Free Bets Lines & Odds Why Bet in CAD? About the Sportsbooks Getting Started Mobile Glossary Odds Comparison

When it comes to betting on sports in Canada, football is still the number one in terms of dollar value and the number of people that participate in wagering, perhaps surprisingly,hockey coming second. This site explores the best online football betting options from a purely Canadian perspective. There are two main reasons for this exploration: first, most football fans have relied on their local provincial sports lottery games to wager on football. Over time, most people come to the realization that these provincial lottery games are inconvenient and have odds stacked in the favour of the lottery corporation. Wagering online or with your mobile is more convenient and the odds provided payout significantly more on your winners making for the best sports betting experience available.

Once people realize that online and mobile betting is the way to go, they want to select an online betting provider but with so many, they are not sure which sportsbook will best-suit them because they don’t know the important issues or which companies are trustworthy, or if using alternative online betting services is even legal in Canada. I’ve reviewed over 25 international sportsbook brands in order to find the best ones from a Canadian perspective, especially with a mind toward football.

This website is not the only one that reviews sportsbooks, but I do take a far different approach than most. You’ll notice I only list four betting companies. This is because I’ve excluded those that I’ve rejected. Other review sites might review 20 companies and list them all, forcing you to read through all their info and make heads or tails of some lame star rating or grading scheme that is only displayed to make you feel better about signing up - “It must be great if they rated it five-stars.” You might think so, but they rated every company four or five out of five, so how does that help? A) it doesn’t and B) all that site cares about is that you pick any of the sportsbooks that they list, which is why they list all of them. I’m not interested in duping you, read more about my methodology at right.

Find the best football betting sportsbooks for Canadians

Football betting from your mobile device is amazing!

Each of the sportsbooks that I list allow you to view current point spreads, totals, money lines and place bets at the tap of your tablet or smartphone. This is a must-have service if you want to check live scores on-demand or are always on-the-move. Choose to access your account through your mobile browser or download available apps for free. Click to read about the best mobile football betting or any of my recommended mobile sportsbooks below to get started.

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Bodog was started by a Canadian - Calvin Ayre and although he sold his stake in the company, it is one of the oldest names in the business, established in 1994. Bodog is specially targeted to the Canadian market with CAD accounts and a wide array of football prop betting because they know we love fantasy sports and this feeds right into that enjoyment. Read the full review here.

Ontario to open legal sports betting and online casino market

All of the top football betting sites that we have listed accept players from across Canada - but they are operating in offshore jurisdictions or in First Nations jurisdictions in Canada. This is because Canada has not a had a properly regulated online gaming space. Canada has been well behind many other European countries that have looked to properly regulate their own markets so that some money can stay at home through taxes and so that their players can be sure that they are playing with a reputable operator.

With the passing of Bill C-218 in Canada to allow for single-event betting in 2021, Ontario moved with plans to have an open and competitive iGaming market in early 2022. This will allow for legal Ontario betting sites to operate and give residents of the province likely over 40 online sportsbook operators from which to choose. These will come in the form of both betting sites and/or betting apps. Some will offer both, others will only offer a mobile app. This new market also covers all of iGaming - which means that residents of the province will have access to fully licensed and legal Ontario casino sites. online poker and even perhaps online bingo.

How my review methodology differs:

Must offer CAD accounts.
Must provide Canadian friendly banking options.
Must provide excellent mobile betting.
Must be an established brand with a reputation as a trusted sportsbook.
Must allow at least some free withdrawals each month for each method.

I researched over 25 betting services, but I only list those that meet all of the above criteria and then offer football fans something extra with excellent prop betting or betting limits that are significantly higher than most sportsbooks.

I don’t list every sportsbook that I’ve researched because I believe it defeats the purpose of this site for you the reader. All sportsbooks inherently provide the same service, you are relying on me to show you the best ones. If I showed you my reviews for all 25, would you read them all and then choose number 23?

Probably not, thus I list only my best four, and in alphabetical order. You may read about the sportsbooks and more specifically, about their football betting offerings, not simply their sports betting.

Sportsbook football odds and how they compare to provincial lottery game odds

For the most part, understand that the provincial lottery sports games stack the odds in their favour in two different ways. First, they only accept parlay bets or multiples where you’ll need to win on everyone of your selections in order to receive a payout. You may enjoy wagering on parlays, but it is certainly tougher to win than if your were wagering on single game outcomes, and you may do this with any online sportsbook.

