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Update: As of July 26, PlayUp is not operating in New Jersey or Colorado. Regulators in New Jersey revoked PlayUp’s license to operate in the state, and the sportsbook told Colorado regulators it planned to suspend operations there. As such, PlayUp is not available in any state and seems to be on the verge of going out of business. This page will no longer be regularly updated.

PlayUp Sportsbook Review

There is no perfect sports betting app. Every app is different. Some offer the best prices, some are easy to navigate, some have the widest selection of sports or prop bets, and others have a great rewards program. People need and want different features as they begin or continue their journey into the world of sports betting.

PlayUp isn’t the perfect sportsbook, but it offers enough to be worthy of a spot on your smartphone. Read on for more information about PlayUp, its promotions, how to create an account, a full review of its browser and app versions, banking options, and which sports you can bet on.

PlayUp Promotions

Promotions are definitely important, and the perfect sports betting app would have lots of them. PlayUp offers a great bonus for new customers. Be sure to check out the Promotions section of the PlayUp website or app for the latest new customer offers and promo codes.

How to Create an Account

Let’s go over how to sign up for a PlayUp account so you can start betting. Signing up for an account is easier than (insert something that is really easy to do). It’s that easy! Here are the steps to sign up for your very own PlayUp account:

Giving personal information to any company is a tough decision to make, particularly when there is so much information on the news about cyberattacks, but you should be assured that your information and your deposits are both safe at PlayUp or any other sportsbook.

Legal sportsbooks are required by state law to have tough security standards, and each sportsbook operator is inspected by regulators in the states in which they operate to make sure they are complying with the regulations and actually keeping their customer information safe and secure. This is the main reason why legal, regulated sportsbooks are so much better than their unregulated, offshore counterparts.

More about PlayUp

PlayUp is an Australian company that is live in Australia, New Zealand, India, and here in the United States. Its US headquarters is located in Las Vegas, but, ironically, PlayUp is not available in Nevada. The sportsbook made its US debut in Colorado, home to a friendly regulatory landscape and over two dozen sportsbooks of all shapes and sizes. After Colorado, PlayUp headed to New Jersey, where it went live on October 15, 2021.

PlayUp expects to go live in additional states soon, starting with Indiana and Iowa, where the company has recently announced an agreement with Caesars to enter both states as one of the casino giant’s online skins. PlayUp clearly sees tremendous growth potential in the US market and will continue to grow its brand here as the market continues to grow and mature.

States Where PlayUp is Live

Colorado

The Centennial State is home to almost two dozen sportsbooks, with more on the way. That may seem like too many for the 20th-most populated state in the country. Other far more populated states like Pennsylvania and Illinois have fewer sportsbooks. Sportsbooks, including PlayUp, prefer to come to Colorado because of its innovative regulatory structure. Going live in Colorado is much easier than in other states, and the low taxes are also helpful to increase competition. This is likely why PlayUp chose to partner with the Bull Durham Casino in Black Hawk to begin in Colorado. Either way, the sportsbook has been taking bets in the state since March 2021, working out the kinks and slowly climbing the revenue charts as it plots its next move(s).

New Jersey

Like many other sportsbooks, PlayUp decided to head to New Jersey. The sportsbook entered the Garden State’s competitive sports betting market on October 15, 2021 through a licensing partnership with Freehold Raceway. This is an online-only agreement; there will not be a PlayUp-branded sportsbook in New Jersey, or anywhere else for that matter. PlayUp is online-only.

Coming Soon

Indiana

The Hoosier State is home to many casinos and several prominent sportsbooks, including all the top names like DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Caesars Sportsbook. Indiana is filled with sports fans who also enjoy betting on their favorite teams. It is a natural fit for PlayUp, which plans to go live in the state at some point after announcing an agreement with Caesars, which itself has an online sportsbook in Indiana. These arrangements are common in states, including Indiana, that require online sportsbooks to be “tethered” to an existing casino. Caesars happens to own a very nice casino in Hammond, which allows the company to extend three online “skins” to additional sportsbooks, including PlayUp.

