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theScore Bet is Penn Entertainment’s sportsbook, and since December 2025 it has been the home of everyone who used to bet with ESPN Bet. This theScore Bet review covers the welcome offer, what the migration actually changed, how the prices stack up on soccer and the NFL, and the two states where the app works but the offer does not.
New customers get the First Bet Reset up to $1,000 in Bonus Bets. There is no promo code — the offer applies through the link.
theScore Bet at a glance
| theScore Bet | |
|---|---|
| Welcome offer | First Bet Reset up to $1,000 in Bonus Bets |
| Promo code | None — the offer applies through the link |
| States live | 20 |
| States the offer covers | 18 |
| App rating | 4.8 / 5 — App Store, 223,000 ratings |
| Loyalty program | PENN Play |
| Casino | Hollywood Casino in MI, NJ, PA and WV |
| Operator | Score Media and Gaming, part of Penn Entertainment |
| Our score | 7.5 / 10 |
theScore Bet welcome offer: First Bet Reset up to $1,000
Place your first wager. If it loses, you get the stake back as Bonus Bets, up to $1,000. theScore Bet’s own promotions page puts it as 100% back if your first wager loses, which is the clearest version of this offer anyone in the market writes.
It is a first-bet reset rather than a deposit match, so the value tracks whatever you were going to stake anyway. Bet $40 and the cover is $40, not $1,000 — the headline number is a ceiling, and only a reader placing a four-figure opening wager gets near it. That is worth saying plainly, because the $1,000 does a lot of work in how these offers get advertised.
The other thing to understand before you plan around it: Bonus Bets stake is not returned in winnings. A $50 Bonus Bet at even money pays $50, not $100. How the refund is split and how long you have to use it are set in the app rather than published on the promotions page, so check the current terms there before your first wager rather than after it.
Compared with the rest of the market, this sits mid-table. bet365 and FanDuel both pay Bonus Bets that do not depend on losing, and Caesars asks for a $1 stake. A reset only pays out if your first bet loses, which is a genuine difference from an offer that pays either way.
What happened to ESPN Bet?
If you are here because your ESPN Bet app turned into something else, this is the short version. Penn Entertainment and ESPN agreed to end their licensing deal in November 2025, and on December 1, 2025 every ESPN Bet customer was migrated onto theScore Bet.
It is not a new operator and it is not a company in trouble. Penn owned and ran the book throughout; ESPN licensed its name to it for two years. theScore Bet is the name Penn used before that deal and the one it has gone back to. Balances, settled bet history and logins carried across the migration, and Missouri launched on the same day.
What changed in practice is the branding, the app icon and the ESPN content integrations. What did not change is the trading operation, the licences or the people. If you had money in an ESPN Bet account, it is in a theScore Bet account now.
How we scored theScore Bet
We score every sportsbook out of 10 across six dimensions, and the overall number is the mean of those six rather than an impression. Six is market par.
| Dimension | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Odds competitiveness | 8 / 10 | Two-way NFL holds of 3.6-4.5% and three-way Nations League holds of 4.1-4.6%, against a -110/-110 standard of 4.8%. |
| Markets and depth | 8 / 10 | Nations League priced down to League D with six props a game, plus drive props, play props and defensive props on NFL. |
| App experience | 9 / 10 | 4.8 / 5 from 223,000 App Store ratings, the strongest volume-weighted rating of the books we review. |
| Customer service | 6 / 10 | In-app live chat and email, but phone support is limited to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and no hours are published. |
| Banking | 6 / 10 | No withdrawal processing times are published anywhere on the public help pages. |
| Promotions for existing users | 8 / 10 | Injury Insurance, Parlay Club, recurring profit boosts and tennis retirement cover, on top of PENN Play. |
The shape of that scorecard is a book that is strong where it controls the product and ordinary where it has to publish information. Pricing, depth and the app are all genuinely above par. Support and banking are marked at par because theScore Bet does not publish withdrawal times or support hours anywhere public, and we are not prepared to score what we cannot check.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Sharper soccer pricing than most US books, and a Nations League board that runs down to League D
- 4.8 / 5 from 223,000 App Store ratings
- A deep NFL prop tree including drive props, play props and defensive markets
- PENN Play turns betting into hotel stays and event tickets, which online-only rivals cannot match
- Ongoing promotions that are actually worth something — Injury Insurance and Parlay Club, not just acquisition offers
- No promo code to hunt for
Cons
- The offer only pays if your first bet loses
- Live in 20 states but the welcome offer covers 18 — Louisiana and New York miss out
- No published withdrawal times or support hours
- Phone support is limited to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts
- Two brand changes in three years, which has cost it recognition
theScore Bet states: where you can bet
theScore Bet takes bets in 20 states: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
The welcome offer covers 18 of them. Louisiana and New York are live for betting but are not on the offer’s eligible-state list, so if you are signing up in either, expect the account to work and the First Bet Reset not to apply. It is an easy thing to miss and an annoying one to discover afterwards.
