Website: | https://www.playup.com/ |
---|---|
Min. Deposit: | $10 |
Promo: | Deposit Match of 100% up to $750 |
Support: | 24/7 Live Chat |
Promo Code: |
No code needed
|
Launched: | 2019 |
Payout Speed: | 48 hours |
Payment Methods: | N/A |
PlayUp Sportsbook has closed its operations in the US in all states in Jun 2023. If you are looking for operators similar to PlayUp, try out bet365.
Impressive range of bonuses
1 of the world's top sportsbooks
Promo Code WSN365
$1,000 Safety Net Bet OR $150 in Bonus Bets
Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER 21+ must be physically located in VA. T&Cs Apply.
As legal sports betting is slowly spreading across the United States more and more sites from around the world have taken steps to get involved in the lucrative new market. We’ve already seen big hitters from Scandinavia and the UK, but the latest addition to the NJ scene has roots even further away than that.
PlayUp is an Australian sportsbook and DFS site, which also operates out of New Zealand and India respectively. So far, PlayUp has launched in both Colorado and New Jersey, with designs on expanding to as many states as possible.
In a sports betting market crowded with familiar names, PlayUp sportsbook represents a refreshing change of pace. With the top books like FanDuel, DraftKings, and Caesars monopolizing proceedings in more than ten different states, It’s not too often we get a totally new platform pitching up in the US.
We decided to send our team of experts in to conduct a full review of what PlayUp has to offer. As always, they came back with a lot to say, and we’ve got it all covered right here.
Impressive range of bonuses
1 of the world's top sportsbooks
Promo Code WSN365
$1,000 Safety Net Bet OR $150 in Bonus Bets
Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER 21+ must be physically located in VA. T&Cs Apply.
Yes. PlayUp is so far available in New Jersey and Colorado, with plans to expand to other US states in the near future. You must be physically located in either of those states to legally place a bet.
Other legal sports betting options available in New Jersey and Colorado are:
PlayUp as we know it now was founded in Australia in 2017, as a re-launch from a previous version of the site which ran into financial difficulties. PlayUp feels like a very modern gambling company, combining classic sports betting and horse racing with the latest in esports and DFS.
PlayUp is one of the biggest betting sites in Australia, which is apparent in PlayUp’s platform. This doesn’t feel like a sportsbook taking its first uncertain steps in a new country. Instead, it feels varied and complete, from the betting interface to the banking process.
Although our experts did come up with a couple of places we think PlayUp could improve - as we’ll get to - in general the platform is already very usable for both beginners and more experienced bettors.
Here are a few headlines about PlayUp to kick things off:
But enough beating around the bush. Let’s jump right into our experts’ in-depth look at the PlayUp platform itself.
PlayUp’s website does a lot of things well. The black and green design is great, a winning combination of easy-to-read and visually striking. The screen is loosely divided into a number of panels: the list of sports on the left of the screen, the betslip on the right, and taking up the most space in the center are the betting lines themselves.
Browsing through the different sports is nice and smooth. The icons beside each sport in the menu showing how many games or competitions are currently accepting bets is a nice touch, and a good way to get a sense of which sports are attracting the most action.
At the top of the list is a tab of “Favorites”, where you can save your favorite sports and league so that they appear there. It’s a great way of personalizing the betting experience.
Sorting through the lines themselves is also straightforward and very beginner-friendly. The most popular bets in the most popular sports appear first: normally money lines, spreads, and totals for the likes of the NFL and NBA. If you do a little digging and click into individual games, you’ll find deep menus of props and futures.
The betslip works very well. All you need to do is click on different bets to add them, and the slip will automatically show you all your options, from singles to parlays and teasers. The betslip also has a tab that shows you all your open bets and recently closed ones, which is a nice way to keep track.
One thing we’d like to see improved is PlayUp’s help section, which at the moment is basically one long list of FAQs. The information in there is actually pretty good, but we’d like to see it presented better and split up into subcategories. A search bar would be a solid addition too.
PlayUp’s mobile app follows the lead of the site. You can download the app for both iOS and Android devices from the app store, and you’ll get the exact same betting options as the desktop site. Navigating around the PlayUp app and placing bets is very easy, and it feels like a nice slick piece of software.
When it comes to attracting bettors to a brand new online sports betting platform, betting bonuses and promos are the ace up the sportsbook’s sleeve. Nothing gets the average member of the betting public more excited than a juicy bonus offer, like the ability to bet for free or get access to exclusive enhanced odds.
PlayUp doesn’t have ready-made brand awareness in the US, so the company should probably be relying heavily on bonuses to help build up a customer base from scratch.
