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The inevitable spread of legal online sports betting around the US has been in process since 2018, and here at WSN, we’re making it our business to ensure we cover all the best sites as they launch in the country.
This time it’s Betway, founded back in 2006 and a huge part of European sports betting and online gambling for the last two decades. While Betway’s global headquarters are still located in Malta, the company has set its sights on the US market of late.
Betway’s sports betting platform is already available in five states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado, and Iowa.
We were excited to see a site with such a strong reputation across the pond launch in the US, so we did what we always do. We sent our sports betting experts in to conduct a thorough review of absolutely everything associated with the site.
Sports, bets, software, bonuses, banking, security, casino games – you name it, we cover it. Everything you need to know about Betway is here.
Although Betway might be relatively new to the US, this is not some novice sportsbook. Instead, it’s a company that has gambling licenses from dozens of countries across four continents, has signed sponsorship and promotional deals with some of the biggest names in sport, and has been accepting bets for 25 years.
All that experience is plain to see on Betway’s site. It feels well designed and well developed, with the desktop and mobile platforms equally impressive. Betway also has casino games available, if you’re living in New Jersey or Pennsylvania which we cover in this review too.
Here are the main things to know about the site:
Let’s get into the weeds on what makes Betway stand out.
Betway has been designing online betting platforms for 25 years, and it shows. The US site is very well designed, modern and engaging but also nice and easy to use at each step of the way. Beginners will have no problems.
The Betway website has a pretty classic format. The right-hand side is taken up with the intelligent Betslip, which automatically updates its options whenever you add selections.
On the left is the list of sports, attractively presented using colorful icons. They stand out nicely against Betway’s black color scheme with green shading. In the menu at the top, you’ll find quick links to other sections, like live betting and the promotions page.
Most screen real estate is given to the betting lines themselves, which are neatly organized into subcategories using dropdown collapsable menus. The most popular sports and bets are prioritized, and it’s easy to cycle through all the different options.
All of this is pretty par for the course for lots of online sportsbooks, but Betway does it especially well and adds some nice little unique touches here and there.
There’s a tab for results and sports news, which is a handy reference point. The live betting section has nice graphics for each sport, presenting live updates from the games. There’s also a live scheduler, so you can see which upcoming events are going to have live betting markets.
Overall, we’re very impressed with the Betway sportsbook. They’re not reinventing the wheel here, but everything is nice and smooth and overall, enjoyable to use.
Betway originally launched as a desktop site only, albeit one optimized for mobile access. Since then however a dedicated app has appeared, and it takes its lead from the desktop site. If you’re already familiar with the former, using the latter will come naturally to you.
The app uses the same color and aesthetic as the site, including the same icons to denote different sports. The best way to navigate is probably using the search bar, which is prominently displayed on the smaller screen.
You can type in whatever you want – sports, bets, games – and you can easily find what you’re looking for.
The Betway app is now available for both iOS and Android phones, and visible in both the App Store and Google Play. Just search for Betway in the store and approve its installation. The whole process takes a minute or two (depending on your internet capabilities), just like downloading any other type of app.
Once downloaded, the entire sportsbook will be sitting on your phone’s home screen, available at the touch of a button.
You can hit up the “Promotions and Features” tab any time you like to see what promotions are on-running at any time. And, we’re happy to report, there’s normally a lot going on in there. Let’s kick things off with the Betway welcome bonus.
Betway always has a welcome offer running for new players, and in this case, it’s in the form of a $250 Back in Bonus Bets. All you need to do to claim the promotion is create an account and opt-in before you place your first bet.
Once you’ve opted in, you can place a bet of at least $10 on odds of at least -300. If your bet loses, you’ll receive the full value back in site credits, maxing out at $1,000. You have 7 days to both place and settle your bet from when you create your account, and your risk-free bet can’t be placed on any odds boosts or other promo-type bets.
At the moment, Betway doesn’t use a bonus code or a promo code to give users access to promotions. There’s not even a space to type one in when you sign up for a new account. Instead, you can simply opt into the welcome bonus later or sign up via our links.