The second way the odds are stacked against you is in the odds pricing itself. When it comes to football betting, they don’t provide pricing on the individual games when but rather the odds for the number of selections that you play and get correct. So for example, for one of the popular lottery games, if you were to correctly select two football games against the point spread, you would win your stake by a factor of 2 to 1. So if you bet $50 you would receive your stake of $50 back, plus $50 in profit for a total of $100.

Compare this to any of the sportsbooks that I list. The odds for each single game will likely payout 1.85 to 1.98 depending on the game and on the sportsbook. To create an like-for-like comparison to the provincial lottery game, those same two selections would actually create payout odds where you multiply the stake by each of the single game odds. So for example: $50 X 1.90 X 1.90 = $180.5. So that’s $80.50 more for a successful two-game parlay by using an online sportsbook, which is over 80% more money in your pocket for the exact same wager.

The beauty of the sportsbooks I’ve listed is that they each independently set their own point spreads, totals and odds pricing as they see the betting markets move. The lottery games set their lines once and have to stick with them. You can wait until the line moves exactly where you want it, or you can actually “buy” points in your own personal point spread. This will change your odds pricing, but you’ll get the line that you are happy with.

Each of my recommended sportsbooks sets their own lines and odds. To help you take advantage of this, I’ve created a page that lets you easily view and compare their football odds. Use this tool to help maximise your potential payout and to see how any of the point spreads or totals might differ, and use this to your advantage as they relate to your own selections. This is why many serious bettors have accounts with several sportsbooks, ensuring they can always get the best handicap and best odds pricing for their stake.

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Being Canadian, you need to be betting in CAD$

For the uninformed, it is important to know that there are several sportsbooks with famous brand names and sporting spokespeople that fail to offer betting in Canadian Dollars, even though they advertise their brand directly to the Canadian market.

If you’re going to start betting football online, you should really be doing it with a sportsbook that offers CAD accounts. I explain the matter in more detail on my page about Canadian Dollar football betting.

In the real world, football point spreads, totals and odds pricing fluctuate. Do you know why this happens?

Did you know this is the case? If you’ve been betting on football with your local sports lottery game, you might not know this because they work with technology from 1993 where they would print odds sheets for distribution to their lottery retailers once a week. While they now post their odds, spreads and totals online, nothing has changed as they still publish only once a week. Think of how poor those NFL odds must pay if they know they can only set the odds once and hope they turn out alright because they can’t adjust them? That’s right, they’re stacked against you from the start.

When you play with an online sportsbook, point spreads, totals and odds pricing fluctuate based on how the betting public has laid their bets. Online sportsbooks aim to balance the amount bet on each game so that all the winning bets will be covered by the money from losing bets. Sportsbooks make their money from “juice” which is a small fee built into the odds pricing for each outcome. They aim to make a relatively small amount through collecting “juice” on a game with perfectly balanced money on each side of a result. They are not interested in large windfalls from an imbalanced game as this also poses a great risk of a great loss. A game that has been bet equally on both sides guarantees at least a small positive amount of revenue.

To balance the handle on each side, sportsbooks move the handicaps and odds pricing to encourage betting on one particular side. For example, lets say Denver is a Home favourite by -7 over Buffalo with the odds pricing set at 1.90 each. If 70% of the early money goes down on Denver, the sportsbook will move the spread to -7.5, -8, -8.5 and so on in order to provide incentive to bettors until the Buffalo side catches up to the Denver side so that they are as close to 50% as is realistically possible. In addition to moving the line, the sportsbook may also contract the odds pricing on Denver for subsequent bets from 1.90 to 1.87 or 1.85 to act as a disincentive to those that wish to bet on Denver. Note that these moves in the lines and odds do not affect bets that have already been made, only new bets.

You get to take advantage of this. Your opinion of a particular game is likely set before the odds and lines are even set. If you can be a patient bettor, you will be able to look at a game and the initial line and know which way the line is likely to move. Public Teams that are generally favoured by a large amount of the public like New England, Denver, Dallas and other popular teams will naturally see a large amount bet on their side regardless of the early line. This means that the lines will likely move to encourage betting on the other side, just like in the example above with Buffalo against Denver in the game above. If you like Buffalo and you can be patient, you can wait for a far more favourable spread. It’s far better to bet on Buffalo at +9 than +7 and your patience can pay off to provide you with a greater margin for error and a better chance to win. This kind of edge is only something you get by betting football online with a real sportsbook.