore this.

It Must Offer Games from Reputable Software Providers

Whether it’s a sports betting site, a casino site, a poker site, or a combination of things, we want to see software from established, reliable firms.

When it comes to online casino betting sites, for example, we really like to see games from NetEnt, Microgaming, IGT, and Playtech. These companies have a long history and are guaranteed fair.

If we see betting software we don’t recognize, that’s not an automatic write-off. We know this industry is highly innovative and are always willing to give upstarts a chance. However, we need to dig deeper and find out if these companies are reputable, and ideally want to see third-party verification of payouts.

Safe betting sites will have no problem publishing payout rates and explaining how the software works. If they aren’t willing to be transparent, we aren’t willing to recommend them.

It Must Have an Established History & Solid Base of Players/Bettors

The longer a betting site has been around the better, in our view. If a site has been servicing thousands of players since 1998, it’s highly unlikely to be unsafe. If it has survived for decades, it’s a safe bet (pun fully intended).

We’re also aware, of course, that there are lots of new betting sites coming online on a daily basis, and plenty of them are safe. In those cases, we look at the management team and company running them. If they are experienced and run multiple safe betting sites, we are happy to recommend them.

If a site is totally new, run by a startup with no industry reputation or experience, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find that site on our recommended list. They will only make it if they’ve done something exceptional to win our trust.

There are some new betting sites which make the cut, but it’s rare, and as you’ll see from the table above, most of our preferred betting sites have been around for a while.

Some of the Risks Associated with Online Betting

Most Secure Betting Sites

Part of the key to staying safe when betting online is education. We don’t mean to be patronizing, but if you’re new to this, you’re more likely to fall into the hands of predatory sites and scammers.

We want to prevent that, if possible. Other than sticking to the sites which have already been reviewed in-depth by our team of experts, it helps to know what some of the common safety concerns are.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the risks associated with betting sites:

• Outright Theft – This is simply a site stealing your money or making it impossible to get it back. It happens all too often but can easily be avoided. Stick to sites with a reputation for fair, fast payouts. Also, take some time to at least skim the terms and conditions, especially the ‘withdrawals’ section.
• Identity Theft – This is the one that really seems to freak people out these days. It’s always slightly unnerving when a betting site asks you to send a copy of your ID and a recent utility bill to verify your account. Again, it won’t be such a worry if you stick to the best-known operators who have licenses requiring them to take data protection seriously.
• Fee Gouging – Those terms and conditions are a treasure trove of information, as we’ve said before. Still, virtually nobody takes the time to read them. This is where dishonest operators can confiscate your winnings for no reason or take back a hefty slice in the form of fees.
• Viruses & Malware – Lots of mobile bettors, in particular, like to download an app from their favorite betting site. However, too many less scrupulous operators install malware, adware, and spyware along with the app. Get a good antivirus program which detects malware, adware, and spyware, and you should be safe.
• Rigged Games & Odds – The crooked bookie or casino run in a smoke-filled room parlor by the mob is long gone. These days, they’ve migrated online. Some unsafe betting sites create their own odds software or casino games, which are designed to rip you off, plain and simple.

Summary

It’s always worth it to take the time to research before deciding on a betting site. You can start by reading some of our in-depth reviews.

We cover each of the points listed above in detail and leave no stone unturned. We’re not saying every site we review will turn out to be right for you, but we are saying you’ll be in a much better position to make a decision after reading one.

Most Trusted Betting Sites

You can find our safest betting sites and their full reviews on the table at the top of this page. We wish you the best of luck!