Wheeling Island Sportsbook Review
The Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack, well-known for its unique geographical location on Wheeling Island in the middle of the Ohio River, is equally well-known for being the premier greyhound racing track in the state. However, in just a few months or so, Wheeling Island will be known primarily for something far more popular and lucrative: sports betting. Indeed, the Wheeling Island sportsbook review promises to peg the venue as a first-class athletics wagering facility once sports betting in West Virginia finally goes live.
Since West Virginia was among the first states to legalize sports wagering in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s PASPA overturn, the state’s five local casinos and racetracks have all been eagerly anticipating opening up their WV sports betting lounges to the public. Once this particular venue opens its doors, the Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack sportsbook reviews will come pouring in. You can also expect those reviews to be overwhelmingly positive, as the racino is poised to provide one of the best sports betting experiences in the state.
The Wheeling Island sportsbook is not yet open for business, but the timeframe for when WV residents can wager on sports at the facility is rapidly progressing. By all accounts, the West Virginia Lottery – which is the agency that manages and regulates WV’s sports betting industry – has fast-tracked the state’s five future sports betting venues through the licensing and regulatory processes so they can be up and operational as soon as possible. While two casinos have opened their sportsbooks, Wheeling Island has not.
As such, Wheeling Island could be hosting its sports betting “grand opening” in just a few short weeks. However, even once the sportsbook at Wheeling Island actually does open, there is a high likelihood that – for the remainder of 2018 and into 2019 – WV residents and visitors will actually have to wager on sports at the physical site itself. Online sports betting is coming to Wheeling Island (and is laid out in detail in SB 415), but the setup for that service is liable to take a bit longer than getting facility-based Wheeling Island sports betting up and running.
So, though Wheeling Island will almost certainly have online sports betting available sometime in 2019, right now your only Internet wagering option is to visit a legal offshore sportsbook like Bovada or SportsBetting or various other top books. These sites have been serving the WV area for over 20 years, and signing up is always totally legal, 100% secure, and absolutely free.
Once its wagering service goes live, you can rest assured that the Wheeling Island sportsbook will offer full-service sports betting to all its patrons. This means that not only will you get access to lines on all the major US leagues, teams, and players, you’ll also be able to place bets on sports from all around the world.
Additionally, the varieties of bets that Wheeling will have on hand should rival even the world’s best sportsbooks, with wager types ranging from the common (spreads, straights, totals) to the obscure (props, futures, specials) and more. No matter what your favorite club happens to be, if you’re betting on sports at the Wheeling Hotel-Casino-Racetrack, you’ll have dozens of options for each and every game of the season.
Once the facility’s sports betting lounge starts accepting wagers, it’ll be natural for folks to ask if Wheeling Island will have mobile sports betting on offer. The short answer is yes, of course. However, there is a caveat: For mobile sports betting to actually work, the West Virginia online sports betting system must already be established. A mobile sports betting app is no doubt in the works (either by Wheeling Island’s ownership group, Delaware North, or the WV Lottery itself), but you should not expect a robust iPhone or Android app to hit the market before the end of the year.
Mobile sports betting at Wheeling Island is definitely the future of wagering in the region at West Virginia sportsbooks, but it will take time to put all the pieces together. And even once the platform, app, and/or site is released to the public, it will probably be geo-fenced so that it is only available to people who are physically inside the state of West Virginia at the time they place their bets. If you happen to leave the state, you will need to use a mobile sportsbook that is not geo-fenced, such as BetOnline.
Proxy betting is when an out-of-state bettor pays a third party to place wagers on their behalf. This is generally regarded as illegal in the USA, as the casino operator has no control over who the actual players placing the bets are or what types of arrangements have been made. There are also concerns regarding fraud and money laundering on a larger scale, making proxy betting a practice that gambling operators avoid. For those who are out of town or simply do not wish to visit the physical sportsbook, logging into your favorite online sportsbook is a much better solution. Bovada, BetOnline, and 5Dimes are just a few of the sites that sports fans have been using for legal West Virginia sports betting for decades.