That’s not to say that Betway won’t introduce bonus codes later, which many sportsbooks do. But for now, no need to worry about them.
Betway have lots of little on-running promos, and two of the best are the odds boosts and the boosted parlays. With the former, certain bets or lines are chosen to receive special enhanced odds, with new boosts appearing every day.
Betway also offers boosted payouts on every single parlay over 3 legs. Up to 5 selections gets you a 5% boost, 6-9 gets 10%, and 10-20 gets a nice little 15%.
It’s a nice promotion that lets you find a little extra value in your own selections.
Betway is constantly updating its bonus offers, particularly depending on which sports are attracting the most interest, and you can be sure to find some kind of juicy offer when you open the promos section. During our Betway review, for example, there was a $5 free bet available for anyone who bet $10 or more on a live NHL game.
Betway pretty much ticks all the boxes in terms of the range of betting on offer. When it comes to the top modern sportsbooks, the truth is there is really more in common between their betting options than anything that separates them.
Here are the headlines:
Use our odds calculator tool to make betting easier.
Let’s take a closer look.
With every sportsbook, the same handful of bets wind up attracting the most action and Betway does a great job of keeping them front and center. Open any game from the major US sports leagues and the first bets you’ll see will be money lines, point spreads, and totals.
If you’re looking for props or more exotic bets, you can click into the individual games to explore. But if you’re sticking to the classics, they’re going to be the most visible.
Placing bets is also very easy. Just click the bet to add to the Betslip, where you can experiment with your stake before confirming.
Props or proposition bets are growing in popularity every year, and there are plenty to be found at Betway. For all the major sports, you can expect to be able to bet on things like rushing or passing yards, layups, assists – basically any individual aspect of either a team or a player’s performance.
You can even bet live props, which let you bet on how the stats are unfolding in real-time.
You’ll also find special markets and exotics at Betway from time to time – things like whether the coin toss in the Super Bowl will be heads or tails.
A futures bet is any type of bet on an outcome far in advance. Think the winner of the Masters in golf, or the Fifa World Cup winner. You’ll find these bets open all year long on Betway, for just about all the sports on the menu.
Parlays let you combine different bets. When you do, the odds of each bet gets multiplied together. But if any of the legs let you down, you lose the whole bet.
Placing parlays is nice and easy at Betway, thanks to the Betslip. You can just add as many selections as you want, and the slip will automatically present you with your parlay options and odds.
We’ve already talked about it above, but live betting at Betway is very simple overall. The live platform is great, and we’re big fans of the 3D graphics that show you what’s happening in real-time.
Placing live bets works just the same way as regular bets, but you need to move fast because the odds are changing all the time.
Thanks to the Betway mobile app, which has a similarly excellent live section, it’s even extremely easy to place bets on games you are actually attending, while you watch.
Check out our full review of the best live betting sportsbooks to see how Betway stacks up against the competition.
As we mentioned, Betway is pretty much up there with the top books in the US in terms of variety of bets and sports.
With just about all major sports – especially anything that’s attracting media interest – Betway will more than likely allow you to bet.
The list of Betway sports also changes up all the time, depending on what competitions are running and the time of year. Below, we’ve listed all the sports you could bet on when we conducted our Betway review:
In addition to the sportsbook, Betway have launched their online casino in two states so far: Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If you’re playing from either of those states, you’ll see the tab at the top of the screen that lets you flip to the casino games. It’s very convenient.
That said, if you didn’t know it was there you might not even notice it. This is a positive in our book: plenty of people are only interested in sports betting, so we don’t like it when sportsbooks try to push you into their casino games.
The gaming selection is very good, with tons of games from a range of top casino software providers like NetEnt. There’s hundreds of slots, roulette, blackjack, video poker, craps, table games and more, as well as special jackpot games.
Betway has a special separate welcome bonus for new customers to its casino. You can get a 100% deposit match bonus worth up to $1,000, based on your first deposit.
As you might have guessed, that $1,000 comes with wagering requirements attached – and they’re on the high side. You’ll need to gamble your deposit + bonus 30x before you can withdraw any bonus cash. Different games count differently towards clearing the deposit too, with slots the most effective.
