SportlineHub is an independent editorial and comparison site for Canadian sports betting fans. We are not a bookmaker: we do not accept wagers, hold player funds, or run a betting account of any kind. What we do run is a website, and like almost every website, this one relies on small text files called cookies to work properly, remember your choices, and give our editorial team an honest picture of how people actually use our guides and odds comparisons.

This policy explains, in plain terms, what cookies are, which ones we use, why we use them, and how you can control or remove them. It should be read alongside our Privacy Policy, which covers the broader question of how personal information is collected and handled across the site. Where the two documents overlap, this page goes into more technical detail specifically about cookies and similar tracking technologies such as local storage and tracking pixels.

What a cookie actually is

A cookie is a small piece of text that a website asks your browser to store on your device. The next time you load a page from that same site, your browser sends the cookie back, which lets the site recognize your browser and recall information from earlier in your visit, or from a previous visit entirely. Cookies cannot reach into your files, read your other browsing history, or install anything on your device. They are, in effect, a simple memory aid that a site uses to avoid treating every single page load as a conversation with a total stranger.

We also use a small number of related technologies alongside cookies, including local storage (a browser feature similar to a cookie but capable of holding slightly more data) and lightweight tracking pixels embedded in some pages or emails. For simplicity, this policy refers to all of these collectively as "cookies," and calls out any meaningful differences where they matter.

Not every cookie on SportlineHub does the same job. Broadly, the cookies you will encounter here fall into four groups.

Essential and security cookies

These cookies keep the site running and safe. They handle things like maintaining a secure connection between your browser and our servers, routing your request to the correct part of our infrastructure, remembering your cookie consent choice so we do not ask you again on every page, and flagging suspicious or automated traffic before it can disrupt the site for everyone else. Because these cookies support core functionality rather than tracking or advertising, they are set automatically and cannot be switched off from within the site itself, though you can still block them at the browser level if you choose to, at the cost of some pages not working as intended.

Analytics and performance cookies

We use aggregated, privacy-conscious analytics, in the style of Google Analytics, to understand which guides get read, how long visitors spend comparing sportsbooks, which pages cause people to leave quickly, and where technical errors are occurring. These cookies typically assign a pseudonymous identifier to your browser so that repeat visits during a measurement window can be counted correctly, without attaching your activity to your name or email address. The resulting reports are statistical: we look at patterns across thousands of visits, not the behaviour of one identifiable person.

Preference cookies

These remember choices you make so you do not have to set them again on every visit. The most common example on SportlineHub is your preferred odds display format: decimal, fractional, or American. If you switch the format on one page, a preference cookie lets the rest of the site remember your choice the next time you return, rather than resetting to a default every time.

Affiliate and referral tracking cookies

SportlineHub is largely funded through affiliate partnerships, a model we describe in more detail on our About page. When you click through from one of our reviews or comparison tables to a licensed partner sportsbook, a referral cookie is typically set, either by our site or by the partner's own tracking system, so that the operator can confirm you arrived from SportlineHub. This is how many of our reviews, guides, and odds tools stay free to read: partners compensate us for qualifying referrals, not for the content of the reviews themselves. These cookies record that a referral took place and, where relevant, a rough timestamp; they do not give us access to any account you subsequently open, any funds you deposit, or any bets you place with that operator.

To give a concrete sense of what actually gets stored, here is a general picture of the kinds of cookies you are likely to encounter while browsing SportlineHub. We describe these in generic terms rather than listing exact vendor cookie names, since underlying analytics and security providers can change over time without altering the substance of what is collected.

• Session cookies: created when you arrive and deleted automatically when you close your browser. These typically hold a temporary session identifier, load-balancing information, or your cookie-consent status for the current visit.
• Analytics identifiers: pseudonymous strings used to distinguish one browser from another for the purposes of traffic measurement. These generally persist for somewhere between a few months and roughly two years, depending on the analytics configuration in place, after which they expire and a fresh identifier is issued on your next visit.
• Preference cookies: such as your saved odds format or display settings. These are usually set to persist for around one year, so a returning reader does not need to reconfigure the site on every visit.
• Affiliate referral cookies: record that a click-through to a partner sportsbook originated from SportlineHub. Retention windows vary by partner program but commonly range from about thirty days to ninety days, which is standard practice across the affiliate industry and is set by the receiving operator's own tracking system rather than by us.

