ESPN Bet sign-up bonus: what existed, and why Ontario never had it

"Sign-up bonus" is the phrase that sells sportsbooks. For ESPN BET it meant a bundle of bonus bets — real, generous-sounding, and narrower than the headline. This page sets out what the offers were, puts a cash value on them, and explains why the Ontario version of this page has no number on it.

What ESPN Bet offered new customers

Between November 2023 and November 2025, ESPN BET rotated its welcome offers by season and by state. Two shapes recur in the coverage of the time:

• Bet $10, Get $100 in bonus bets. Deposit at least $10, place a first cash bet of $10 or more, and receive $100 in bonus bets — usually five separate $20 bets, issued within about 72 hours of the first bet settling and expiring seven days after they arrived. Most versions paid win or lose; some state-specific versions paid only if the first bet won. Full details on its own page.
• A "first bet reset". If your first bet lost, the book returned the stake as bonus bets, up to a cap that ran as high as $1,000 in some promotions. If it won, you simply kept the winnings.

Around those headline offers sat smaller perks: Mint Club, ESPN BET's loyalty programme, which required linking your ESPN account; odds boosts tied to ESPN broadcasts; and, at times, a trial of ESPN+ bundled with sign-up, which renewed automatically unless cancelled. Every one of them was for customers aged 21 or older (18 in Kentucky) and physically located in a state where ESPN BET held a licence.

What a bonus bet is actually worth

This is the part the banners leave out. A bonus bet is not cash. You stake it, and if it wins you receive the winnings — but not the stake. That one rule cuts the value roughly in half.

Take a $20 bonus bet on a standard -110 line, where a $110 cash bet wins $100:

• If it wins, you receive about $18.18 in cash. The $20 itself disappears.
• A -110 line implies a win probability of about 52.4% once the book's margin is included; in reality, before the margin, each side is close to 50%.
• So the expected cash from one $20 bonus bet is about $9. Five of them — the whole "$100" — are worth roughly $45 to $50.

Bettors can raise that figure by using bonus bets on longer odds, because the lost stake hurts less when the potential winnings are large compared with it. A $20 bonus bet at +300 returns $60 if it wins, about a quarter of the time: around $15 in expected value. That's why bonus bets push people towards parlays and long shots — which is a reason to understand them, not a reason to chase them.

How Ontario handles sign-up bonuses

Ontario's regulated operators can and do run welcome offers. What they can't do is advertise them to the public. The AGCO's Standard 2.05 limits gambling inducements to the operator's own site or app and to people who have actively consented to its marketing, and it explicitly reaches affiliate content. The AGCO enforces it: Unibet's Ontario arm, for one, was fined C$48,000 in 2022 over ads that broke it.

For you, that means three practical things:

1. Any current Ontario offer is visible inside the regulated app, with its full terms, after you register.
2. A public page with a big Ontario bonus number is either outside Ontario's rules or outside Ontario's market.
3. An offer seen on a US stream or podcast — the kind that made ESPN BET famous — is not for you, even if the same company runs an app here.

For the brand ESPN BET turned into, that app is theScore Bet, registered with iGaming Ontario since 4 April 2022. Look in its Promotions area for what is offered to you, and read the terms first.

Visit theScore Bet ↗

A five-question checklist for any welcome offer

1. Is the operator in iGaming Ontario's directory? If not, stop.
2. Is the bonus paid in cash or in bonus bets? Bonus bets are worth roughly half their face value at even odds.
3. What qualifies? Minimum odds, eligible markets, and whether casino play counts.
4. When does it expire? Seven days was ESPN BET's standard; some offers are shorter.
5. Does it change your limits? Never raise a deposit limit to "unlock" an offer.

Bet responsibly, in Ontario

Sports betting is entertainment that costs money. Over time the book keeps a margin on every market, and no promo changes that arithmetic.

• Decide the amount before you start, not during. A limit set mid-session isn't a limit.
• Use the tools the app gives you. Regulated Ontario apps must offer deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. theScore Bet's own deposit screen carries a "Set Responsible Gaming Limits" link next to the amount buttons.
• Never chase a loss, and never bet borrowed money or money that already has a job.
• Watch the time, not just the balance. Time spent is the earliest warning sign.

ConnexOntario is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 1-866-531-2600, by text at 247247 or by chat at connexontario.ca. Ontario also runs a centralized self-exclusion service, BetGuard (betguard.ca), that blocks you from every regulated online operator at once.