Still, it’s nice to get a chunk of bonus money.
Beware though: you won’t be able to claim your sportsbook welcome bonus, play around with it for a while, and later claim the casino bonus. It’s one or the other for brand new players.
Betway is pretty well stocked with different banking methods right off the bat. We always like to see a broad range of payment methods accepted, so that the site is inclusive to everyone, and that’s pretty much the case here.
Here are the options:
The first thing to say is that Betway doesn’t charge any transaction fees for any method, which is great. That’s not to say that your bank or third-party service won’t however, so be warned to check this on your end. PayNearMe is an example of a service that will cost you money.
During our tests, all the methods worked pretty much perfectly. Deposits are processed immediately, and the money appears in your Betway account straight away. Withdrawals are a different story. There is an internal review period AND a processing period after it gets approved.
For the most part, the withdrawal methods weren’t too slow, especially Play+ Card. But it would be nicer to have a little more clarity. And, of course, instant withdrawals would be even better.
Method | Deposit | Withdrawal | Processing Time | Minimum Deposit | Max Deposit | Fees |
Visa | Yes | No | Instant | $10 | Adjustable | Not from Betway |
Mastercard | Yes | No | Instant | $10 | Adjustable | Not from Betway |
PayNearMe | Yes | No | Instant | $10 | Adjustable | Yes |
PayPal | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, up to 48 hours for withdrawal | $10 | Adjustable | Not from Betway |
Play+ Card | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, up to 48 hours for withdrawal | $10 | Adjustable | Not from Betway |
ACH Transfer | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, up to 7 days for withdrawal | $10 | Adjustable | Not from Betway |
Cash at Casino | Yes | Yes | Instant | $10 | Adjustable | No |
As we have come to expect with all the new sportsbooks we review, signing up for Betway is extremely straightforward. All sportsbooks, whether in NJ or other states, are required to ask for more or less the same information from their members – so the process tends to be very familiar and repeatable.
To sign up with Bewtay, you can start by hitting the green “Join Now” button. Throughout the sign-up process, the “contact support” button is also visible, which is a nice touch.
Here’s the process:
Once you’ve signed up, accessing your account takes a couple of seconds. You just need to use your email and password, which you chose during the sign-up process. Type them in, press “Enter” and you’re in.
You can also choose to use two-factor identification every time you log in, which involves both entering your details and opening an email. It’s nice to see Betway taking its security seriously, but it’s not something we generally use – at least when playing at home on our secure WiFi network.
Logging in via the Betway app is even easier since you can either save your details on your phone or simply remain logged in. One of the biggest advantages of using the app is the sheer convenience of having that access, seconds away at all times.
In parts of the US, yes. Right now Betway is legal in five states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado, and Iowa.
The legal situation with sports betting in the US all changed in 2018. Prior to that, sports betting had effectively been illegal everywhere in the country except for Nevada, thanks to something called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act or PASPA.
In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down PASPA. This meant that the federal ban on sports betting and online gambling was removed, and each state was free to legislate for the issue however they wanted.
Since then, more than half of the states in the US have launched some form of sports betting, with access growing more widespread seemingly by the month.
The specific laws surrounding sports betting vary state by state. To operate legally within a state, sportsbooks need to check, as a minimum these, two boxes:
Betway fulfills these and various other obligations in each of those five states.
Each state has its own licensing and regulatory body, and Betway has valid licenses for each state it operates in. In NJ, that body is the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. In Pennsylvania, it’s the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
These bodies regulate all activity on the site, making sure Betway is treating customers fairly and using their data as they state.
Betway itself uses advanced encryption to protect its users’ data as well as all transactions on the site.
All in all, we have no security concerns with Betway. This is a trusted, multinational sportsbook that is not the business of trying to scam US bettors.
Customer support is not everyone’s first thought when it comes to choosing a sportsbook, but it is a significant factor. The best sportsbooks make things as easy as possible for their users, including providing fast and simple solutions for any problems they run into.
Betway’s support section is very good, with lots of useful articles split up into a number of categories. When you’re in the help section, the live chat button is always available too – which we found to be the best way to get fast help.