Cookies are also grouped by who sets them. First-party cookies are set directly by sportlinehub.com and are only readable by us. Third-party cookies are set by services we rely on to operate the site, and are readable by those providers. On SportlineHub, third-party cookies mainly come from three sources: aggregated analytics providers who help us measure traffic and page performance; content delivery network (CDN) and security providers who protect the site against abusive traffic and keep pages loading quickly across Canada; and affiliate or referral networks used by the sportsbooks we review, which activate only at the moment you click an outbound link toward one of those operators.

We do not control the retention periods or internal practices of third-party providers directly, though we select partners that publish their own privacy and cookie disclosures, and we encourage readers who want the technical specifics of a given analytics or affiliate provider to consult that provider's own policy.

You are not required to accept any cookie that is not strictly necessary for the site to function, and every major browser gives you tools to inspect, block, or remove cookies at any point. The general settings path in the most common browsers is as follows:

• Google Chrome: open Settings, then Privacy and security, then Cookies and other site data, where you can view stored cookies, block third-party cookies, or clear cookies for specific sites.
• Mozilla Firefox: open Settings, then Privacy & Security, and look under Cookies and Site Data to manage exceptions, clear existing cookies, or set Firefox to block trackers automatically.
• Apple Safari: open Preferences (or Settings on iOS), then Privacy, where you can choose to block all cookies, prevent cross-site tracking, or remove stored website data.
• Microsoft Edge: open Settings, then Cookies and site permissions, then Manage and delete cookies and site data, where individual sites or all cookies can be cleared.

Because browser interfaces change fairly often, the exact menu wording above may drift slightly between versions; searching your browser's help documentation for "manage cookies" will always get you to the current settings screen. Most browsers also let you set a rule to reject cookies from specific sites while still accepting them elsewhere, which is a reasonable middle ground if you want to keep convenience cookies on sites you trust while limiting others.

If you arrived at SportlineHub from a region where a consent banner is shown, you can also usually adjust or withdraw your consent at any time by reopening the cookie preferences panel on the site, typically accessible from a small settings link in the site footer.

Blocking or deleting cookies will not stop you from reading SportlineHub's reviews, odds comparisons, or strategy guides. The core content of the site remains accessible either way. That said, disabling cookies does change how the site behaves in a few smaller respects.

With essential cookies blocked, some interactive elements, such as odds calculators or comparison tables that remember filters within a single session, may not work correctly, and a small number of security checks that protect the site from automated abuse may not function as intended. With preference cookies blocked, choices like your odds display format will reset to the site default every time you load a new page, since there is nowhere for that choice to be remembered between requests. With analytics cookies blocked, nothing about your experience of the site changes at all; you simply will not be counted in our traffic statistics, which is a perfectly reasonable choice and has no effect on which pages you can view.

Blocking affiliate referral cookies means that if you go on to open an account with a sportsbook after clicking through from our site, that operator's system may not correctly attribute the referral to SportlineHub. This has no impact on you as a reader or on any bonus or account terms offered by the operator; it only affects whether our referral is recognized on the partner's end, which in turn affects how the site is funded rather than anything about your own experience.

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" (DNT) signal that a visitor can enable to indicate a general preference against being tracked across the web. There is currently no single, universally agreed technical standard for how a website should interpret or respond to that signal, and in practice most websites, including SportlineHub at this time, do not alter their cookie behaviour based on a DNT header alone. We think it is more useful to be direct about that than to suggest otherwise: if a DNT signal is present, our servers may still set the essential, analytics, and preference cookies described above, though you always retain full control through the browser-level settings outlined earlier in this policy, which work regardless of whether a DNT signal is sent.

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time to reflect changes in the cookies and third-party services we use, changes in applicable Canadian privacy law, or simply to make the language clearer. When a change is meaningful rather than purely editorial, we will update the page and adjust the effective content accordingly; we encourage readers who care about the specifics to check back periodically, particularly before relying on any statement about a specific retention window or provider category. This policy does not create any additional rights beyond those already described in our Privacy Policy, and nothing here should be read as altering the terms of any third-party sportsbook you choose to sign up with.

If you have questions about this Cookie Policy, want more detail about a specific category of cookie, or want to exercise any of the privacy rights described in our Privacy Policy, you can reach our team at [email protected] for data-related questions, or [email protected] for general site support. We aim to respond to genuine inquiries within a reasonable timeframe and, where a request touches on personal data specifically, in line with the timelines set out in our Privacy Policy.