ESPN Bet Promo Code: Sportsbook Bonus Updates – August 2023

📲 ESPN Sportsbook Name	ESPN Bet
🚨 ESPN Bet License Partner	PENN Entertainment
📅 Date of Partnership Announcement	Aug. 8, 2023
✅ Written and Fact-Checked By	Robby Sabo

ESPN Bet Promo Code means many things, but perhaps the most obvious deals with the historic sports company’s most recognizable tune …

“DaDaDa, DaDaDa” must move to the side in order to make room for, “ChaChaChing, ChaChaChing.”

A once-nondescript Tuesday in early August 2023 turned out to be one of the most monumental sports betting days of all time when both ESPN and PENN Entertainment allowed simultaneous press releases to hit the wire.

Suddenly, the mundane turned hectic. Instantaneously, the boring morphed into a frenzied state of affairs that could only be attacked from a plethora of angles across various spectrums.

Thanks to a new agreement between the Worldwide Leader in Sports and PENN Entertainment, ESPN Bet is set to launch in the Fall of 2023, immediately sliding into the already live and legal states where Barstool Sportsbook made its bones. What it means is big bucks for all involved, as the best ESPN Bet Bonus Code resulting in a tantalizing ESPN Sportsbook Bonus is set to hit the online sports betting world in the Fall of 2023.

This particular page of the internet will dig into the industry-shaking announcement from a variety of angles including the potential of an ESPN-backed sportsbook, what it means for Barstool Sportsbook, and much more.

	ESPN Bet
📲 ESPN Bet Sportsbook Launch	📅 Fall of 2023
💰 Expected ESPN Bet Promo Code Offer	TBD
🚨 Expected ESPN Bet Promo Code	TBD
🇺🇸 ESPN Bet Eventual Launch States	Arizona Colorado Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Louisiana Maryland Massachusetts Michigan New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania Tennessee Virginia West Virginia
➡️ App Platforms	TBD
💲 Minimum Deposit	TBD
✅ Minimum Betting Age	21
📝 Sports Betting License Partner	PENN Entertainment

ESPN Bet to Launch in Fall 2023

Per the ESPN press release, ESPN Bet is set to launch in the Fall of 2023.

“ESPN today announced an agreement with PENN Entertainment to launch ESPN BET, a branded sportsbook for fans in the United States,” the ESPN press release begins. “PENN Entertainment will rebrand its current sportsbook and relaunch as ESPN BET, effective this Fall in the 16 legalized betting states where PENN Entertainment is licensed. The rebrand includes the mobile app, website, and mobile website.”

This means that ESPN Bet will launch in the thick of the 2023 NFL season—right when the legal online sports betting calendar is at its high point. Additionally, PENN CEO Jay Snowden indicated that November 2023 is the current launch target—with Thanksgiving serving as the background.

The reason why it’ll be so easy for ESPN Bet Sportsbook to launch quickly is quite simple: The infrastructure needed to spread a sportsbook’s wings is already present. PENN Entertainment’s betting licenses across the country do not change.

Therefore, thanks to the company’s incredible wealth and myriad of recourses, we expect ESPN Bet to become the next sports betting powerhouse.

Plus, we already know which states ESPN Bet will enter first.

ESPN Bet Promo Code to Arrive in Fall 2023

The ESPN Bet launch in the Fall of 2023 should simultaneously provide the sportsbook’s first new-user bonus.

Expect the best ESPN Bet Promo Code to arrive with a legal betting bang in the thick of the 2023 NFL season. Also, expect the ESPN Promo Code to immediately compete (if not surpass) the likes of our FanDuel Promo Code that results in a $1,000 No-Sweat First Bet or our DraftKings Promo Code awarding a guaranteed $150 sportsbook bonus in exchange for a minimum $5 initial sports bet.

So, stay tuned to Saturday Down South for the very best in ESPN Bet Bonus Codes and new-user promotions.

ESPN Bet Has Powerhouse Sportsbook Potential

While DraftKings Sportsbook and FanDuel Sportsbook continue to dominate the marketplace—with BetMGM Sportsbook trailing in the third spot, jumping up and down for more attention—a tremendous opportunity is there for another operator to take a seat at the big-boy table.

ESPN Bet now has every opportunity to be that online sportsbook.

Imagine the reach ESPN has—in terms of not only its owned and operated properties but its overall viewership. A list of football-only properties and TV contracts is worth its weight in sports betting gold:

NFL

• Monday Night Football
• Manningcast
• NFL Live
• Saturday night regular season games (Weeks 14-18).
• Pro Bowl
• NFL playoffs
  • One wild card game
  • One divisional playoff game (starting in January 2024)
• Super Bowl (rotational basis starting in February 2027)

College Football

• Select Bowl Games
• College Football Playoff (until 2026)
• ACC (until 2036)
• Big 12 (until 2025)
• Pac-12 (until 2023)
• SEC (until 2024)
• Sun Belt (until 2031)

It of course doesn’t end at football. ESPN televises an incredible number of programming hours for other sports such as basketball, baseball, and hockey—not to mention golf and tennis.