During our review, all our questions were answered more or less instantly via chat.
Our one criticism here is that the help section is a little hard to find, and the live chat can only be accessed there. We’d like to see a quick link on the homepage.
Occasionally we review a new sportsbook that just blows us away with some new innovation or gimmick, which we think might shake up the industry. That’s not Betway.
But what Betway has done is just as impressive – which is to launch a platform with incredibly high standards across the board. It might not quite be anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s excellent at what does.
Here are our highlights:
Our team of experts have been doing this for a long time, and they haven’t yet reviewed a betting site where they don’t come back with something in the way of constructive feedback.
Here’s what we think could be improved:
Betway was founded in Europe back in 2006, and its global headquarters are still located in Malta. Over its early years, Betway slowly grew its brand in Europe, offering online sports betting in a growing number of countries including Germany, Italy, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, and more.
The company has historically paid a lot of attention to marketing, sponsorship, and brand partnerships as a way to increase its reach. For years, it was the official betting partner of the Grand National, the biggest horse race in the UK. It has sponsored numerous European soccer teams, including West Ham in the Premier League. As part of its inroads into the US market, Betway has also signed partnerships with both the NBA and NHL.
In 2014, Betway made global headlines when the Guinness World Record for a single slot payout was broken on its site. Jon Heywood took home $20,000,000 from playing Mega Moolah, a game developed by Microgaming. The record has subsequently been broken, but it’s seen as a milestone moment for online gambling.
These days, Betway directly employs 600 people and operates in 4 different continents, in the worlds of sports betting, casino gaming, horse racing, esports, and more.
Sportsbook | Welcome Bonus | Software | Fastest Withdrawal Time | Mobile App | Live Chat Support | Standout Features |
Betway | $250 Back in Bonus Bets | 9/10 | 2 days | Yes | Yes | All-round great design and usability |
DraftKings | $1,000 Deposit Bonus | 9/10 | 2 days | Yes | Yes | Huge range of bets |
BetMGM | $1,000 Risk-Free Bet | 8/10 | 6 business days | Yes | No | Excellent continuous bonuses and promotions |
FanDuel | $1,000 Risk-Free Bet | 10/10 | 3 days | Yes | Yes | Easy to use and beginner-friendly |
Review Site | Rating | No. of Reviews |
Apple App Store | 4.7/5 | 46,900 |
Google Play Store | 4.3/5 | 10,600 |
Trustpilot | 1.4/5 | 14,729 |
We always love to see the biggest names we’ve heard about in European circles for years arrive in the US, and Betway certainly hasn’t disappointed.
Strangely, Betway doesn’t really have much in the way of USPs.
Instead, this is a sportsbook that is just impressive across the board, from its betting lines to its software, bonuses, and banking. If you’re looking for a site to direct brand new bettors to, Betway is perfect. If you’re looking for a live betting specialist, Betway is perfect. If you want a deep selection of bets, and daily odds boosts and offers, Betway is perfect.
We expect – and hope – to see Betway spread further around the US in the coming months. We’d also love to see if it has any plans to further differentiate itself from the current top books in the US, like DraftKings and FanDuel, whether that be via new sponsorship or other marketing strategies.
Either way, it’s an exciting time for Betway. If you do decide to sign up, don’t forget to use your sign-up links to get your welcome bonus.
Yes, as long as you are over 21 years old and physically located in one of the legal states.
Yes. Betway has a mobile app for both iOS and Android, which you can find in App Stores and the Google Play Store.
Betway is licensed and regulated in 5 US states: NJ, PA, IA, IO, and CO.
Yes. Betway has bonuses for new users, including a risk-free bet worth up to $1,000.
Yes. Our experts were satisfied that the odds at Betway were up there with the other top books in the US.
Billy “Krackman” Krackomberger has made his living as a professional sports gambler for nearly three decades. You have seen him on ESPN, Gaming Today, and SiriusXM. His connections in the sports gambling industry run all the way to the top. His bets move the lines and regularly have him banned from books for being too sharp. Email: [email protected]
More info on Bill Krackomberger
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