DRF Sportsbook Review & Promo Code 2023
The popping US legal sports betting scene is making way for a familiar name. DRF Sportsbook is expanding their offerings beyond horse racing. They are looking to take advantage of the enormous potential within the US sports betting market. Their hope is that a little name recognition will be a brand-catalyst for an established and new generation of legal sports bettors in America.
DRF, otherwise known as The Daily Racing Form, has been a mainstay in the North American horse racing community for over a century. Self-described as “America’s turf authority since 1894”, DRF is hoping to parlay their experience within America’s horse racing community into a viable legal sports betting market share across the country.
Below, we will take a quick peek into the sportsbook’s welcome bonus and other relevant promotions, dive into a little history of the established DRF brand, a little background of how they arrived on the scene, how to sign up for the DRF experience, their software, sports betting menu, bet types, backing options, customer service, and more.
DRF Sportsbook welcome bonus – $1,000 deposit match
It has become increasingly important to provide new bettors with a generous sports betting bonus. This is especially true during what has been a veritable gold rush in the US sports betting market.
Wooing bettors to your site and keeping them away from the rash of top-tier competition in the market is becoming more difficult and is calling for a little more creativity. That’s why we’re extremely excited to offer a $1,000 deposit match promotion in partnership with DRF Sportsbook.
| DRF Sportsbook Promo Code | Coming Soon! |
| DRF Sportsbook Bonus | $1000 Deposit Match |
| Platforms | Desktop/iOS/Android |
We’ve arranged for new sign ups to have access to an exclusive DRF Sportsbook promo code. The code provides players with a first-time deposit match of up to $1,000. This DRF Sportsbook promo code and bonus are better than the standard offer that non-SportsHandle readers will get – so don’t leave money on the table.
New DRF Sportsbook bettors who create their account and make a $100 minimum first deposit, will receive their deposit match.
Once received, both the initial deposit and the bonus funds will be restricted from withdrawal until DRF Sportsbook’s 5x wagering requirement is met. Players will need to wager all of the restricted funds at least 5x at odds of -303 or longer (-250, +150, etc) in order to be able to extract any winnings. Once this is complete, anything left is yours to keep!
Players must make their initial deposit within 30 days of account creation or the offer will expire. Furthermore, any bonus funds that aren’t cleared within 21 days will become void, so wager them as soon as possible!
Bettors must be of legal age to sign up, and at present, they can only bet in Iowa. They must also be within state lines at the time of wagering.
DRF Sportsbook active states
Currently DRF Sportsbook is only available in one state, and it’s not the biggest. DRF officially opened for business in the state of Iowa on January 25, 2022. They’ve partnered with the Lakeside Hotel and Casino in Osceola, Iowa.
However, we have reason to believe that Iowa is just the beginning for the racebook turned sportsbook. Keep an eye out for DRF Sportsbook in other states soon. We’ll keep you posted.
| State | License Partner | Launch Date |
|---|---|---|
| Iowa | Lakeside Hotel & Casino | January 25, 2022 |
Background info on DRF Sportsbook
As previously mentioned, DRF has been around North American horse racing circles for over a century. It has been tabbed a “dominant daily publication in the horse racing industry since 1894.” Simply put, providing wagering information to subscribers isn’t exactly new to the company.
Daily Racing Forum signaled their intention to expand their offerings as a global omnichannel sports, technology, digital, media and wagering business in September with the launch of DRF Bets in September 2021. It effectively moved the company beyond just the providing of betting trends to horse racing aficionados.
Affinity Gaming provides what the DRF site calls “best-in-class tech and sports data and intelligence available to nearly 1 million users in the U.S. alone.” A newly forged relationship between them furthered DRF’s commitment to providing an expanded sports betting menu to their customers.
On January 25, 2022, DRF Sportsbook went live in the competitive Iowa market. This was thanks to an agreement with Lakeside Casino and Resort. It was the culmination of decades of experience in the horse racing industry, combined with opportunity and the desire of DRF brass that brought them to competing with FanDuel and DraftKings, among others, for market share.
Name recognition among sports bettors should draw new bettors in. Also, relationships with Kambi Group, who provides services to heavyweights like Unibet and BetRivers, should give the new offering some prestige in the US markets they are hoping to infiltrate.
Signing up with DRF Sportsbook
Signing up for the DRF Sportsbook experience is quick and painless. It takes 3-5 minutes before you will be able to get in on what DRF has to offer. Like other competing sportsbooks, DRF’s hope is to get you betting, not bogged down in a registration process.
