New Jersey okays PointsBet online sports betting ‘soft play’

New Jersey’s online sports betting options are set to grow by one while more Pennsylvania casinos want to join their state’s betting brigade.

On Tuesday, the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) announced that it had authorized Australian operator PointsBet to commence “soft play” online sports betting in partnership with the Meadowlands Racetrack. The two parties originally announced their sports betting tie-up in July.

New Jersey’s sports betting law allows Atlantic City casinos and state racetracks to each offer up to three betting ‘skins,’ and the Meadowlands already has a functioning online and land-based betting deal with Paddy Power Betfair’s US-facing FanDuel brand.

Pointsbet offers both traditional fixed-odds sports betting but also its signature Points Betting product, which marries traditional point spread wagering with spread betting, a product usually associated with financial markets and which has come under increased regulatory scrutiny in Europe in recent years due to some customers’ outsized losses.