The central showpiece of the website appears to be a looping flash presentation running on the Home Page. While the movie is tasteful, it slows down one’s progress while navigating and causes the main page to load far too slowly. The page took close to 25 seconds to load over a dial-up connection and just over 8 seconds to load over high-speed DSL. These simple load-testing benchmarks should not have passed any Quality Assurance department. Further, the website only works with Java-enabled browsers.

An interesting component on the Home Page is a sports ticker with updated scores. One can manually choose between various sport categories to be shown in order to avoid irrelevant score lines. The other content on the site is very limited and most of the links are geared towards providing registration information and help. There are also several casino-related links. This keeps the overall site layout modest, but intuitive.

SportsWager.com appears to take a casual approach to the sportsbetting industry. While competitors often aggressively market their own reputation and cater to the serious better by providing news updates and industry reviews, this website offers little in this respect. There are several interesting promotions for new members and referrals, but nothing that suggests a concerted effort to attract a first-time visitor. There is a category called ‘Contests’ that lists interesting raffles that will take place in the coming months, but by then one is not entirely convinced that SportsWager.com is the ideal sports-betting venue online.

A listing of sports categories is not prominently provided anywhere on the SportsWager.com site. Instead of exploring the Live Bets section in order to get an idea of the sports offerings, we were able to get an answer from the accessible live chat staff. The website, like most others, focuses on the four major American sports as well as international favorites such as Tennis, Golf, Boxing, and Horse Racing during the Triple Crown.

Because SportsWager.com is a casino as well as a sports bookmaker, one can also sign up to play popular table games and slots via the website’s online casino. Casual visitors also have the option of playing with free money in a convenient flash window that doesn’t require any software download. This is a distracting feature that, nevertheless, is enjoyable and steals a visitor’s attraction for more than a few minutes.

Registration is free, as for most websites, but there is a $50 minimum deposit before one can start betting on sports events. That is a substantial deposit, especially for the recreational better. The process of registering and transferring funds is fairly standard and easy. Although all the major Internet and non-internet-based methods are entertained here, there are significant transaction fees associated with payouts. SportsWager.com offers no assistance in this respect – unlike most major players in this industry, who try to accommodate most transaction fees via refunds and rebates.

Customer service is a great feature of SportsWager.com. One has the option of emailing a service account as well as contacting the CEO, Ed Vargas, directly via his personal email address. A live chat option is offered for help and is answered instantly by a courteous and knowledgeable representative. A toll-free telephone number is provided that isn’t answered 24 hours a day and an alternate phone number in San Jose, Costa Rica is offered as well.

SportsWager.com, much like its website suggests, seems to be a casual sports betting operation that does not aggressively market any major competitive advantages or an established reputation. The website seems geared mostly towards the occasional better who wouldn’t mind getting in on a few hands of free blackjack. T he website is simple and basic in functionality, and it works fine just that way without threatening to compete seriously for market share in the industry.

Upshot: Recommended for Occasional Users Only