Placing your first bet on any online sportsbook can be intimidating. Thankfully, DraftKings Sportsbook is making sure that new players in New Jersey can ease into sports betting with a free wager to get started.

DraftKings Sportsbook is now offering to match all first bets onsite up to $500. This deal, which is more than double its previous amount of $200, will give players more freedom and flexibility to see how things work.

How the $500 First Bet Match works

This promotion is open to newly-registered DraftKings accounts (here’s a how-to guide to get started). Simply make a first wager and see what happens.

Whether that first bet wins or loses, a Free Bet for the same amount will soon appear in the player’s account. In effect, DraftKings is doubling the bet amount for the first go-round.

There are a couple of caveats, however:

• The first is the timing of the bet — a player must place his or her wager within 30 days of registration in order for the bet to be eligible.
• The other issue is that the Free Bet is not a negotiable instrument. Bettors cannot simply exchange the Free Bet for cash – the new money must be put back in play. However, players will keep any winnings from the Free Bet.

This promotion is active right now, but won’t last forever. Players need to be sure to make their first bet by Jan. 21, 2019.

What new players to DraftKings Sportsbook will find

DraftKings Sportsbook was the first online sportsbook to debut in NJ and it has maintained its dominance through innovative and intuitive design and operation. New players will likely be surprised at how easy it all is.

The first thing that greets players to the mobile site is the betting carousel. This design feature places bet suggestions on a wheel that mobile users can then rotate to see more options.

These suggestions are not just stock opportunities, however. Each player’s betting carousel is customized according to the player’s preferences and betting history.

The result is that no two players will experience the same DraftKings. Instead, each will find prompts for wagers they would be most likely to make, anyway.

DraftKings Sportsbook also offers incredible flexibility with its variety of wagers. Almost every type of bet and betting limit is available for players to craft their betting patterns. There are even betting limits that are less than a dollar.

Players also have options to guard against last-minute defeats or parlay legs that seem unreliable in hindsight. The DraftKings live ticket system allows bettors to cash out their tickets at almost any point during the game(s).

The bottom line is that DraftKings leading the field in New Jersey for a reason. With the site doubling players’ first bets up to $500, there’s no reason not to try out the sportsbook this month.

DraftKings clawed its way to the top of the multimillion-dollar daily fantasy sports industry by maximizing the most visceral appeal of its product — the chance to win large sums of money in a single day. That potentially making any sporting event, regardless of its participants, one of keen interest.

That seductive quality has enticed plenty of sports fans — approximately 10 million of them according to co-founder Matt Kalish — to at least give DraftKings’ daily fantasy sports (DFS) offerings a try at one point or another.

The company kickstarted a new era when DraftKings Sportsbook officially went live Aug. 6. Being the new kid on the block brings plenty of challenges; managing to capture the same level of engagement with the sports betting customer as they do with those on the DFS side is one of the bigger ones.

Spicing up conventional sports betting

Traditional sports betting can be a notably more “static” product than DFS on the surface. Many traditional wagers hinge on end-of-game outcomes. And many bettors may only have action on a handful of contests on, say, a typical NFL Sunday. Conversely, the DFS player could potentially have a stake to some degree in every game being played if they’ve created enough lineups.

Not averse to thinking outside the box, DraftKings Sportsbook has multiple features that allow bettors to have many skins in the game during the game. These are in addition to the conventional array of tried-and-true sports betting options, including:

• Spread/run line wagers
• Moneyline wagers
• Over/under wagers
• Parlay betting
• Prop betting

However, they’ve also literally made every “event within the event” potentially mean something by making all of them wagerable.

Every point in tennis. Every play in a football game. Shoot, every pitch in a baseball game. They all have odds assigned within DraftKings Sportsbook, allowing you to plunk some money down on, say, whether Tom Brady’s next pass successfully finds its target or falls incomplete.

For example, DraftKings Sportsbook offered in-play golf bets on every hole for Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy during the PGA Championship. Bettors could watch live action of those featured players on the PGA Championship app and bet on every shot on the DraftKings Sportsbook app, with the odds changing on the fly.

Having that kind of in-play action certainly helps glue a fair share of eyeballs to a game, not to mention the DraftKings Sportsbook app. And while, admittedly, DK is far from the only operator offering in-game betting (it’s already big in Europe), there’s another innovative feature they can actually claim all their own for the moment — a revolutionary “live ticket” system.

