The Best Ways to Use Sportsbook Sign-Up Promos & Bonuses

Sportsbooks hand out hundreds of dollars in bonus money to capture your attention and wallets, especially if you've never signed up there before.

So how can you use them to build your bankroll?

There are a few different ways, but bonus bets should always be used on underdogs or anything plus-money. I'll explain why in a bit.

The Difference in Promotion Types

First, let's get into the differences of each promotion type because the terms all sound so similar. We dove deep on this topic already.

• Actual money: It's cash in your account you can bet or withdraw. This comes in smaller increments like $10 or $25, so if you do take it and run, the book isn't losing much. Most books don't give away this kind of bonus money anymore, unless you're signing up for their online casinos.
• Bonus bets: You can bet with this money, and if you win, it turns into real cash, but you don't keep the bonus bet itself. These bets are the most common promo — anything like "bet $5, win $200" is $200 in bonus bets.
• First bet on the house or "no sweat" first bet:FanDuel sometimes offers a "no sweat" bet up to $1,000. But to realize the full $1,000, you need to deposit $1,000. If you win the bet, great. It's a winning bet and real cash. But if the bet loses, you get credited in bonus bets — so you need to bet and win using those bonus bets to get the actual cash back in your account. Then if you lose that bet, suddenly you have nothing to show for your supposedly "risk-bonus bet" — which is why books have had to move away from the term risk-free.
• Deposit match:BetMGM offered a deposit match in the past. So if you deposit $200 and it's a 25% deposit match, they’ll give you another $50 in bonus bets. Again, if you lose those bonus bets, you have nothing to show for your deposit match.
• Site credit: Site credit is the same as bonus bets but better because you get the stake back from those wagers. Almost no one gives site credit anymore.

Always read the fine print and make sure you understand the promotions at each book, as sportsbooks aren't always being malicious with their marketing, but I'd argue they're intentionally vague. Big dollar amounts catch people's attention, even though they likely won't end up with anywhere near that amount. You can navigate these nuances by using the BetMGM Bonus code to try them out.

Just click "more info" or "view terms" under each promotion, and the rules should be clearly laid out.

Understanding Rollovers

If you ever bet offshore, you may have felt a little deceived when you tried to withdraw money after receiving a sign-up bonus, only to find out you need to to hit a rollover requirement. We covered rollovers in-depth here.

A rollover (also called a play-through) is the amount you need to wager to become eligible to redeem your bonus. They're designed to prevent you from making one bet using a bonus and running away with the cash. But some offshores have predatory rollovers at 10x or 20x your deposit. You'll lose all the money trying to bet enough to hit the requirement.

Rollover Math

Most legal U.S. sportsbooks have reasonable rollover requirements.

But DraftKings has a deposit match rollover that you'll likely end up losing before you can even claim the full amount.

DK gives 20% of your deposit as a bonus, but you must wager 5x your deposit in 90 days to claim the full bonus. The bonus is released $1 at a time for every $25 you wager.

So if you put in $500, DK will give you an extra $100. But to get the full $100, you must wager $2,500 ($500 x 5) in 90 days.

That's a lot of bets! If you're a $20 bettor, it will take you 125 bets to hit that threshold.

To keep it simple, let's say you bet exactly $20 on those 125 bets, all on -110 point spreads.

If you win 50% of them and go 63-62, you'll lose $111. So you've now lost your entire bonus, plus $11.

Even if you do stay afloat and realize the full $100, it's redeemed in bonus bets, which you then need to bet to turn into cash.

How to Use Your Sportsbook Bonuses

OK, now for the fun part. How should you use these bets?

1. Bet Underdogs

With both bonus bets and first bets on the house, you want to make plus-money bets with a few qualifications:

• Aim for tight markets between +300 and +500. A tight market is one in which both sides are close together — like +300 on the dog and -400 on the favored side. By offering the other side of a bet, the sportsbook has some accountability on the price — if they offer a first touchdown scorer at +1500 but his true probability is +3000, you're not getting any edge, despite it being a plus-money bet.
• Aim for lines that are favorable relative to other sportsbooks. If it's a best-in-market price, you're getting an edge.

Your first reaction might be to play it safe and bet on a big favorite with your bonus bet or first bet on the house. Lock in the cash.

There are two flaws with this:

• Many sportsbooks don't let you bet huge favorites with bonus bets (often capped at -300 or so).
• You're actually getting less expected value with big favorites anyway.