Head to the DRF Sportsbook site and select the yellow ‘Sign Up Now‘ button to get started. There, you will be asked for a Promotional Code in order to claim your welcome bonus. You will also be asked to put in your email address, and think of a password. The passwords should consisting of 8+ characters with at least 1 capital, 1 number, and 1 symbol.
Be sure to enter a promo code in the ‘Promotional Code’ box. A green checkmark will appear next to it once the code has been accepted.
Once that is done, you will be required to provide some personal information, such as your Name, Address, Phone Number, Birthdate, and the last four digits of your SSN for verification purposes.
Lastly, you will be expected to accept the Terms and Conditions, make a deposit, and proceed to the DRF Sportsbook menu of sports and bet-type options.
Of note, new bettors can sign up for DRF Sportsbook anywhere, but they will have to be located within the borders of the state they signed up in to physically place a bet.
DRF Sportsbook software
DRF Sportsbook may be a newcomer to the sports wagering world. Nonetheless, their experience successfully providing a mobile sportsbook app for horse racing gives the company a leg up with respect to the design and rollout of their DRF Sportsbook software suite.
DRF Sportsbook is available on both iOS and Android and boasts an equally impressive desktop version of their product. We found little difference in the overall experience between the desktop and mobile versions of the site.
The established relationships with elite software developers shine through right away with the DRF Sportsbook. While not quite on par with some of the heavyweights in the US legal sports betting industry, the DRF product is streamlined and competitive with respect to the visual layout and the ease-of-use aspects of their site.
The DRF Sportsbook won’t blow anybody away with anything new or ground-breaking. Regardless, the software has proven to be quick, responsive, intuitive, and pleasing to the eye.
DRF’s platform isn’t as flashy as some we have seen in the market but to some, the relative simplicity, cleanliness, and lack of a busy graphics may cater to those focussed on the substance rather than the flash. We did like the Search option for sports, leagues and teams that was readily available on the top of the main screen.
As a new-ish sportsbook provider and having years of experience catering to bettors in the horse racing world, we have confidence that the DRF offerings will continue to improve. It will need to in order to compete with DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, BetMGM and all of the other high-level competition they will be facing in the market.
As one of the new kids on the US legal sports betting block, Daily Racing Form Sportsbook is forgiven for not having the biggest menu of sports to bet on.
That said, all of the major North American sports are covered by the sportsbook. The same applies to the majority of the main global leagues and sports – most of them are available. Everything the typical North American bettor would want is there. Included on the list are:
- Football
- Basketball
- Hockey
- Soccer
- Tennis
- Golf
- Boxing
- UFC/MMA
- Motorsports
- Formula 1
- Cycling
- Rugby Union
- Australian Rules
- Baseball
- Winter Olympic Games
Each sport is visible and accessible of the far-left hand side of the screen. The number of betting opportunities associated with each sport is clearly laid out.
So, while not the biggest menu of sports available in participating US states, DRF has done a good job in their relative infancy, of populating a respectable list of sports directed at the typical North American bettor. We expect that menu to increase as the sportsbook becomes more established going forward.
DRF Sportsbook markets
New sportsbooks take time to populate sports and betting markets that they will support. DRF Sportsbook is no different in this regard. While offering the typical, traditional bet-types to their clientele, the sportsbook, we found, is still lacking in their overall selection of bet types.
That said, just like the sports DRF covers, their menu of betting options is more-than-satisfactory for the typical bettor they are targeting in the US market. Included are:
- Moneyline – The moneyline is traditionally the most popular form of betting. It is simply wagering on who you think will win a game/match. Oddsmakers set the lines with a favorite and an underdog and bettors wager on those odds. A winning bet on an underdog is always more lucrative than one on a favorite.
- Points Spread – oddsmakers determine how many points/goals they think one combatant of a sport will win by. A winning bet must “cover” that spread. For bettors to cash on the underdog, their team must either win outright or lose by less than the spread. Let’s say the KC Chiefs are -4 (four-point favorites) against the Las Vegas Raiders +4. A bet on the Chiefs would only cash if KC won by more than 4 points. A bet on the Raiders cashes if they win the game or lose by less than 4.
- Totals – otherwise known as the Over/Under. Oddsmakers set out how many goals/points they think will be scored in a given game. Bettors wager on whether or not the teams/players involved exceed or fail to hit that “Total”. Let’s say that oddsmakers have the Total for the Philadelphia 76ers vs. Golden State Warriors set at 195 points. At the end of the game, if the teams combine for less than 195 points, the Under wins the bet. Over wins if the teams score more than 195 combined points.
- Parlays – stringing together three or more bets into one. The three or more bets aren’t confined to one sport. A parlay can consist of bets in multiple sports and can have prop bets included, totals, and other bet-types. Parlays are notoriously tough to win because if one “leg” fails to win, the whole bet is sunk. On the flip side, parlays can be lucrative.
