Legal New York Mets Betting
Forget the old meet and greet. That’s yesterday’s news. The new hotness is betting on the New York Mets, and it’s completely legal for all NY residents to do just that. That’s because, even though federal anti-gambling laws like the Wire Act, PASPA, and the UIGEA supposedly make sports betting illegal in New York (and most of the rest of the country), these laws only go after sportsbooks, not sports bettors. Since all the best online sportsbooks are based overseas and outside of US jurisdiction, New Yorkers can freely and legally use them to place Mets bets whenever they want.
To get started with your Mets betting career, all you need is an Internet connection and a couple of bucks. Just fire up your iPhone or Android smartphone (or tablet, home computer, etc.), navigate over to a reputable online sportsbook like SportsBetting or BetOnline, and take five minutes to register. (If you’ve ever signed up for a Gmail account or similar, the process is the same.) Then, just deposit your cash, select your bonuses, and make your picks.
You have several options when it comes to filling up your NY Mets sportsbook with funds. That said, each option has different processing times. Credit and debit cards, for example, allow fairly instant transfers, while old-school “paper” methods (personal check, money order, wire transfer, etc.) have higher fees and take up to two weeks to clear, as do payouts utilizing these same avenues. If you need to put cash into your account so you can bet on the Mets this weekend, you’ll probably have to go with a credit card to ensure your funds are available in time. (Note: Right now, no legal New York sports betting site accepts American Express. Only Visa and Mastercard deposits are currently offered.)
All that said, the very best way to deposit funds into your legal New York sports betting account is via Bitcoin. Because it’s entirely digital and secured by state-of-the-art blockchain technology, Bitcoin is the safest, most private way to transfer money into your online sportsbook. It’s also much faster to take out your winnings via Bitcoin than any other method, as you can have your funds in as little as 30 minutes from the time of your withdrawal request. Better yet, there are no associated fees for this service. Once you’re set up to use Bitcoin, it really is the simplest, easiest way to manage all your legal New York Mets betting funds.
Let the Stankees use fiat money. The Metropolitans require a more progressive kind of cash.
If you’re not familiar with the US system of sports gambling, the main thing you’ve got to understand in order to successfully put action on the New York Mets is how to read the odds. As with all other American sports odds, New York Mets odds are expressed via a mechanism called the moneyline. No matter what type of sports bet you’re making, the moneyline will always be included next to it. This tells you exactly how much money you have to wager and how much you stand to win for a given wager.
The US moneyline is based on $100 bets and payouts. The favorite will always be shown with a negative moneyline, which denotes the amount of money you must wager to win $100. The underdog, on the other hand, is usually shown with a positive number indicating the amount of money you can win on a $100 bet. It might seem counterintuitive at first, but after a few solid Mets wagers, it’ll become second nature, as will all of your legal New York sports betting pursuits.
The most popular kind of wager for legal New York Mets betting is the point spread, which is called the “run line” in baseball. In sports betting, the spread is a way for sportsbooks to “handicap” the competition to get an equal amount of money on both sides of a given wager. The underdog is essentially “given” points from the favorite, and this “head start” affects how the game’s betting unfolds. A New York Mets run line bet will usually look something like this:
- New York Mets -1.5 (-110)
- vs.
- Philadelphia Phillies +1.5 (-110)
In this example, the NY Mets are 1.5-point favorites over Philadelphia. That means that, to win the wager, the Mets must win the game by at least two runs. The Phillies, meanwhile, can lose by a run and still win the wager. Half-point increments are used to prevent “push” results, which generally require sportsbooks to refund all the action on the affected bet. Most legal online sportsbooks fix their run lines at +/- 1.5 to avoid this outcome.
Straight up betting, or straight moneyline betting, simply requires bettors to pick a winner or a loser. There is no handicapping. As such, the bigger the favorite, the more expensive the wager. In other words, with straight betting, a favorite will have a lower payout than an underdog. These “odds” are shown by the moneyline. A straight moneyline bet on the NY Mets will be structured as follows:
- Atlanta Braves (+155)
- vs.
- New York Mets (-160)
Here, the underdog Braves pay out $155 on a $100 bet. If you pick the Mets, however, that only pays out $100 on a $160 bet. If you’re picking a favorite to win outright, the straight bet is always safer than the spread, but the reward isn’t ever as great.
Over/under betting is the last of the big three Mets wager types, and unlike the others, it isn’t concerned with winners and losers. Instead, over/under bets only take the combined final score of a given game into consideration. For this reason, over/unders are also called totals bets.
- New York Mets
- vs.
- Washington Nationals O/U 6.5 (-110)
In this game, the “over” bet wins if the Mets and Nats score a combined 7 or more runs. If the game is more of a pitchers’ duel and ends with a total combined score of 6 or fewer runs, then the “under” wins.
If you aren’t satisfied with just putting action on the above, your legal New York Mets betting provider is bound to offer dozens of extra bets on every Mets game. These are called proposition bets, a.k.a. prop bets. New York player prop bets are based on the individual performances of each player in a given game. You’ll be able to put money on which player will hit the first home run, whether or not the shortstop commits an error, how many hits the three-slot guy collects, and so on.
There are also team props available for collective achievements during a given matchup. New York Mets team props might cover things like the number of hits the Amazin’s get, the runs they score, and so on. Prop bets add value by simultaneously offering the bettor more chances to win and giving them even more reason to watch the entire ballgame. The wide selection of New York Mets prop bets available at legal online sportsbooks has been partially credited with increasing the television and radio ratings for the Mets over the last several years.
Other Mets Bet Types
In addition to all of the above, legal New York Mets betting fans can also find alternate lines, futures, parlays, and several other Mets bet types at their favorite Internet sports gambling sites. Even better, all of the biggest online sportsbooks have started offering live betting on the Most Exciting Team in Sports.
Live betting is a new(ish) phenomenon in legal online sports betting circles, and it allows NY Mets fans to put action on their club throughout the game. In addition to constantly-changing lines and odds, live betting – also called in-game betting – lets NY sports bettors wager on in-game events. Think you know what the next pitch will be? Bet on it. Do you foresee a home run in the cleanup spot this inning? Throw your money down.
Throughout the course of a single NY Mets game, you might have the opportunity to wager on literally hundreds of live bets. Much like prop wagers, live betting has caused a spike in legal New York Mets betting, viewership, and audience retention across the board.
Due to Apple and Google locking down their app ecosystems, there are no official legal sportsbook apps on the App Store or in Google Play. However, if you have an iPhone, Android phone, iPad, or other mobile device, you can still easily get action on the Mets on the go. That’s because all the best sportsbooks like SportsBetting, BetOnline, and 5Dimes offer mobile-optimized websites for all your New York sports betting needs.
To access your favorite sportsbook’s mobile site, just log into your account on your device of choice. You’ll be redirected to the book’s web portal, which is designed specifically for the small screen and features fast, efficient search options for browsing the boards and placing your wagers. You can even save your sportsbook to your home screen, making a “web app” shortcut to your NY Mets betting page.
There are lots of options out there, but in the world of online sports betting, you need to make sure your NY sportsbook is reliable and well-established before entrusting them with your time and money. SportsBetting, BetOnline, and 5Dimes (as well as BookMaker and BetDSI) are all reputable, upstanding firms for legal New York betting.
These legal online sportsbooks are your best bets for NY sports betting in general and NY Mets betting in particular. And since each of them has different spreads and lines for every Mets game, it is recommended that you sign up at more than one so you can easily shop around for the best Mets bets out there.