NJ Sports Betting

Do you want the best online sportsbooks in New Jersey served on a platter? If you do, you are in luck, my friend, as I have just that. At NJ Punter’s place, you will find the most comprehensive list of legal online NJ sports betting sites and nothing below that. I never settle for anything less than betting perfection, and you can rest assured that if I say that certain NJ sports betting sites are the best online sportsbooks in the state, that really is the case.

Here you will only find sports betting sites that are legal, licensed, and secure. As a punter with years of experience, I would never even think of promoting sportsbooks that aren’t legit. In my book, this is tricking my fellow bettors into wagering with inferior sites, and that’s strictly forbidden in our bettors’ Code of Honor.

Stay with me to find out more about the best legal betting sites in New Jersey and the licenses and security protocols they utilize. If you read on, you will also learn more about some top-quality betting promotions and bonuses I found just for you. Lastly, I will give you a complete rundown on the best new and mobile betting sites.

In short, the list of sportsbooks you will find here is as comprehensive and as enticing as you want it to be. Let’s not waste a minute more, and let’s dive into New Jersey’s betting finest.

Best Sports Betting Sites that are Legal in NJ

The first thing that you should cover when betting online is to check whether the sportsbook operates legally or not. If the sportsbook is legal, it’s probably up there with the best in the business, and you should proceed with placing your bets there. You will find that the majority of the best sports betting sites that are legal in NJ are actually listed right here.

On the other hand, if the sports betting site is not a legitimate business, the choice is easy; you don’t wager there. However, this is easier said than done as you cannot expect a sportsbook to tell you that it works illegally, can you? In fact, the chances are that the bookie’s people will do everything in their power to cover that matter up.

Things to Look Out For

Fortunately, you have people like yours truly that are here to help. As I promised at the beginning, I will serve the best legal sportsbooks on a silver platter so that you don’t have to go through the hustle of verifying the legitimacy of a bookmaker yourself. However, if you do insist on checking each sportsbook’s credentials, here are the things that a betting site must have:

• A valid license;
• The latest security protocols and certificates;
• A secure mobile betting app.

I always analyze these legal and security aspects before I include a sportsbook or casino on my list. And not once have I been let down by an NJ sportsbook that has satisfied the three criteria above.

You can say that by revealing them to you here, I am sharing some of the important secrets of my trade. However, there should never be a compromise when the safety of your deposit is concerned, and if you check these things, that will never be an issue.

Licenses & Security in NJ Sportsbooks

If you want to have a safe and risk-free wagering experience, you should always check licenses & security in NJ sportsbooks first. These are the two most important things to cover before placing wagers, and you should never disregard them.

Sure, aspects such as bonuses, high odds, and low sportsbook edges matter too. However, if you lose your deposit at the hands of a fraudulent bookie, would you care much about its promotions? I think not.

I will talk in-depth about which licenses a New Jersey sportsbook must possess, but before I do, let’s look at what the law has to say about sportsbooks operating in the State of New Jersey.

New Jersey Online Sports Betting Law

As you probably know by now, legal NJ sportsbooks exist at both casinos and racetracks. On June 11, Governor Phil Murphy signed the bill that finally made all types of sports betting legal in Garden State. Three days later, on June 14, a bettor made history and placed the first legal sports wager at Monmouth Park racetrack.

NJ players can place legal sports bets online too. The first online sports bet in the State of New Jersey was placed in August 2018, and bettors in the state haven’t looked back since.

You have to remember a couple of things before you place your NJ online bet, though. The first one is that you have to be 21 years or older. The State of New Jersey is pretty strict when it comes to this, so make sure you meet this requirement.

Another important thing to bear in mind is that you have to be physically present in the state to wager at its online sportsbooks. Online betting vendors use geolocation to determine where you access the sportsbook from. If you are not physically located in the State of New Jersey, you cannot bet online.

Regulatory Bodies and Licenses

All gambling and betting-related things in New Jersey are under the jurisdictions of the NJ Casino Control Commission and NJDGE. The New Jersey CCC is responsible for regulating casino gambling. The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, on the other hand, is a government agency that sees over sports betting of all types.

