Skybook Casino Review

Well, here is another name that has sent my memory into nostalgia mode –
Skybook is the subject of this review. I remember Skybook from my early days in
the online gambling industry, and it is always great to see brands like that
standing after almost 20 years. The question is – is this book any good? I will
be digging into the details of Skybook to determine if their betting interface
has been modernized to accommodate the current style of sports betting, and to
see if they are worthy of my readers pulling out their wallets and making a
deposit.

Ratings Breakdown

Site Navigation

The Skybook website is clean and easy to navigate, and when you get to the
betting pages after you create an account, you will see that the interface is
very simple to understand. I like that I can make bets across multiple sports
with ease, and the layout is the same as many of the sportsbooks I have tested
in the past.

Customer Service

When I review a site, I test out the customer service with a couple of
relatively easy questions to see how well they respond. I am happy to report
that not only does Skybook have an excellent support team, but they also offer
you multiple ways to get a hold of them. This includes a live chat window which
you can find on the left-hand side of every page of the website. As with all
these sportsbooks, I only wish there was an FAQ section to assist with general
queries.

Promotions

The Welcome Bonus options are well explained, which is why the mark is as
high as it is for promotions. I want to recommend gambling sites that make an
effort to engage with their players, and I am afraid Skybook doesn’t do a great
job of this aside from offering rebates. This is an old-school approach to
marketing that harkens back to the early days of offshore gambling.

Mobile Interface

While the approach to marketing may be a bit dated here, the team has really
put some effort into the mobile offering. This is excellent news for my readers,
as the odds are that most of you are reading this from your phone or tablet
right now. I think that this interface is one of the best I have seen short of
having an app downloaded to your phone. If you like to bet during a game, the
speed of the lines being displayed is excellent and will let you get your wagers
in quickly.

Game Selection

The standard sports are available at Skybook for betting, and this will be
more than enough for most of you. There are no eSports lines that I can find on
the site, and this is a bit of a bummer for me. The casino has a few games but
is lacking in slots content and any video poker, otherwise I would have given
the site a better overall score.

Payout Speed

Payouts from sportsbook sites based in Central America are never really fast,
so if you want to get a check or a wire you can expect o wait a couple of weeks
to get paid. If you use Bitcoin, the speed will be significantly improved, but
you will have to take on the added risk of the volatility of the cryptocurrency.

About the Site and Who Can Play?

When Skybook opened its doors back in the early 2000s, they were an
independent entity. Over the years, there has been some consolidation in the
industry, and today the site is under the BetPhoenix banner of companies.
Regardless, there is a lot of experience at this sportsbook, which is always
good news for players.

The site is obviously focused on American sports and players from that
country, which you should be able to tell right from the homepage of the
website. Creating an account is simple – I clicked on the link, added a few
details about myself and I was off and running.

It would appear that players from other countries can also play here, but I
guess that if you live outside North America, you would be better off trying a
European-facing book as there are much better options from the payments
standpoint.

What I Liked the Most

I really like the way that the company has built their mobile platform. This
is crucial in the current gambling landscape, as so many players are accessing
their sportsbook accounts from their phones. The mobile platform is very
intuitive – I was able to find odds very quickly and make my bets without
hesitation. This is the key to being able to use live in-play odds, and Skybook
clearly recognizes how much those bets will impact their bottom line. I am very
impressed with the emphasis the site places on its mobile offering.

What I Liked the Least

I am not very impressed with the promotions on this site. You will see in
more detail some of my issues with the Welcome Bonuses, and aside from some
other deposit bonuses and rebates, there really isn’t anything of substance from
a marketing perspective. The industry is more competitive than ever, and if a
site isn’t providing sticky offers to get players to hang around, it is too easy
to check out the next site they see. Hopefully, there are some more promos that
will be coming to me by email.

The Sportsbook

Since this is a sports-first site, I am starting my journey in the sportsbook
area. For me, the first thing I look for when I hit a sportsbook homepage is the
way the lines are displayed. At Skybook, I was met with the most popular lines
for that day. On the left-hand side of the screen, you will find the list of all
the available sports, including the following.