On top of that, considering that ESPN is 80 percent owned by ABC, Inc. (an indirect subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company) and 20 percent by Hearst, the potential for reach and growth in the legal online sports gambling market is infinite.

ESPN Bet to Launch in 16 States Immediately

	ESPN BET STATE LEGAL?
Alabama	❌ No
Alaska	❌ No
Arizona	✅ Yes
Arkansas	❌ No
California	❌ No
Colorado	✅ Yes
Connecticut	❌ No
Delaware	❌ No
Florida	❌ No
Georgia	❌ No
Hawaii	❌ No
Idaho	❌ No
Illinois	✅ Yes
Indiana	✅ Yes
Iowa	✅ Yes
Kansas	✅ Yes
Kentucky	❌ No
Louisiana	✅ Yes
Maine	❌ No
Maryland	✅ Yes
Massachusetts	✅ Yes
Michigan	✅ Yes
Minnesota	❌ No
Mississippi	❌ No
Missouri	❌ No
Montana	❌ No
Nebraska	❌ No
Nevada	❌ No
New Hampshire	❌ No
New Jersey	✅ Yes
New Mexico	❌ No
New York	❌ No
North Carolina	❌ No
North Dakota	❌ No
Ohio	✅ Yes
Oklahoma	❌ No
Oregon	❌ No
Pennsylvania	✅ Yes
Rhode Island	❌ No
South Carolina	❌ No
South Dakota	❌ No
Tennessee	✅ Yes
Texas	❌ No
Utah	❌ No
Vermont	❌ No
Virginia	✅ Yes
Washington	❌ No
West Virginia	✅ Yes
Wisconsin	❌ No
Wyoming	❌ No

PENN Entertainment currently holds licenses in 16 states per online sports betting. This means that ESPN Bet, once ready, will simply slide into a sportsbook operation in those existing states.

The full list of states where sports bettors can expect an ESPN sports betting app upon launch is as follows:

• Arizona
• Colorado
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• New Jersey
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Tennessee
• Virginia
• West Virginia

Interestingly, one of the top revenue-generating states in the country is not on the list (New York). Perhaps this pivot by PENN Entertainment goes a long way in getting them a seat at the NY Online Sports Betting table.

ESPN Bet Kentucky Sportsbook

In addition to the 16 states where PENN Entertainment is already entrenched, Kentucky Online Sports Betting is set to launch on Sept. 28, 2023. And guess what? Barstool Sportsbook was set to launch in the Bluegrass State.

Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect that ESPN Bet Kentucky Sportsbook will also come to fruition.

How exactly that happens and on what timeline remains to be seen—considering Kentucky will most likely go live with sports betting prior to ESPN Bet’s launch—but it’s a tremendous bet that ESPN Bet will get the green light in Kentucky at some point this fall.

Why PENN Entertainment’s Pivot is Gold

It’s no secret that PENN’s former partner held them back in a lot of ways. Not only did regulators make PENN’s life miserable by way of licensing in new states, but controversies seemingly surfaced on a regular basis.

With ESPN, the sky’s the limit by way of which states ESPN Bet can live. New York may only be the start, as other states such as California, Texas, and Florida are the other white whales that have yet to officially launch online sports betting.

PENN Entertainment’s pivot from Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet is currently lauded as one of the greatest moves in business history. In a regulated business such as legal sports gambling—especially due to its newness—rebranding with such a trusted company name and logo should prove invaluable for PENN Entertainment.

Of course, this rebrand means that PENN’s old partner, Barstool Sportsbook, is left hanging with a status of “undetermined” by way of its online sports betting business.

What Does ESPN Bet Mean for Barstool Sportsbook?

The news of the new partnership between ESPN and PENN not only means a new powerhouse is expected to climb the ranks of the online sportsbook industry, but it also means an old partner is left hanging to dry.

Shortly after ESPN and PENN announced the Earth-shattering news, Barstool founder Dave Portnoy called yet another of his “emergency press conferences.” Portnoy did indeed buy back the entirety of the Barstool Sports company from PENN Entertainment.

Emergency Press Conference – I Bought Back Barstool Sports pic.twitter.com/dmUk0eNowx

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 8, 2023

Back on Feb. 20, 2020, Barstool sold 36% of the company to PENN Entertainment with an eye on diving headfirst into the regulated sportsbook market. As we sit here today, over three years later, it hasn’t quite worked out to the liking of both parties.

In short, Portnoy admitted that dealing with the regulations that come with the legal sports betting territory presented too much of a roadblock for Barstool Sportsbook to compete and survive.

