Who can wager at BetRivers Sportsbook

While a handful of states have set the minimum sports betting age at 18, only individuals who are 21 or older can wager on BetRivers Sportsbook and other RSI platforms in the U.S.

Bettors aren't required to be a resident of the 15 states in which BetRivers Sportsbook accepts mobile wagers, but they are required to be physically located within one of these jurisdictions in order to place a bet.

BetRivers Sportsbook utilizes GeoComply's state-of-the art geolocation and online security services to make sure all of its bets are legal, offering an extensive geolocation help section on its website. Furthermore, in order to prevent identity fraud, BetRivers Sportsbook gives customers the option to select "strong authentication," wherein they are sent a security code via text message each time they attempt to log in, thus providing an extra layer of protection beyond someone's password.

Funding methods and Customer Service

In order to begin wagering at BetRivers Sportsbook and take advantage of any welcome bonuses, you must first deposit money into your account. This can be done via debit or credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, AmEx), Venmo, online banking (Trustly), PayPal, PayNearMe, a BetRivers Play+ card, and VIP Preferred ACH, in which each qualified account has a weekly limit displayed within the wallet tab when depositing or withdrawing money.

Among the methods that can be used for withdrawing funds are BetRivers Play+ card, VIP Preferred ACH, PayPal, Venmo, check by mail, and cash at a casino cage (a list of brick-and-mortar locations can be found below). In order to make this experience as frictionless as possible, RSI has a proprietary system, RushPay, that seeks to auto-approve as many withdrawals as possible.

For account holders who have questions or issues that require timely resolution, BetRivers Sportsbook's award-winning customer service team can be reached 24/7 via live chat on the app or website, phone (800-635-0776), email (varies by state), or social media.

Featured signup bonus: Second-chance bet up to $500

BetRivers offers one of the clearest and most user-friendly welcome bonuses in the biz, giving customers who lose their first bet of $10 or more a second-chance bet of equivalent value up to $500. This is doled out in the form of bonus bets that only require a 1x playthrough.

While this signup promotion is about as straightforward as they come, it's always important to review a sportsbook's terms and conditions for any and all wagers, as they will inevitably vary from book to book and state to state.

BetRivers' iRush Rewards

Account holders at RSI's sportsbook and online casino platforms earn loyalty level, tier, and bonus store points every time they play. There are nine loyalty levels with iRush Rewards, and among the perks available at various stages of point accumulation are bonus store access, birthday bonuses, bonus bets, BetRivers merchandise, tickets to concerts and sporting events, luxury VIP gifts and birthday dinners, a monthly Uber Black credit, and even a VIP vacation package.

Sports to wager on at BetRivers Sportsbook

Novice bettors who sign up for a BetRivers Sportsbook account will want to take advantage of the app's Sports Betting Quick Start Guide, where a handy primer for betting strategies involving major sports can be found.

Among the sports BetRivers Sportsbook accepts wagers on are football, basketball, hockey, tennis soccer, golf, UFC/MMA, motorsports, Australian Rules Football, baseball, bowling, boxing, cricket, cycling, darts, Gaelic sports, lacrosse, rugby, snooker, surfing, table tennis, volleyball, esports, handball. BetRivers Sportsbook also takes bets on award shows like the Oscars and Golden Globes in states where such wagering is permitted.

Sports betting in the U.S. is regulated differently in each state where it is legal. Herein, some states have barred wagering of all kinds on in-state colleges, including player props, in order to protect young athletes' mental health and the integrity of the competitions.

Bet types

In addition to its sport-by-sport guide to wagering, BetRivers’ Sports Betting Quick Start guide also provides an extremely helpful glossary of various bet types. Following are some of the more common wagers, much of which is summarized in the glossary.

The simplest wager in sports wagering is called a moneyline bet, in which you back one team or athlete to win a given event. If this team or athlete wins that event, then you win your bet, and if they lose, you do as well. 

If your team's odds of winning that moneyline bet have a minus sign before them, that means your profit will be less than your initial stake. For instance, if the team you back to win on the moneyline is favored at odds of -160 to do so, you must wager $160 for a profit of $100 -- equaling a total payout of $260. Conversely, if the team you bet on is a +160 underdog to win, a wager of $100 will yield a profit of $160. These are known as American odds, and this same stake-profit logic applies to most other bets as well.

If you think an underdog has a compelling chance of keeping things close but aren't willing to back them to win outright, a spread bet might be the wager for you. Here, if a team is favored by seven points, it will be listed as a -7 favorite, whereas a seven-point underdog will be listed at +7. If you bet on the seven-point underdog to beat the spread, that means your bet will cash if they either win the game outright or lose by six points or less. If they lose by exactly seven points, then the bet is a push and your bet will be returned as though you never made it.