• FOOTBALL
• BASEBALL
• BASKETBALL
• HOCKEY
• SOCCER – ENGLAND
• SOCCER – SPAIN
• SOCCER – ITALY
• SOCCER – GERMANY
• SOCCER – FRANCE
• SOCCER – EUROPE
• SOCCER – AMERICA
• SOCCER – AFRICA
• SOCCER – ASIA
• TENNIS
• GOLF
• BOXING
• MIXED MARTIAL ARTS

I am a bit surprised that there are no eSports lines available in the
sportsbook at Skybook – the increasing popularity of these events has most
sportsbook adding the lines from the major competitions. It’s entirely possible
that Skybook will follow suit soon, but for now, you will have to look elsewhere
if you want to bet on the world of competitive video gaming.

The Casino Games

As with most of the sportsbooks that are set up in Costa Rica and accept U.S.
players, we find a small casino attached to Skybook. Now, this is typically for
a couple of reasons. First, this is really a sports betting site, so the casino
is more of an add-on product than a primary focus. Second, there aren’t too many
providers that allow their clients to accept American wagers these days so you
won’t find a company like Microgaming powering one of these books.

The caisno games at Skybook come from Digital Gaming Solutions, a Costs Rica
based company. I have had some experience dealing with this company in the past
– they are small, but they have a nice roster of clients, and the software they
have built is reflective of being a provider in the sportsbook industry.

The DGS games can be played on a PC or from your mobile device, as all the
games are built in browser-based code. This means you can be in front of your
television watching Redzone on a Sunday and playing the games on your phone.
This is exactly how I tested the games, and I found them to be of excellent
speed and quality.

Table Games

As I said, these guys built their casino to be an add-on to sportsbooks, so
the content is definitely skewed towards what that demographic is looking to
play. There are a couple of different blackjack games, which seem to play with
the same speed and quality of other games I have tried. You will find some
Roulette and a handful of other table games, but this is definitely not a full
array of even the standard games you would find at an online casino.

Slots

DGS offers you all of their slot machines in the Skybook casino lobby, but
don’t get too excited. The titles barely fill a page of the website – again,
they aren’t banking on people playing them who also bet on sports. I appreciate
that there are any there in the first place, and I did play a couple of them to
see what they were like. I am not a big slots guy, so while the gameplay was
rather simplistic in my opinion, it still fits the bill in that there are
spinning reels and you have a chance to play multiple paylines. This isn’t a
slots catalog for the casino-hungry readers of this review.

• Aztec Magic
• Book of Pyramids
• Brave Viking
• Cherry Fiesta
• Crazy Starter
• Desert Treasure
• Fantasy Park
• Hawaii Cocktails
• Lucky Blue
• Lucky Lady’s Clover
• Lucky Sweets
• Platinum Lightning
• Princess of Sky
• Princess Royal

Video Poker

As far as I am concerned, video poker is the best thing to play in a casino.
I probably sound like a broken record if you have ever read any of my other
reviews, but I really love to play these games. There is just something about
the combination of speed and skill that no other game in a casino can offer.

Skybook has a tab of their caisno labeled Video Poker, so I was already
excited as I never expected enough games to consider having its own area of the
lobby. However, when I clicked on it, I found the poker titles that are table
games (Caribbean Stud, etc.) and NO VIDEO POKER MACHINES! Ugh. What a
disappointment. Skybook either has to add some games or change the tab, so
players aren’t confused when they are in the casino lobby looking for Jacks or
Better.

Live Casino

Recently, Skybook launched some Live Dealer games. This is very progressive
for a U.S. facing sportsbook, and if you haven’t tried these games before I
definitely recommend this is where you start your casino journey with this site.
These tables feature human dealers, giving you a feeling of being in a
land-based casino even though you are sitting on your couch. There are only a
handful of table games available, but this is still more than many of Skybook’s
competitors currently offer their players.

Conclusion

Skybook seems to operate as many of the sportsbooks that set up shop in Costa
Rica in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It runs pretty lean – focused on sports
and the American betting market. The promotions could use a little work, but if
you don’t care much about that, then you will find a clean betting interface
that works very well on both a PC and a mobile device. The casino product is
decent but nothing to write home about, but again this a sports betting site so
you shouldn’t expect much more.

Overall, this isn’t the best of the Costa Rica sportsbooks, but it is decent
enough for me to recommend it to players. You will find the majority of what you
are looking for at this book, but don’t be afraid to shop around a bit as well.

FAQ’s