That footprint puts it in the upper half of the market. It covers New York, the biggest regulated handle in the country, and it does not cover California, Texas or Florida — but then no licensed sportsbook does, because those states have not legalized online sports betting. If you are in one of them, the prediction markets are the only regulated route to a position on a game.
theScore Bet odds: how competitive are they?
We checked the book on a live NFL game and a full international soccer round rather than taking the marketing at face value. The margin — the overround — is what a sportsbook builds into a market, and lower is better for you.
On Falcons at Packers, the spread was priced at -115 / -105 for a margin of 4.5%, the total at -120 / Even for 4.4%, and the moneyline at +210 / -250 for 3.6%. The US default is -110 on both sides of a spread, which is a 4.8% margin. So theScore Bet is pricing slightly tighter than standard, and it is moving the juice around the line rather than sitting flat on both sides.
That is one game on one afternoon, so treat it as a sample and not a verdict. But it points the same way as the soccer numbers below, and two independent reads agreeing is more than most books manage.
theScore Bet soccer coverage
This is where theScore Bet is more interesting than its US rivals, and it is the reason it is worth a Squawka reader’s time.
On the September 2026 Nations League round the three-way margins ran from 4.1% on Portugal against Wales to 4.6% on Netherlands against Germany. For context, a US sportsbook treating soccer as a secondary sport typically prices a three-way market nearer 6%. Those are European-book numbers on an American licence.
The depth backs it up. The board runs the whole competition rather than the televised end of it — League D fixtures like Andorra against Malta and Liechtenstein against Lithuania are priced alongside the League A ties, each with six props attached. Anytime goalscorer, first goalscorer and team total goals are all there, on players from Erling Haaland down to Charalampos Kostoulas.
Beyond soccer, the board covers the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college football and basketball, golf, motorsports, MMA and tennis.
theScore Bet app review
The app is the strongest thing about the operation. It holds 4.8 out of 5 from around 223,000 App Store ratings, which is both the highest score and one of the largest samples among the sportsbooks we review — and it is worth noting that the rating survived a full customer migration, which is usually when a betting app gets torn apart in reviews.
That is not an accident of marketing. theScore was a sports media app with a large US and Canadian audience before it was a sportsbook, so the scores, news and betting sit in a product built by people who had already shipped a good sports app. Updates land regularly. There is a full desktop and mobile web version too, with the same markets and promotions.
theScore Bet promotions for existing users
The recurring offers are better than the welcome offer, which is the right way round and rarer than it should be. Live at the time of writing:
- Injury Insurance — cover when a player you have backed goes off injured
- Parlay Club — place four $10-plus parlays of four legs or more and get a $10 Bonus Bet
- Profit boosts — a rotating set, including a 50% same-game parlay boost on a featured NFL game and 20% on the Presidents Cup
- Tennis Retirement — cover on match winner markets if a player retires mid-match
- Refer a Friend
Injury Insurance and the tennis retirement cover are the two that matter, because they pay out on the way a bet actually dies rather than on a promotional gimmick. Anyone who has lost a player prop to a first-quarter injury knows the difference.
PENN Play rewards and Hollywood Casino
PENN Play is the loyalty program Penn Entertainment runs across its online and land-based business, and it is theScore Bet’s clearest structural advantage. Betting earns PENN Cash, which is worth double when spent on hotel stays at Penn properties, or can be turned into tickets through Score Tickets.
An online-only sportsbook can give you Bonus Bets and nothing else. Penn owns physical casinos, so the loyalty currency buys something outside the app. Whether that is any use depends entirely on whether you would ever visit one — if you would not, treat PENN Play as a rounding error rather than a reason to sign up.
Hollywood Casino sits inside the same app in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, so the sportsbook and casino share a wallet in those four states.
theScore Bet payments and customer service
Support runs through in-app live chat and email, with a phone line for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts residents only. No operating hours are published, and no withdrawal processing times are published either.
