DraftKings recently announced that its “Early Exit” policy hit a milestone, with 1 million customers having their bets refunded when a player exited early due to injury. With features like Early Exit, DraftKings aims to continue to establish itself as an industry leader as an operator that consumers trust.
Prop betting has become extremely popular among sports bettors. Most recreational users tend to target overs on player props instead of unders, which leaves them vulnerable to player injuries. In fact, there have been countless occasions where a player left early with an injury, where bettors took to social media to voice their complaints, demanding a void on their wagers.
That’s why DraftKings implemented Early Exit, where your pre-game player prop bet is refunded if your player has to leave the game early. All that needs to happen for the refund to be provided is that your player cannot come back after leaving.
By introducing this offer, DraftKings has tried to establish trust among its users. Other operators have done the same, where FanDuel has introduced Bet Protect+, allowing users to pay an extra 3% fee of their stake for injury-related safeguards.
With operators competing with each other to establish more consumer trust by providing injury protections on player props, it’s creating a more favorable environment for sports bettors.
Part of the risk that users take with betting an over on a player prop is that the player departs early with injury. With policies like DraftKings’ Early Exit, that slightly reduces the risk involved.
Since this has become more common among sportsbooks, there’s a chance that pricing on player props can reflect these changes.
In other words, you may see overs on player props at inflated odds compared to unders, especially on marquee players. For example, Luka Doncic over 50.5 points+rebounds+assists may be at -125 instead of your standard -110. This would be an attempt by sportsbooks to get back any losses they take with injury refunds.
For bettors, this could make taking overs a bit riskier, since early exits from injuries aren’t as common as you may think. Unders could get more favorable pricing, giving this side more value than before.
It will also be interesting to see if sportsbooks that opt to avoid providing injury protections start losing market share. Operators like DraftKings and FanDuel have set a precedent in providing this feature, so it remains to be seen if avoiding that could have a negative effect on operators.