Although we do not yet know for sure what this means for the future of Barstool’s legal sports betting platform, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Barstool Sportsbook lives on in a legal and regulated manner—per what’s assumed in the buy-back deal between Portnoy and PENN.

Basically, unless something drastic transpires or is revealed, Barstool Sports will go back to its Ruthean digital blog and podcast days where so much more goes and the inmates are running the asylum.

ESPN Bet Top Competitors

Due to the idea that nothing ESPN does falls in the also-ran category, it should be expected that ESPN Bet competes with the top operators of the online sportsbook industry.

That means the likes of FanDuel Sportsbook, DraftKings Sportsbook, and BetMGM Sportsbook are all scrambling around with the intent of putting together the best defensive strategy.

The following is a list comprising what will be ESPN Bet’s toughest competitors in the sportsbook market:

• DraftKings Sportsbook
• FanDuel Sportsbook
• BetMGM Sportsbook
• Caesars Sportsbook
• bet365 Sportsbook
• WynnBET Sportsbook
• BetFanatics Sportsbook

ESPN Bet Culminates the Normalization of Online Sports Betting

Perhaps Archie Bunker using those cigar-stuffed pipes to belt out, “Those Were the Days,” is something even more nostalgic on a day like this. Then again, Archie never had his adrenaline pumping at a million miles a minute while tracking live scoring on a parlay he so bravely slammed down on the virtual betting table.

The wonderful world of the internet has brought us to a time unrecognizable by anybody living pre-turn of the century. (Sure, the internet was around in the year 2000, but let’s get serious; the internet two decades ago is mere child’s play compared to today’s capabilities.)

In any event, the days of your grandfather (or even father) calling up his local bookie en route to yet another financial heartbreak or thrilling victory are long gone. When New Jersey’s efforts helped the Supreme Court overturn PASPA in 2018—the federal law that prohibited legal sports betting on a national level—not even at that point had we reached a stage where folks could claim even a semblance of sports betting normalization.

Today, however, now that ESPN, the Worldwide Leader in Sports, has so excitingly jumped into the legal online gambling pool, sports betting normalization has culminated in a major way.

How ESPN Bet Sportsbook Impacts SEC Football Betting

Naturally, the average user landing on this specific page is a diehard SEC football fan. After all, this is Saturday Down South, the platform that provides the best SEC football coverage in the universe.

One may wonder, “How will ESPN Bet shake up the SEC football and College Football Betting industry?” Although we’re still extremely early in the process, it’s a pretty safe wager that ESPN Bet will be heavily involved in SEC Football Betting and College Football Betting as a whole.

Considering ESPN’s standing as the network that broadcasts an incredible number of hours of college football programming, the presence of ESPN Bet from multiple angles should be salivated over and expected.

ESPN History

Founded in 1978 and officially launching on Sept. 7, 1979, ESPN owns humble beginnings that are worn on the company’s sleeve. And why shouldn’t ESPN wear its humble start proudly?

Very few in the know thought a 24-hour-a-day sports channel could actually work. Yet, a father and son, Bill Rasmussen and Scott Rasmussen, an eye doctor and insurance salesman, respectively, featured ambitions that actually matched what ESPN would turn out to be.

Headquartered in Bristol, CT, ESPN’s early days featured an incredible amount of college sports, such as the early days of the Big East, when Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown Hoyas, Chris Mullins’s St. John’s Red Storm, and Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse Orange played rock-em-sock-em ball on the hardwood.

ESPN also featured under-the-radar sports most fans hadn’t even heard of previously—the same kind that’s often packaged as “ESPN The Ocho” these days, with a hat tip towards the comedy film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

Ultimately, ESPN grew, bit by bit, using its acclaimed SportsCenter as its anchor and leaping off the backs of the Big East. The dot-com era propelled ESPN into another stratosphere, and heavy speculation surrounded the traditional company’s willingness to enter the fast-moving legal online sports betting industry.

For years, since New Jersey helped spearhead the overturning of PASPA via the Supreme Court (in 2018), ESPN was always mentioned as the next potential major sportsbook— with no actual results on the board.

That is until now, Aug. 8, 2023, when the shocking announcement of a new partnership with PENN Entertainment changes so much in the sportsbook market.

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Robby Sabo

Robby Sabo is a co-founder, developer and credentialed New York Jets content creator for Jets X-Factor | Jet X, which includes Sabo's Sessions (in-depth film breakdowns) and Sabo with the Jets. Host: Underdog Jets Podcast with Wayne Chrebet and Sabo Radio. Member: Pro Football Writers of America. Coach: Port Jervis (NY) High School. Washed up strong safety and 400M runner. Founder: Elite Sports NY - ESNY (sold in 2020). SEO: XLM