The pitches flew on the baseball diamond yesterday, but they started flying even before that at the New Jersey online sports betting sites, who are pitching their customers (and potential customers) on MLB deals.
Most of the major sites have new baseball-specific promotions, so here’s a look at some of the heavy hitters in the lineup.
With some of the most player-friendly vigs and creative promotions in the business, PointsBet has been turning heads of late, and their “Let It Fly” promotion will make bettors love the long ball.
Here’s the deal: Place a pre-game moneyline bet of at least $50 on one side of any individual game through April 8, and you get a $10 bonus bet for every home run your team hits.
If your team loses but drives a ball or two over the fence along the way, it’s a little money back to cushion the blow. If your team wins and does so with the help of a few big swings, it’s bonus cash.
Teams hit between 0.8 and 1.63 home runs per game last year, with the average landing at 1.15 per team per game. (We’re at 1.62 through one full day of the 2019 season, skewed ever so slightly by an eight-homer outburst by the Dodgers on Opening Day.)
Using last year’s stats, this deal is worth $11.50 for every $50 wagered. PointsBet most definitely does not charge a 23% vig. This is very clearly a favorable deal for bettors, as long as they aren’t too excessively sub-optimal at picking winners.
FanDuel Sportsbook knows its audience, playing to the New Jerseyans, the New Yorkers who come by bridge and tunnel to make bets, and the Philadelphians who are growing old waiting for Pennsylvania mobile betting to launch.
FD’s “Local Locks Bonus” applies to any pre-game moneyline bet of $25 or more, through Sunday, on the Yankees, Mets, or Phillies, rewarding bettors with $5 in site credit for every run the local team wins by.
Thursday was a rough day for the sportsbook. All three teams prevailed in their openers: Mets by 2, Yankees by 5, and Phillies by 6. That’s $65 in bonus money on top of the moneyline payouts if you went for the clean sweep.
Promotions aside, FanDuel has an important wrinkle to protect baseball bettors this season. When you place a bet on a game, you select an option for whether you want to withdraw the bet if there’s a change to the pitching matchup. You can choose to keep the bet no matter what, cancel it specifically if Pitcher A doesn’t start, cancel it specifically if Pitcher B doesn’t start, or cancel it if either scheduled pitcher doesn’t start.
That’s great customer service for a bettor who wants to wager on a game but might not be in the state or have his phone handy later to pull out of the bet if there’s late pitching news.
DraftKings and BetStars are both going with what’s become a very familiar promo across many sports, essentially the “my team broke my heart” insurance.
At DK, “9th Inning Insurance” is exactly what it sounds like: If a team you bet on the moneyline has a lead going into the ninth and blows it, you’ll get a refund in the form of a free bet, up to $50.
BetStars has a similar promo called “Extra Inning Insurance,” which you can probably figure out the terms of based on the name. If your team loses in extra innings, you get your moneyline bet back in the form of a free bet, though the limit is lower than DraftKings’, at a $20 maximum refund.
Hey, it always stinks to lose. But it stinks a lot less when you can lose and still break even.
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