So far, judging by our PlayUp review, they’ve made a good start but still have more work to do. You can check out all the offers PlayUp is currently running by clicking on the small “Promotions” tab just below the homepage - and below we have a rundown of everything that was there for us in this section.
It’s early days for PlayUp, and we’d be willing to go out on a limb and bet that these offers are just the beginning and we can expect them to get even more extensive. For one thing, elsewhere on the site, they advertise exclusive offers every day, which doesn’t seem to be the case yet.
PlayUp has different bonuses depending on which state you are playing from. First up is the PlayUp New Jersey bonus, which is a 100% Deposit Match Bonus worth up to $750.
With welcome bonuses at PlayUp Sportsbook, you don’t need a bonus code during registration. Instead, there is a special field in the cashier section where you can claim them - in this case with the promo code “PLAYUP750”.
The minimum you need to deposit for this promo is $50, which is a little steep, and the max amount of bonus cash you can claim is $750. All the bonus money comes with wagering requirements of just 1x, which is good and easy for beginners to understand - just gamble with your bonus once and it becomes regular money you can withdraw.
The equivalent sign-up bonus in Colorado is not quite as good in our opinion. For one thing, it’s only worth $250. For another, you need to deposit via Skrill to claim it. However, the upside is that this offer is available for one time only at any time you decide to sign up with Skrill, not just for your first deposit of any method.
In this case, all you need to do is make a Skrill deposit and place your first bet on odds of at least -250. If the bet loses, you’ll receive a free bet token worth the same value as your bet, up to a max of $250.
PlayUp CL is also offering an odds boost on every single parlay you place. A 2 leg parlay gets an extra 5%, 3 legs gets 10% and so on. This works for every single parlay you place, which is great.
There was also a $500 bonus up for grabs every day for six weeks for the person who wins a football parlay with the longest odds.
These types of on-running promos are exactly what we mean when we say we imagine PlayUp might soon flesh out their on-running promos in both states.
We’ve covered the software, but what about the betting lines themselves? PlayUp might be a new addition to sports betting in the US but you wouldn’t know it from the betting options.
PlayUp sportsbook slots into the other top sites in both NJ and CO seamlessly, with competitive odds, a wide range of different bets and a great in-play betting platform.
Below is a run-through of the main bets you can expect to find at PlayUp.
Click into any of the top leagues, from the NFL to the NBA or NHL, and you’ll be greeted first and foremost with three main types of bets for upcoming games: money line, point spreads, and totals.
These are consistently the most popular ways to bet, and for that reason, the sportsbook always makes them the most visible and easiest to place. It takes a single click to add any of them to your betslip, and one further click to place a bet. This is exactly how things should be, and PlayUp does it perfectly.
Alternatively, you can click into each individual game which is where things start to get even more interesting. PlayUp has a full menu of prop bets for all the games in the top leagues.
First of all, you can divide the games up and only bet on certain sections, like a single half in the NFL or a quarter in the NBA. You can bet on things like whether there will be overtime, or a team’s disciplinary record.
Then there are player props, which let you get real specific with certain aspects of a player’s performance: betting on rushing yards in NFL, layups in NBA, assists in NHL, and more.
A futures bet is any type of bet on an outcome that won’t be decided for a long time, and PlayUp is fully loaded with them. Futures bets typically involve picking the winner of a tournament or conference, or a player winning an individual award like MVP.
Since futures bets are normally placed a long way in advance of the outcome, you can get pretty good odds on most selections.
Live betting seems to be getting more popular and every year and PlayUp has clearly devoted considerable time and care to launching with a great live platform. You can hit the “In-Play” button to check out what live games are available st any time. The section benefits from the same sleek and fairly minimalist design as the regular site - making
In-play betting is nice and beginner-friendly.
In addition to regular spreads and money line bets, PlayUp also has an impressive selection of live props. You can get very specific, betting on things like the next player to score in a soccer game, or the result of individual games in a tennis match.
PlayUp has a deep selection of sports on the menu that more than match up to the range of bets and the lines themselves. While maybe just behind the very deepest sportsbooks in the US in terms of variety, Play Up is certainly competitive.
Most importantly for lots of bettors, all the major US leagues are covered: NBA, NFL, MHL, and MLB along with tons of soccer betting options. But there are also more leftfield options, like betting on Table Tennis or Aussie Rules football.
Below we’ve listed all the sports we found during our review. It’s also worth bearing in mind that this list is subject to additions whenever new leagues or competitions begin their seasons.
Banking is one of the areas that new sportsbooks occasionally struggle with. It’s hard to launch with a full suite of payment providers already integrated into the site, and it’s often the case that new payment methods get added overtime after the book has already debuted.