Think sports betting meets day trading, in the purest sense. Except, in this case, you won’t hear a chaotic cacophony of “buy!” and “sell!” — the action all takes place over a matter of seconds within the serenity of a bettor’s smartphone or mobile device.

Simply put, any open bet on DraftKings Sportsbook — even those that fully hinge on end results — can be assigned a value based on what’s happening as the contest unfolds.

In DraftKings Sportsbook, you can monitor that potential value of your wager — which fluctuates as lines adjust for in-game events — and jump off at any point in time you feel is particularly advantageous. A click on the Cash Out button that appears on every open betting ticket is all it takes.

The live ticketing system even applies if you have suddenly second thoughts about taking a stake in multiple games. In other words, you can jump off a parlay just as easily as you can a single-game ticket.

DraftKings Sportsbook becomes the first to offer the live ticket system in the United States, and it’s a feature that could certainly help it carve out a niche in what is already a crowded online sports betting market in New Jersey. The fact that bettors can take advantage of the price they locked in when they opened their betting ticket — particularly when there’s a drastic change in circumstances, such as injury to a key player — is likely to appeal to a sizable segment of the customer base.

As more states begin legalizing sports betting, sports books are looking to attract gamblers with new and innovative product offerings. DraftKings Sportsbook announced Thursday that it has unveiled Sportsbook Pools, borrowing a concept from its daily fantasy sports offerings.

The new product, currently on available in New Jersey, is intended to appeal to more casual sports wagering fans and is similar to games among coworkers in office pools. Company officials expect it to be the first in a continuing attempt to offer players new gaming options. The new offering may signal a trend that has also been seen in online poker through the years, adding more betting options and varieties to keep players wagering.

Jump in the pool

The Sportsbook Pool format allows a group of players to make picks from certain games with the competitors battling it out for the top prize. A player who might not be a strict follower of betting lines or the over/under may be more prone to make game selections in a pool. It’s an easy wager and makes following those games on a Saturday or Sunday a bit more enjoyable.

“Millions of Americans have been playing in sports pools for years with their friends and coworkers, and now one of the most popular ways that fans can get skin in the game is live on DraftKings Sportsbook,” said Matt Kalish, chief revenue officer and company co-founder.

Players outside NJ may not be able to wager but can preview Sportsbook Pools in the DraftKings betting app. The site’s inaugural contest for players in New Jersey features a $20 entry with $200,000 in prizes. That includes a $100,000 jackpot shared among those who select all Sunday and Monday NFL Week 10 games correctly. The contest doesn’t only award perfect selectors with payouts, but also those who nail 12 and 11 picks as well.

“DraftKings Sportsbook Pools feature simple predictions, such as picking the winner of each NFL game weekly, combined with the potential to win jackpot-style prizes,” Kalish says. “This product will unquestionably make every game more exciting for DraftKings Sportsbook players of all levels.”

Future innovation

The new addition is expected to be the first of several rolled out by companies like DraftKings looking to innovate within the sports betting space as they attempt to distinguish themselves and reach out to different levels of players.

Other companies like BetStars, the sports book arm of PokerStars, are offering “odds boosts” and other promotions. FanDuel Sportsbook is offering limited “NBA Overtime Heartbreak” insurance as well as NFL Big Win Bonus for moneyline bets where a pick wins by 14 points or more.

But beyond promotions on traditional sports betting, Sportsbook Pools points to innovations in how players bet on games.

Even the new Alliance of American Football has embraced betting and fantasy football and sees these games as keys to its success and survival. The league itself hopes to offer new betting options within its own app, partnering with MGM as its gambling partner and promising plenty of innovations in live betting and fantasy.

Similar ideas were recently unveiled at the Global Gaming Expo, with companies unveiling new technology for in-game betting. For example, IGT debuted its new CrystalBetting Terminal allowing for bettors to view their preferred games and bet right on screen.

DraftKings is also working on a feature so players can create their own pools. A bettor could create a pool and invite 10 buddies to play. The company is even considering traditional football squares and shotgun pot options.

As the landscape continues to change and more legal jurisdictions open up, it will be interesting to see what the legalized sports book plan to attract more gamblers.