Iowa

Similar to its arrangement in Indiana, PlayUp used the same announcement to say that they were coming to Iowa through an arrangement with Caesars. It apparently pays to own casinos in states with a tethering requirement. Just like Indiana, online sportsbooks in Iowa must have a retail casino partner. Just like Indiana, Caesars owns a casino in Iowa. Unlike Indiana, Caesars owns three casinos in the state, so they had plenty of online skins to deal out. PlayUp will be in Iowa sometime in late 2021.

PlayUp Browser Review

If you’re in New Jersey or Colorado, is the PlayUp worth checking out? In a word, sure. Is PlayUp the most amazing sportsbook that has reinvented the sportsbook game? No. Is it a solid product worth using? Yes. It’s right in the middle of the pack. Let’s go over the pluses and minuses of the browser version.

The browser version of PlayUp is pretty, pretty good. It’s easy to read and navigate and has all the major and minor sports you could possibly want to bet on. The black and green layout is unique and interesting to look at. This may not seem like a big deal, but layouts that are not visually appealing quickly become irritating to look at and use. All the sports are listed in a row across the top of the page and also in a column on the left side of the page. All in all a very nice product.

Once you find a bet you want to make, you are just a few clicks away from finalizing your wager. Click on the clearly marked button and your bet immediately appears in a betslip on the right side of the page. There, you can decide if you want to combine multiple bets into a parlay, the odds of which are helpfully displayed. You can also just make straight bets, which are also clearly displayed in the betslip.

After deciding how much you want to wager, the potential payout is listed, and at that point you just push the confirm button and you have yourself a bet. All pending bets are listed in the same betslip column under “open” and if you are interested in cashing in a bet before your game is over, you can click the “cashout” button to see how much PlayUp will pay you to withdraw your pending wager. Previous bets are listed in the “closed” column, which is helpful for tracking which bets won and which came up short. All these options available in one betslip column is a helpful feature offered by PlayUp that should be replicated by other sportsbooks because it is intuitive and helpful for bettors of all skill levels.

PlayUp browser screenshot
The PlayUp browser version is easy to use

Live betting on PlayUp

The live betting experience on the browser version is impressive and better than many other sportsbooks out there. Powered by Sportradar, many live events show a digital display of the action. Live tennis has a virtual tennis court while live basketball shows a virtual basketball court. All the available in-game bets are right there on the same page, just below the virtual action. This is about as good as it gets for live betting.

When you watch a game on cable, you’re not seeing the game as it happens. There is a slight delay. This doesn’t matter much to fans because the delay is only a second or two, but those seconds matter a lot if you are betting on the next point or play. The delay is called latency, and latency is why live sports are not broadcast on sportsbooks very often. The data you see on PlayUp’s live betting platform is as close to real-time as possible due to Sportradar’s innovative data delivery system, so you can be assured that the prices listed are the best possible and the bets you make reflect the actual progress of the game or match.  

PlayUp app screenshot
The PlayUp app has lots of helpful features

Prop Bets on PlayUp

Prop bets are everywhere these days. Sportsbooks are tripping over themselves to offer bets on absolutely everything related to even the most low-profile game. During testing, an upcoming English Premier League soccer match had well over 100 different prop bets available. Everything from the exact score to the number of corner kicks to who will score first was available to bet on. If you can think of it, chances are PlayUp offers it as a bet. PlayUp’s prop bet selection is extensive and is definitely a top feature of the sportsbook. If you’re into prop bets, PlayUp has you covered.

PlayUp App Review

Like most sportsbooks, games that are live are featured first on the PlayUp app. After that, the day’s upcoming games are a quick swipe away on the same home page. The in-play and upcoming action are both divided by sport, which is helpful. Available sports are also listed in an easily accessible row across the top of the app, with all the promotions promoted right below. In another helpful move, under the “all sports” tab, any sport with a live event has a green “live” tag on it. So on Saturday morning when the Premier League is playing, you will see a green “live” tag on the soccer button, indicating that live soccer games are available for wagering. With live betting growing in popularity, this is a helpful way to find in-play action.