This means that a legal sports betting site must hold a license from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. To check if your New Jersey sports betting provider has a valid license from this government agency, you need to do two things.

First, scroll down to the bottom of the sportsbook’s website. If the sportsbook is licensed and regulated, you should find the name of the regulatory body we just mentioned right there.

Once you have done that you just need to verify that the license is still valid, you can do that by contacting the regulatory body or by going on their website. If everything checks out after completing this two-step procedure, you are dealing with a legal sports betting operator.

Security Certificates and Data Encryption

Licenses and security protocols are two sides of the same coin. They deal with different aspects of your wagering adventure, but both achieve the same goal of risk-free betting. In fact, you would rarely find one in a sportsbook and not the other.

There are two things to look for when analyzing whether a sports betting site is secure enough. The first aspect you should check is whether the security certificates it has are still valid. If they are expired, it is not smart to place wagers at this sportsbook, and you should look elsewhere.

Another thing to check is the type of encryption the site uses. Encryption with 256-bit keys should be the goal here. This level of encoding data will ensure that the financial information you enter on a site is so scrambled that hackers will have zero chance of decoding it.

NJ Sports Betting Promotions & Bonuses

Once you have covered the licensing and security issues, you can proceed to check out the bonuses online sportsbooks offer. NJ sports betting promotions & bonuses are famous for being very enticing, and the best online sportsbooks have them in spades.

There are different types of bonus offers out there, and you should use all of them. Just find out how you can qualify for a certain promotion and go ahead and meet those criteria.

My advice is to go for as many bonuses offers as you can. I say this because, most of the time, a promotion means a risk-free bet.

So how does a bonus look like? Well, usually, the sportsbook will either match your deposit or give you a free bet in that amount, and that’s never a bad thing.

Why risk your hard-earned money when you can place risk-free wagers with the funds the sportsbook so generously gives you? Read on to find some of the most lucrative New Jersey sports betting bonuses on offer right now.

First Deposit Bonus Offers

This is by far the most enticing of all types of bonuses at New Jersey sports betting sites. As the name implies, sportsbooks award these welcome bonuses on new clients’ first deposits.

Usually, a sportsbook would say something like:

• Place a minimum of $10 on odds -200 or higher and qualify for a 100% matched deposit bonus.

In this case, if your first deposit is $20 and you place your first bet on odds -200 or higher, you will get $20 courtesy of the sportsbook. Instead of wagering with just $20, you can now bet with double that amount.

As you can see, you can use these first deposit bonus offers to increase your betting tally quite substantially. Most experienced betting pros do this, but they don’t stop there. Instead, they try to qualify for some of the next bonuses on this list too.

Reload Bonuses

Reload bonuses are top of the list for experienced bettors. They are very similar to first deposit offers as they usually match your deposit to a certain extent. However, they are also different from welcome bonuses as sportsbooks give them to existing customers who have already used the first deposit bonus.

With a reload bonus, you are rewarded by the sportsbook on each subsequent deposit you make. This is usually on a monthly basis, and the bonus funds you get range from 50% to 100% of your deposit. This keeps existing customers happy and incentivizes them to play more and, hopefully, win more too.

Risk-Free Bets

Sometimes sportsbooks give players the chance to bet on certain events, and if the bet loses, the sportsbook returns the stake to the player. This is called a risk free bet.

Most of the time, bettors have to meet certain conditions for their wagers to qualify for a risk-free bet. These include placing a stake of a certain amount, betting on minimum odds and higher, or including a certain number of selections in the bet. If you meet these conditions and your wager loses, you get your stake back.

Here’s an example of how this bonus offer might look like:

• Up to $500 Risk-Free Bet – Bet up to $500 on 3 selections with minimum odds of -200 and get a $500 risk-free bet.

As you can see from the example, any bet up to $500 qualifies for the risk-free bonus offer once you meet the other two conditions. If you make a treble accumulator bet and all of your picks have odds higher than -200, you qualify for the $500 risk-free bet.

Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs reward existing players and always favor customers who make more wagers and tend to place higher stakes. Most loyalty schemes give players points for the bets they make. Once a player collects a certain number of points, he progresses to the next loyalty level.

The higher bettors go on the loyalty ladder, the better the prizes they get. For example, a top-level punter often gets VIP perks, daily cashback, weekly free bets, personal advisor, and so on.

Cash Out Functions

Cash-out functions are not bonus offers in the real sense of the word. However, they are quite useful promotions that lots of New Jersey online sportsbooks have. With a cash-out of the promo, you can get some money from your bet before it ends. This means that you don’t have to wait until a selection is finished to get some returns.

A cash-out function is great for those bettors who cannot stand to watch the last minutes of a game. They are also very useful if you see that the team you backed will not end the game as you previously predicted.

If you play your cards right, the cash-out option will allow you to get some money from a potentially losing bet. As such, it is a very practical tool in the inventory of the experienced bettor.

Cashback Offers

The last entry in my list of popular New Jersey sports betting bonuses is the cashback. A cashback offer is when the sportsbook gives you a certain percentage of your losing wagers back.

For example, if you placed $1000 in losing bets, you can get $100 back at the end of the month if the sportsbook has given you a 10% cashback opportunity.

New Sports Betting Sites in New Jersey

If you want to get the best out of your wagers, you should try out a variety of bookmakers and see which ones give you the biggest bang for your buck. Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that some of the best betting offers out there come from new sports betting sites in New Jersey.

These new sites try to compete with the more established players in the industry and, as such, give better offers to their players. This means that if you are playing at a new NJ betting site, you can expect to see better odds, more bonuses, and a larger number of sports betting markets.

That’s why I strongly suggest that you check the offer a sportsbook has before disregarding it on the count of being new. As you should never judge a book by its cover, don’t judge a betting site just because you have never heard of it or seen its sportsbook logo.

Sports Betting Options and Markets

Sports betting in New Jersey has been around for a long time. It was there back in the early 19th century when sports betting was still legal in the state. It was also there in the first half of the 20th century when it was illegal.

As you know by now, betting is still around in New Jersey, and, fortunately for me and you, it is once again legal, and it looks like it will stay that way this time.

And once things are legal, my friend, they become better. You don’t have to look further than the sportsbooks the I listed here to see that this is true. These New Jersey sports betting sites really do know their onions.

Nowadays, NJ sportsbooks try hard to include as many betting options as possible in their offers. The chances are that if you are into wagering on football, basketball, hockey, baseball, or any other sport out there, they will have what you are looking for.

Professional and College Betting

It goes without saying that NJ sportsbooks have some of the best NBA and NFL sports betting options out there. However, it is important to note that most NJ sports betting sites don’t limit their offer to only professional competitions.

You can also find lots of college competitions in NJ sportsbooks’ betting portfolios. This means that you can place wagers on college leagues and games, but only the ones you can reasonably expect to see at a sportsbook.

However, you cannot place bets on all games at an NJ sportsbook. The State of New Jersey does not allow NJ sports betting providers to offer to wager on New Jersey teams.

This applies to games of both professional and college New Jersey-based sides. This means that if you want to bet on the New Jersey Devils to beat the Edmonton Oilers, you won’t be able to do that at an NJ sportsbook.

Pre-game and Live Betting

There are two types of bets that you can place at New Jersey sportsbooks: pre-game and live betting. Pre-game betting means that you are wagering on the outcome of a selection before the game, race, or event starts.

Live betting, on the other hand, is when you place a bet while the game is in progress i.e., after it has started. Both of these types of wagers come with lots of sports betting markets. Here are the most popular ones.

Point Spread

The most popular sports betting market in the US is the point spread one. It is a type of bet in which one of the teams is handicapped by a certain points margin while the other gets an advantage of the same number of points. For example, if you are betting on the LA Lakers (-6.5) to beat the New York Knicks (+6.5), you are predicting that the Lakers will win by at least a 7-point margin.

Point spread bets are probably the most American types of bets you can find, and it is no surprise that all NJ sports betting sites have them. They are the brain-child of math teacher Charles K. McNeil, who invented them back in the 1940s.