We looked for both and could not find them on the public help pages, which is why those two dimensions score at par rather than above it. That is not evidence of a problem — there is no visible pattern of payout complaints — but a book that tells you its withdrawal times upfront has earned something that a book keeping them behind a support conversation has not.
Is theScore Bet legit?
Yes. theScore Bet is operated by Score Media and Gaming, a subsidiary of Penn Entertainment, a company listed on the Nasdaq. It holds a separate licence from the gaming regulator in each of the 20 states where it takes bets, and publishes state-specific terms for every one of them.
The brand history is the only thing that gives people pause, and it should not. The ESPN Bet period was a licensing arrangement over a book Penn already owned and ran. The company behind the app has not changed once in that time.
Does theScore Bet have a promo code?
No, and it is worth being direct about this because a lot of pages are not. There is no theScore Bet promo code, bonus code or referral code for the First Bet Reset. The offer applies when you sign up through a tracked link, and any site advertising a specific code is either describing an expired promotion or inventing one.
If the sign-up form shows a promo code field, leave it blank. The offer attaches either way.
How to sign up for theScore Bet
- Open theScore Bet through the link on this page — no code needed
- Register with your name, date of birth, address and the last four digits of your SSN
- Confirm your identity and enable location services so the app can verify your state
- Deposit, then place your first wager
- If it loses, the stake returns as Bonus Bets up to $1,000
Sites like theScore Bet
If theScore Bet is not live in your state, or the reset does not appeal, these are the closest matches. bet365 is the obvious one for soccer, with the deepest board in the US market and a first-bet offer of the same shape. FanDuel has the wider footprint and pays its welcome offer whether you win or lose. BetRivers runs the other serious loyalty program in the market.
The full list is on our best online sportsbooks page.
theScore Bet: the verdict
theScore Bet is a better sportsbook than its brand recognition suggests, and the two name changes in three years are most of the reason for that gap. The soccer pricing is the headline for a Squawka reader — three-way margins around 4% with a board that runs to League D is not what US books normally offer — and the app deserves its rating.
The welcome offer is the least interesting part. It is a competent first-bet reset that only pays when you lose, and the $1,000 ceiling is a number almost nobody will reach. If the offer is what brought you, there are bigger ones. If soccer prices and a good app are what you want, this is a genuinely strong option in most of the 20 states it covers.
theScore Bet review FAQs
No. There is no code for the First Bet Reset — the offer applies when you sign up through a tracked link, and anywhere advertising a code is not describing the current offer. If a sign-up form asks for one, you can leave it blank.
Penn Entertainment and ESPN ended their licensing agreement in November 2025, and every ESPN Bet account was moved onto theScore Bet on December 1, 2025. It is the same operator running the same book under the name it used before the ESPN deal. Balances, bet history and logins carried across.
Place your first wager, and if it loses you get 100% of the stake back as Bonus Bets, up to $1,000. Bonus Bets stake is not returned in winnings, so a $50 Bonus Bet at even money returns $50 rather than $100. Check the app for how the Bonus Bets are issued and how long you have to use them.
Twenty: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The welcome offer covers 18 of those — Louisiana and New York are not on the offer list.
Better than most US books. On the September 2026 Nations League round the three-way margins ran between 4.1% and 4.6%, where a US sportsbook pricing soccer as an afterthought is usually closer to 6%. It also prices the competition down to League D rather than stopping at the headline fixtures.
Yes. It is operated by Score Media and Gaming, a Penn Entertainment subsidiary, and is licensed individually by the regulator in each of the 20 states where it takes bets. Penn is listed on the Nasdaq, and the book publishes state-specific terms for every jurisdiction it operates in.
The loyalty program shared across Penn Entertainment’s online and land-based business. Betting earns PENN Cash, which can be spent on hotel stays at Penn casinos at double value, or turned into event tickets. Very few online-only sportsbooks can offer a physical redemption like that.
Yes. There is a full desktop and mobile web sportsbook as well as the iOS and Android apps, and the same markets and promotions run across both.
21+ where required. Eligibility, offer terms and available markets vary by state. If gambling is causing you harm, help is available in every state that regulates sports betting; your state’s helpline is listed on our state guides. Please play responsibly.
21+ where required. Eligibility, offer terms and available markets vary by state. Must be physically located in AZ, CO, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MO, NC, NJ, OH, PA, TN, VA or WV. Please play responsibly. Offer available in select states. Terms apply. See app for details. Gambling problem? Counseling resources available. 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA); 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN); 1-800-GAMBLER or visit mdgamblinghelp.org (MD).