A total is the estimated number of points a sportsbook thinks two teams will combine to score during the course of a game. Betting either side of the total is commonly known as an over/under wager. If BetRivers Sportsbook thinks the Pistons and Bulls will combine to score 203.5 points in a midseason tilt, an over bet would cash if they collectively score 204 or more, while an under bet would cash if the total is 203 or fewer.

Bettors who enjoy taking the long view and are content to sit back and wait a while to see if their prediction will prove true might want to consider a futures bet. Let's say BetRivers Sportsbook sets the 76ers’ season-long win total at 48.5 and you don't think there's a snowball's chance in Tahiti that they'll eclipse that mark. It might then be wise to make a futures bet on Philly winning 48 games or fewer and then seeing how things play out.

Did you fail to get your moneyline bet in before the first pitch of the Yankees-Red Sox rubber match? Not to fear: Live, or in-game, betting is as viable an option as placing a pre-game wager. With live betting, odds will fluctuate in real time based on what's occurring during the course of a game, but you lock in the price shown at the time of your wager. Microbetting is a lightning-fast subset of live wagering in which bettors can wager on the result of the next drive in football or next possession in basketball.

Prop bets have traditionally been associated with the more eccentric wagering options that BetRivers Sportsbook and its competitors offer on major sporting events events like the Super Bowl, but they've steadily become a part of American bettors' everyday diets. Prop bets run the gamut, from which player is likeliest to score the first basket in a basketball game to whether Nikola Jokic will earn a triple-double against the Thunder.

If you were to combine these two Jokic wagers into one, you'd be making a parlay bet, which is a single bet that links two or more wagers -- or legs -- and is dependent upon all of those bets winning in order for the parlay to prove successful.

Some online sportsbooks, BetRivers included, offer a cash-out option to bettors who are feeling less than confident that the final leg of their parlay will cash and would rather pocket what the sportsbook is offering them at a given juncture.

Special betting features at BetRivers Sportsbook

It's perfectly natural to want to bet on your favorite teams and players, and BetRivers Sportsbook makes this type of wagering all the more accessible with its "Favorites" bar in the upper left corner of the site or app. Once you've saved your favorite players or teams, wagers involving them will be the first you see every time you log on to the BetRivers Sportsbook app.

BetRivers Sportsbook also has a special feature called Teaser+ that allows bettors to manually adjust a point spread or point total for a given game, with the price automatically adjusting in correspondence with the chosen alternative.

Given the popularity of prop bets in the U.S., BetRivers Sportsbook has a "Prop Central" page that contains every prop that's being offered on the app and website for a given day's games. The sportsbook also has a handful of house specials that frequently take the form of pre-concocted parlays and are available for a short amount of time.

Retail BetRivers Sportsbook locations

RSI's most prominent retail BetRivers Sportsbook location is at the Rivers Casino in the suburban Chicago community of Des Plaines, where it consistently ranks among the top sports wagering venues in the state of Illinois.

Elsewhere in the U.S., you can find retail BetRivers Sportsbooks at Harrington Raceway and Casino in Delaware; Delaware Park Casino and Racing in Wilmington; Rivers Casino and Resort in Schenectady, New York; Rivers Casino and Hotel in Philadelphia; Rivers Casino at the Landing Hotel in Pittsburgh; and Rivers Casino in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Responsible gambling initiatives

During Problem Gambling Awareness Month (March) in 2022, RSI became the first U.S.-based online casino and sports betting company to receive RG Check iGaming accreditation from the Responsible Gambling Council. This status, said the RGC's CEO at the time, is meant as "a clear demonstration that an operator prioritizes and embeds responsible gambling into the core of its operations."

Here, BetRivers Sportsbook gives its customers the option to set various responsible gambling limits, including those involving deposit and spending amounts and the amount of time spent on the platform. Sports bettors who feel like they need a break can elect to take a 72-hour cool-off period or self-exclude themselves from BetRivers Sportsbook for a longer period of time, during which they will not be allowed to engage in online gambling.

BetRivers Sportsbook also encourages parents and other concerned adults to speak to children about the dangers of gambling, which will better prepare them to make responsible choices when they're of legal age. Furthermore, BetRivers Sportsbook warns against using gambling as a coping mechanism or a solution to any problem, as it is a behavior best enjoyed exclusively for entertainment purposes.

Should you ever feel like you can no longer control your gambling on your own, call 1-800-GAMBLER or a state hotline to learn about your options for immediate assistance and treatment.

BetRivers Sportsbook offers comprehensive responsible gambling tools and resources, including limits on access time, deposits, and wagering amounts. Must be 21+ to wager. Terms and conditions apply to all offers. Please see BetRivers Sportsbook for details. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.