Nowadays, the point spread market comes in all shapes and sizes. You can get lower spreads if you want a safer bet or can opt for larger margins if you want to get higher odds. Moreover, you can even try an adjust the spread yourself by placing teaser bets.

Betting Lines

Betting lines are similar to point spread markets, and you can argue that one originated from the other or vice versa. As with the point spread bet, in a betting line, one of the teams gets an advantage before the game starts, and the other is handicapped. For example, if you are backing Seattle Sounders (-1.5) to beat Portland Timbers (+1.5), you are backing the Sounders to win by a 2-goal margin.

There are various types of betting lines out there, but they all have the same goal – to even the betting field out. In baseball, run lines make sure that both teams are evenly matched. Similarly, puck lines offset the advantage the stronger hockey team has over, the weaker one. Likewise, soccer handicap markets balance the forces on the soccer field and so on.

Over/Under Totals

When an NJ sports betting site gives you the chance to bet on an Over/Under market, it asks from you to predict whether a game or team limit will exceed a certain limit. For example, if you are betting on an NFL game and the sportsbook gives you a limit of 39.5 points, you have two options. You can bet that the game will end with less (Under) or more (Over) points than 39.5.

You can find this market in almost all sports that New Jersey sportsbooks offer. In soccer, you can bet on Over/Under goals. Meanwhile, in basketball, you can place wagers on Over/Under point totals. On the other hand, baseball offers betting on Over/Under runs and so on.

Payment Methods

There are various payment methods available to NJ bettors when it comes to making deposits and withdrawals. All NJ sports betting providers that operate online accept credit and debit cards. However, that’s not the case with other payment methods. Their presence varies from one operator to another.

Before you start wagering at an NJ sportsbook, make sure that you know which payment methods the sportsbook accepts and which it doesn’t. Trying to place a bet two minutes before an NFL game starts only to find out that the sportsbook doesn’t accept e-Wallet transactions can be frustrating, to say the least.

Credit and Debit Cards

Credit and debit cards are great if you want fast deposit times. They are a superior alternative to other banking methods such as bank and wire transfers. This is because transferring money onto your account via a credit or debit card is instant, whereas bank transfers can take up to five days.

Withdrawals are not that instantaneous, but that’s not down to the sportsbook as New Jersey sports betting sites immediately release your funds. However, it usually takes 2 to 3 days for the bank to process the funds, and that’s what causes the delay.

Prepaid Cards

If you want to keep a close eye on your betting bankroll, prepaid cards might be the best option for you. With a prepaid card, you have the chance to load money onto it, and you can then deposit that money on your betting account. This can give you added control over how much you spend on wagering and how much on other expenditures.

e-Wallets

Electronic wallets or e-Wallets are quite popular among NJ sports betting enthusiasts. They enable bettors to set up an account through an email address and then fund it via a bank or credit/debit card transfer.

Most NJ sports betting sites accept at least one e-Wallet option. Players can use these payment methods to both deposit and withdraw money from their sports betting accounts.

Bank Transfers

As the name implies, bank transfers are just that; you transfer money from your bank account to your sportsbook’s bank account. As soon as the money arrives, the sportsbook funds your sports betting account with the amount you transferred.

Bank transfers are notoriously slow and are rarely an option for bettors, especially when there are other, faster payment methods available. Bank transfer deposits can take from 2 to 5 days, depending on when you make the deposit.

Withdrawals take the same amount of time to complete, and that’s just too long for most bettors. However, unlike other payment options, you can make quite large deposits and withdrawals using bank transfers. That’s why they are often an option for high-rollers.

Mobile Betting Sites

Bettors place most of their wagers on the go these days. That means that sportsbooks have to offer mobile betting sites or betting apps if they want their clients to be happy. And most of them do that.

However, you cannot just design an app and then do nothing and hope for the best. Most sportsbooks are aware of that, but some choose to ignore this fact. Here are some of the aspects you should pay attention to if you want to choose a good quality mobile option and avoid the bad ones.

Mobile Sports Betting Options

A mobile app or version of a website should offer the same range of wagering options as the site itself. This means that you should be able to place wagers on both pregame and live selections.

