Sportsbooks in New Jersey are well-renowned for their branding and marketing. Most sports betting sites in the Garden State offer a cohesive and thoughtful experience, leaving no element untouched by the company’s brand identity.
In many cases, that extends to the 404 error page. In other cases, NJ sportsbooks woefully miss the mark. Today, let’s take a look at NJ sportsbook 404 pages. Who gets it right, wrong, and in between?
To dole out these prestigious awards, we used a scientific process to test each sportsbook’s 404 page … typing random letters into various URLs on every sportsbook site.
Best in show: PointsBet Sportsbook
Unlike the Oscars, Tonys, Grammys, or other awards shows, we’re not going to make you sit through the fluff before giving out the biggest prize of the night. The 404 pages at PointsBet Sportsbook NJ (yeah, that’s pluralization you see there) are by far the best of any sportsbook in the Garden State.
PointsBet randomly displays one of three 404 pages themed after a major sport: football, basketball or baseball. Each comes with its own pithy saying. Football: “Benched!” Baseball: “There’s been a mound visit.” They’re accompanied by a massive “404” and some stock art of an athlete dressed in the sport’s garb.
Only PointsBet has more than one error message. And each one is unique and worth a chuckle. It wins the day as far as best NJ sportsbook 404 messages go, and it’s not close.
Just fine: FanDuel, DraftKings, Barstool, Caesars
Four of the biggest sports betting brands fall into the “alright, sure” category. They do a little to spice up their 404 pages, but it feels like one small step beyond the bare minimum.
FanDuel Sportsbook NJ shows a field goal post with a football bouncing off — a tough pill to swallow for Chicago Bears fans who remember the double-doink all too well — alongside some boilerplate “Page Not Found Text.” Points for the image, but that’s the extent of FanDuel’s 404 flair.
DraftKings Sportsbook NJ goes with some betting jargon: “Sorry, unfavorable odds shift.” It’s relatively uninspired, but it plays with sports betting vocabulary rather than a straight-up sports pun. Points for being different.
Beyond that, Barstool New Jersey displays some small text that says “Foul!” And Caesars Sportsbook NJ just says “Fumble!” and gives you a link to the homepage. Both are boring, but effective.
None of these sportsbooks do anything particularly eye-catching, but we’ll give them a little credit for trying.
Ghosted: BetPARX
BetPARX gives us a head-scratcher.
The page remains blank except for a link to “Settings.” The plus side here is that the typical links to leagues and sports remain, so shifting to a working page is easy. It’s puzzling but functional. No laughs or witty branding here; BetPARX keeps it simple.
Funny in the wrong way: Tipico
The 404 page at Tipico Sportsbook NJ is a big white screen with an exclamation mark and this hilariously incorrect text:
“Oops! Something went wrong. This page does not exists.”
Love a good subject-verb agreement foible. Something went wrong, indeed.
Just enough: Golden Nugget
Golden Nugget Sportsbook has the most run-of-the-mill 404 page. This is standard stuff, accompanied by text you’re likely to see on any other website’s error page.
Normally we’d let Golden Nugget slide by unnoticed in a piece like this. But it deserves a mention because even this 404 page — the simplest, starkest kind — beats out our next award.
Big yikes: Hard Rock
Hard Rock’s 404 page looks like my novel draft: a few lines of nonsensical text and a whole lot of white space.
The kicker? We’re only showing you a small portion of it. This image had three more bullet points with long strings of numbers and letters. It is an abomination I can’t share, because I don’t know whether those alphanumeric lines could give some reader unfettered access to my aforementioned novel draft.
This is a particular shame, because the Hard Rock Sportsbook NJ branding is otherwise strong. “Bet to a different beat” is the sign-up slogan, and the sportsbook does a phenomenal job of blending music motifs with betting.
Who gets it marginally correct?
Unibet, Bet365 and WynnBET all do away with 404 pages as far as I could tell. Instead, they give a generic “no odds available for this event” message within the sportsbook window.
What NJ sportsbooks get it technically correct?
Five sportsbooks manage to void 404 messages altogether (at least in my experience typing random characters into different URLs).
The following NJ sportsbooks automatically redirect to the most relevant page they can find instead of bringing you to a 404 message. This usually means you’ll end up back on the sportsbook homepage if you type in a wonky URL:
- BetMGM
- BetRivers
- Betway
- Borgata
- PlayUp
One alternative to this would be send people to the respective NJ sports betting promos page.
As the saying goes, “technically correct” is the best kind of correct. But there’s a unique charm in getting something delightfully wrong. PointsBet, our best in show, does that perfectly by acknowledging a faulty URL with a funny and on-brand message.