- Live or in-game betting – bet-type that takes place after a game has already started. Bets on who will score the next goal, and who will win the game (after it has already started) are a couple of examples. Live betting takes into account the nuances of every play and allows bettors to have a stake in every minute of the game they are betting on. Real-time stats are a critical element of Live Betting options.
Banking with DRF Sportsbook
DRF’s experience as a long-standing provider of horse racing wagering opportunities is best demonstrated by the shear volume of banking options they make available to their customers, Typically, new sportsbooks take some time to develop a big list of deposit/withdrawal options for their clientele.
DRF Sportsbook has managed to populate a pretty complete list from Day 1 of their existence as a wide-ranging sportsbook provider. Included on their list are:
- Bank Transfer – Common way for deposits and are instant. Bettors need to make sure that their bank allows transfers to sportsbooks.
- Credit/Debit Card – DRF accepts all major credit cards including Visa and Mastercard for deposits. They too are instant and a preferred way of many to fund their DRF Sportsbook accounts.
- PayNearMe – Fund your account with visits to local 7-11 stores of Family Dollar. You will be provided a bar code from the DRF website. You simply scan that code at your favorite retailer and make deposits with cash, right there at the register. It is just like you were making a regular brick-and-mortar purchase.
- Wire Transfer – A traditional way of sending funds to your DRF Sportsbook account. Transfers can take a little more time to process, but people have been using wires for years and they are thought to be among the more “familiar” options for online sportsbook deposits.
- DRF Play+ (Prepaid Card) – DRF prepaid Play+ cards provide a fast and easy way to deposit and cash out from DRF Sportsbook. In addition, it’s an excellent way to manage your bankroll and the physical card can be used everywhere that Discover is accepted. DRF Play+ cards have a high approval rate, making it one of the best available options.
Deposit limits apply and may vary.
Withdrawal options are basically a reverse of all of the Deposit options. Keep in mind that not every method can be used for withdrawal, like credit/debit cards and PayNearMe. Likewise, some withdrawal methods may necessitate a deposit first to verify the account.
DRF Sportsbook security
Questions about site security almost always seem to follow banking options for a sports betting site. DRF Sportsbook checked all of our boxes in this regard. Not only has the company been around since 1894, but it has also been providing Americans with horse racing betting opportunities for decades.
We found no nefarious activity with DRF Sportsbook over their decades of experience taking bets around the country. Elite encryption software is an essential part of the site’s offerings and all we would expect from such an established name.
DRF rewards program
Daily Racing Form does offer a rewards program for their horse racing product, DRF Bets. It offers up to 5% back for loyal bettors. It was a tiered system based on past performance. Essentially, the more you bet with them the more you could recoup through the horse racing rewards program.
However, at current we have yet to see DRF Sportsbook implement a similar system. Ultimately we would love to see them reward their loyal sports bettors with a little more. Not many brands offer one though, so we won’t knock them too much for its absence.
Customer service on DRF Sportsbook
Customer Service for sportsbooks has become a focus, mostly because of reviews like this. A poor review can make a big difference for a sportsbook hoping to compete in what has become a very competitive market. DRF Sportsbook, with years of experience catering to bettors in the American market got a head start on customer service options available.
Unfortunately, DRF’s experience has not quite translated into what we hoped was a top-tier set of customer service options. We had to search for any Customer Support but eventually found it at the very bottom of the main page. Other competing sportsbooks have an easily accessed tab that takes bettors to the support options.
Once we clicked through the Customer Support tab, we were underwhelmed. There was a somewhat disappointing FAQ section that addresses account information, and basic questions about deposit and withdrawal options. In addition, the section was limited and not nearly on par with other sportsbooks at your disposal.
The site lacked any Live Chat options that are almost becoming an industry standard. It’s also missing a customer support phone number or even an email address for customers to contact. After a fair amount of searching, we did find [email protected] But the address is not readily available.
DRF Sportsbook does offer an awkward “Ticket” system in which you will have to enter your email address in order to have a customer service rep contact you via email. It seems an inefficient and arduous way to have any queries addressed. Overall, improvements could be made here.
- DRF Sportsbook welcome bonus – $1,000 deposit match
- DRF Sportsbook active states
- Background info on DRF Sportsbook
- Signing up with DRF Sportsbook
- DRF Sportsbook software
- DRF sports betting menu
- DRF Sportsbook markets
- Banking with DRF Sportsbook
- DRF Sportsbook security
- DRF rewards program
- Customer service on DRF Sportsbook