Available markets on the PlayUp app
Available markets are easy to find on the PlayUp app

Sometimes the games load slowly, and often the odds don’t load at all. During testing, several of the day’s upcoming baseball games didn’t list any odds, even though they were scheduled to begin in just a few hours. The cause of this is unknown, but it seems unlikely that 8 out of 10 games would be taken off the board at lunch. These sort of technical glitches happen at times, but it is not a good look for PlayUp to not have baseball odds listed in the middle of the afternoon when people are likely planning their day’s wagers.

PlayUp Bet Builder

A review of PlayUp wouldn’t be complete without discussing the confusing Bet Builder feature. It appears to be an easy way to build a parlay, which is odd in itself because parlays are pretty easy to build, particularly when parlay odds are automatically calculated when you put two or more bets in your PlayUp betslip.

Putting that aside, parlays are all the rage now, so it makes sense that PlayUp would want to promote them by creating the Bet Builder product. Bet Builder would be great if it gave bettors an odds boost as a type of promotion to get customers interested in betting more parlays. But it doesn’t quite do that. In fact, during testing, the odds listed using the Bet Builder were consistently inconsistent, offering value at times and much less value other times.

We tested three different two-leg parlay bets using the standard parlay method and the Bet Builder feature. Two of the bets offered a great deal more value using the Bet Builder (+420 Bet Builder vs. +386 standard and +300 Bet Builder vs. +274 standard) while the other bet was a bit short (+210 Bet Builder vs. +243 standard). Bet Builder doesn’t make parlay betting much easier, but it can offer some value. Just be sure to check your Bet Builder bets against the standard parlay payout featured on the betslip before making your bet.

Bet Builder is a creative promotion offered by PlayUp

PlayUp Banking Options

Most standard deposit and withdrawal options are available on PlayUp, including:

Available Sports on PlayUp

The sheer number of sports offered on PlayUp is impressive. Chances are you haven’t heard of pesapallo, the very strange Finnish baseball-like game. You can bet on it on PlayUp, though. Table tennis is a favorite in CO and elsewhere, mostly as a result of the recent COVID-related shutdowns, during which few sports aside from table tennis were available for wagering. Of course, table tennis is prominently featured on PlayUp. If you want to bet on it, chances are you will be able to do so on PlayUp. Here are the sports available for wagering:

Markets Offered on PlayUp

A market is a type of bet offered by a sportsbook. Milwaukee -200 moneyline against Pittsburgh is a baseball market. Pittsburgh +175 moneyline in the same game is a second market. A low-profile MLB game such as Milwaukee vs. Pittsburgh can have dozens of markets. Bigger events like NFL games or playoff games often feature hundreds of markets, mostly prop bets. Here are the most popular markets featured on PlayUp:

PlayUp Customer Service

Chat is where it’s at…in sportsbook customer service, that is. People these days avoid talking on the phone at all costs, so a chat function is a vital service that needs to be available for bettors with questions about their account. During testing, PlayUp had an inconsistent chat service. One day it was totally down all day but the next day it was up and the person was able to quickly answer our questions over the easily accessible and intuitive chat function.

If you want to talk to someone on the phone, there is a phone number available, but let’s be honest, chatting is essential these days. You can also send them an email with your question. The FAQ is functional but is small and hard to read. Overall, because of its inconsistent chat function, PlayUp does not measure up to the robust customer service options offered by the leading sportsbook companies.

PlayUp Sportsbook FAQ

What makes PlayUp better than other sportsbooks?

PlayUp has a few features that are better than its competition. Its live betting product is above average, and the sheer number of prop bets offered is very impressive. The Bet Builder feature also offers some value. Its pricing is competitive and the overall customer experience is pretty good. After testing, PlayUp is firmly in the middle of the pack in the sportsbook industry. It’s definitely not the worst we have tried, but it also doesn’t offer enough to separate its service from the industry leaders.

Is there a PlayUp casino?

Nope. Unlike other sportsbooks operating in New Jersey, PlayUp does not offer a casino to go along with its sports offerings. Ah well.

Which payment methods are available on PlayUp?

PlayUp has several popular banking options, including ACH Check, Skrill, Play+ branded prepaid card, PaySafe: cash, PaySafeCard (similar to PayPal), and credit/debit cards.

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