Mobile apps are streamlined versions of the site, and that makes placing wagers much easier. This is essential when it comes to placing live bets in particular. You want to place in-play bets as quickly as possible, and before the sportsbook lowers, the odds or, worse, removes the bet.

It is also important that you have the full array of bonus offers at your disposal on both the mobile app and the desktop site. Some sportsbooks try to cheat their way out of this and would let you get a bonus when using the site, but would play dumb when it comes to their app.

Always double-check that the app you use comes with the same perks as the website. If you find something that doesn’t look right in terms of a bonus offer or promotion, contact customer support, and insist on the problem being fixed immediately.

Mobile App Security

Security is important when betting through a web browser, but it is even more important when placing wagers via an app. Most sports betting apps these days come equipped with the latest in security protocols. However, you can take some extra measures just to be on the safe side.

One of the things that you can do is to only download an app from the official sportsbook website. If an NJ sportsbook has an app, it will likely place a download link on its website. It’s in the sportsbook’s best interest to have more people using the app, so the bookmaker will try to make it as easy as possible for bettors to download their mobile betting option.

If you cannot find an app download link on the website, you might be better off without it. Downloading apps from third-party sites can often do more harm than good.

Mobile Payment Options

A mobile app should enable all the payment options the sports betting site does. Having these same perks is important as you will likely make most of your deposits and wagers via a mobile device.

This means that the ideal online sports betting app should let you deposit and withdraw using credit/debit cards, e-wallets, prepaid cards, bank transfers, and so on. You don’t necessarily need to have all of these options, but the one that you most often use should definitely be there.

Customer Support Service

Customer support is another aspect of a mobile app that is quite important. If you don’t agree with this statement, you have obviously never had a deposit disappear at 5 o’clock in the morning and no one to talk to.

This is why you need a mobile app that lets you communicate with the help desk staff 24/7 and lets you do that instantly. Ideally, you want the app to come with a live chat option.

That’s the quickest way to get in touch with a help desk person and should be your first port of call. If you don’t have that at your disposal, check that you can at least communicate with the sportsbook via email or phone.

Conclusion

Betting has always been a huge part of the sports culture in New Jersey. In fact, some of the earliest wagerings in the US took place in New Jersey, and the state has always contested Nevada’s right to monopolize sports betting.

However, with legal betting still being fairly new in the state, lots of bettors feel like they don’t have enough information as to how they can place their NJ sports wagers. That’s where I come in.

Here are the key things to remember once again. First of all, always go with sportsbooks that are licensed and regulated. Nothing beats legal sports betting, and a licensed sportsbook is the only way to do that.

Secondly, check security protocols and data encryption levels. You don’t want your first bet to go down the drain just because the website administrator forgot to renew some security certificates.

Another aspect you should cover is whether the sportsbook values your decision to bet there and not somewhere else. If a sportsbook is happy to reward you with various bonus offers, they are worthy of your wagers. If that’s not the case, you have plenty of other options elsewhere.

You visit a sportsbook to bet on sports. Therefore, another important factor to consider is whether there’s a decent selection of sports and markets to bet on. If you can bet on most professional and college games and can cherry-pick your markets, the chances are that you chose a good sportsbook.

Lastly, check that the online sports betting site also comes in a mobile variant. Mobile apps are all the rage now among bettors and for a good reason. They are practical, safe, and make placing wagers a breeze.

FAQ

Can you bet on sports in New Jersey?

Yes, you can. You can bet on all professional and college sports competitions. However, you cannot place bets on local teams. That means that games that include a New Jersey team are not part of the sports betting offer.

Where can I bet on sports in NJ?

You can bet at licensed and regulated online sportsbooks and at offline sports betting providers such as casinos and racetracks.

Can you bet on college sports in New Jersey?

Yes, you can. You can bet on the most popular college sports and games at New Jersey online sports betting providers. However, you cannot bet on college games in which a team from New Jersey is involved.

Do you pay taxes on sports betting in NJ?

Yes, you do. All gambling winnings are subject to the New Jersey Gross Income Tax.