We feel like this will be the case for PlayUp. Right now, there are some good banking methods available, but there is also room for improvement to catch up with the best sportsbooks.
Below are the options currently available:
Deposit Methods:
Withdrawals:
Credit cards like Visa and Mastercard are the most obvious option currently lacking, and they would certainly make a welcome addition. We imagine PlayUp is already working on this, so we’re withholding too much judgment for now.
ACH Transfers are likely to be the most popular way to deposit and withdraw. This type of transfer goes directly from your personal bank account to your sportsbook, and is both fast and secure.
For those that prefer to avoid direct contact between their bank and online gambling sites, Skrill is the sensible intermediary option. However, it would be nice to see a greater variety of e-wallets than just the one, with PayPal being the obvious omission. Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency payments are growing in popularity and would be another good addition.
PlayUp doesn’t charge any transaction fees for deposits or withdrawals, which is always nice to see. During our tests, each of the methods worked just as described with no real problems.
Below are some more details.
Method | Deposit | Withdrawal | Processing Time | Minimum Deposit | Max Deposit | Fees |
ACH / Instant eCheck | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, within 3-5 business days for withdrawals | $20 | Adjustable | Not from PlayUp |
Play+ Card | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, within 1 business day for withdrawals | $20 | Adjustable | Not from PlayUp |
Skrill | Yes | Yes | Instant for deposits, within 1 business day for withdrawals | $20 | Adjustable | Not from PlayUp |
Cash at Casino Cage | Yes | Yes | Instant | None | None | Not from PlayUp |
Registering a new account at PlayUp is very straightforward. In fact, if you’ve ever signed up to a sportsbook in New Jersey or further afield before, you’ll probably be pretty familiar with the process.
Here is our step-by-step guide.
During our tests, our experts were able to complete the whole process in under 2 minutes.
PlayUp currently has two separate gaming licenses in the US - from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement and Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission - with the expectation that the sportsbook will also expand into other states like Indiana and Iowa. Part of the legal requirements to operate an online book in both NJ and CO is to have a brick-and-mortar partner. In New Jersey, that location is the Freehold Raceway while in Colorado it’s the Bull Durham Saloon Casino.
PlayUp might not be too well known in the US just yet, but it comes with a big reputation on the other side of the world. The company is one of the biggest gambling enterprises in Australia, and has also been successfully exported to both India and New Zealand. This is clearly a good sign from a safety and security perspective.
PlayUp has done everything in the US by the book so far, and we have found no reason to suspect it will ever be anything different. No concerns here.
Just like with the banking methods, the customer support at PlayUp feels a little underdeveloped but we’re prepared to put it down to early teething problems for now. Our biggest issue comes with the fact that there is no live chat support, which has become our preferred way to get fast help whenever we run into an issue using a sportsbook.
However, the “Contact Us” page does indicate that live chat will be added soon, which is good. For now, you can choose between email support (at [email protected]) and phone line - both of which we found useful.
We also feel like the help section could do with a bit of a facelift. At the moment, it’s basically one long series of FAQs and little else. We’d like this split into subcategories and maybe a search bar. Overall, it’s not far off being great, but it’s not there yet.
If you or someone you know have a gambling problem call 1-800-gambler for support.
Our experts came back with lots of positive things to say about PlayUp. Although the site does feel slightly unfinished in places, the positives massively outweigh the negatives. Here are our highlights:
As we’ve mentioned a couple of times, our experts did notice a couple of places the site is lacking. The good news is that these are all relatively easy fixes, and we imagine they’ll be addressed soon.
PlayUp has had something of a roller-coaster history. In fact, it’s probably fair to split up the company into two distinct eras.
The first iteration came back in 2012 when PlayUp was launched as a very different-looking company compared with today. The company began as a fixed-odds bookmaker which later pivoted to social media. It attracted significant investment in Australia - including from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull - but by 2016 the company was bankrupt.
PlayUp was bought out by entrepreneur Daniel Simic, who re-launched the site in 2017 as a free Daily Fantasy Sports site, initially focused on the Asian market. With an entirely new management team, Simic rebuilt the brand and expanded into fixed-odds betting once more.
Over the next five years, the company opened offices in India and New Zealand, before making the jump to the US in 2021.
Our overall vibe from PlayUp is very positive. We’ve been around the block enough times to know that sportsbooks only get better and more refined with more experience, and the improvements we’d like to see are all relatively easy and obvious points - which makes us optimistic.
We would be much less satisfied if PlayUp launched with, say, tons of banking methods but a horrible mobile app or really bad lines. Instead, they’ve got the most important things nailed.
PlayUp is a slick and modern addition to the US sports betting landscape, and we can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
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