With a bonus bet or first bet on the house, you're not "risking" anything, so the expected value (EV) is the probability multiplied by the amount you can expect to win.

Expected value is the amount of money you'll win or lose on that bet if it were placed an infinite number of times.

Take these three examples:

Example 1: You bet a -250 favorite with your $50 bonus bet. You'll win $20 if the bet wins. The probability a -250 favorite wins is 71.43%.

The EV, in this case, is 71.43% x $20, which equals $14.28. So over an infinite number of bets, that $50 will be worth just $14.

Example 2: Now let's bet a +250 underdog with a $50 bonus bet. You'll win $125 if it wins, and you can expect the bet to win 28.57% of the time.

The EV, in this case, is 28.57% x $125, which equals $35.71.

Example 3: How about a +500 underdog with a $50 bonus bet. You'll win $250 if it wins, and you can expect the bet to win 16.67% of the time.

The EV, in this case, is 28.57% x $125, which equals $41.67.

It's mathematically impossible to get a better advantage over the sportsbook on a favorite than on an underdog with a bonus bet. The longer the odds, the more value you get.

The counter argument is that you only have so many bonus bets, so this theoretical value may not turn out to be real money if your 30-1 underdogs keep losing. But over your sports betting life, you will get plenty of bonus bets if you continue to deposit and wager with these books.

You want to take underdogs.

2. Futures

If you bet with a bookie in the past, you'll be sad to learn that legal sportsbooks do not let you bet on credit. If you want to bet something, you must deposit and wager the money up front.

This makes betting futures a tricky proposition for most bettors. Even if I love Europe to win the 2025 Ryder Cup, do I really want to let the sportsbook hold my money for almost two years? There are surely better things I can do with that money over the next few years, in or out of sports betting.

So, bonus bets are a fun way to get exposure to futures without putting up your own money.

The only problem is that sportsbooks have such a ridiculous hold on futures. Books will keep around 25% of every dollar wagered on the Stanley Cup winner, and north of 50% on niche markets like No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. On point spreads, they hold less than 5%.

So mathematically, it's not always the most effective way to use bonus bets, but it can be fun to plant your flag on a team or player via futures and cash that bet when you turn out to be right. And sports betting is supposed to be fun, isn't it?

3. What About Parlays?

Parlays are not a bad option, but instead of tying together a bunch of teams to get a +500 payout, just make a single bet at a similar price. Tying a bunch of favorites together zaps your expected value because the sportsbook is giving you a much worse price than the real probability on parlays, and increasing your variance because you need multiple things to happen.

4. Bonus Bet Conversion

There are ways to convert a bonus bet into 70% of the value, guaranteed, by essentially betting both sides and hedging.

You want the plus-money side as high as possible, and the negative side to be as close to that number.

Here's an example. You must always do this at two different books, because the books don't like it. And make sure you're not limited and are betting something that you can get enough money down on.

• Trevon Diggs interception +900 (DraftKings)
• No Diggs interception -900 (FanDuel)

In this example, you're putting the bonus bet on +900 and hedging with the -900 side. Because you're not actually risking anything with the bonus bet, you'll win $450 if it hits and lose $405 if the hedge hits, for a total of $45.

If the longshot does not hit, you'll win $45 off the $405 hedge, and the bonus bet is no lose because it was a bonus bet.

So you've taken a $50 bonus bet and won $45 in real cash — that's a 90% conversion, which is usually as good as you'll get.

5. "Free Roll"

An arbitrage is when you bet both sides of the same game at odds that allow you to lock in a profit no matter what.

This isn't exactly arbitrage, but it's a similar idea. It's kind of like a free roll.

You can bet the favorite at one book with real money, and then the underdog at another book with the bonus bet.

Let's say you have a $50 bonus bet you want to use on the NFL this weekend. You can free-roll yourself on the Browns.

The best prices available on either side of Browns–Bengals at the four available New York sportsbooks are:

• Browns -250 (DraftKings)
• Bengals +225 (Caesars)

You can use your $50 bonus bet on Bengals +225. You'd profit $112 if they win.

You can then put $112 on Browns -250, and you'll win $45.

So now, if:

• The Browns win, you win $45
• If the Bengals win, you break even

On that $50 bonus bet, you're getting $32 of expected value (71.43% x $45), but you got to bet the favored Browns instead of the Bengals.

As we talked about in the first section, bigger longshots will give you more EV, but I understand people are uncomfortable taking the Jets against the Bills this weekend, even if it's a bonus bet.