How to calculate a sports betting sign-up promo's actual cash value

There’s a lot of bad sports betting information out there, especially as it pertains to sportsbook sign-up offers. That’s because most sportsbooks and their advertisers push the promised dollar amounts at face value — when you see “get $1,000 now” it never means actual cash. It doesn’t even mean site credit (aka bonus bets).

So you must know what kind of offer you’re dealing with before getting too excited about the dollar amount.

Here’s a breakdown of the six most common sportsbook offers and how to determine what the cash value actually is. Keep in mind these are averages over large samples — you may win $2,000 from a $10 bonus bet, while someone else may lose everything they put into a first bet offer.

Offer Type	Typical Max Cash Value
Cash	100%
Bonus bets	60-70%
First bet on the house	40-50%
Deposit match	Rollover dependent
Site credit	95%
Profit boosts	N/A

Types of Sportsbook Promos & How to Determine Their Value

1. Actual Cash

This type of bonus — getting actual cash that can be withdrawn without being bet — is almost never given out in sports betting anymore. Way back in 2018, DraftKings would give out $20 cash at times, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time.

How to determine the value: Whatever the promised amount is, that’s the value. If it is ever offered by a sportsbook, it will usually be around $10-$20.

2. Bonus Bets

Bonus bets are a currency that can only be used at the sportsbook, and then you can withdraw any profits from those bets. Think of them like a store credit.

You can acquire bonus bets in many different ways, but as a sign-up offer, we call them “bet/get” offers. Most of them require a small deposit and first wager, and then you’ll get bonus bets. You’ll usually have to bet $5 and you’ll get anywhere from $50 to $200. FanDuel will often run a bet $5, get $150 or $200 in bonus bets.

How to determine the actual value: If used optimally by making plus-money wagers in the +300 to +700 range, a bonus bet will be worth about 60-70% of the advertised value in the long run.

So if you’re getting $200 bonus bets from a $5 first wager, we project it will be worth about $130 in cash. It’s optimal to bet that way because you don’t keep the stake of the bet like you would with a cash bet, so the expected value will always be higher if you’re betting at plus money.

However, most users don’t use them optimally and sportsbooks only end up paying out about 30% of the advertised value in cash in the long run.

3. First Bet on the House

These sportsbook offers take on many different names — no sweat first bet at FanDuel, first bet offer, first bet safety net at bet365. But they all work the same.

You make a first bet up to the advertised amount and if it loses, you’re refunded in bonus bets equal to whatever you lost. If you win your first bet, you keep any profit and the original stake.

There are two optimal ways to use first bets on the house like this:

• Use the first bet on a longshot (+300 to +600 range) to maximize the expected value. It’s counterintuitive, but you actually want to give yourself the best chance at earning the bonus bets back.
• Hedge your first bet against another sportsbook. You can learn more about that process here.

How to determine the actual value: If used optimally, a first bet on the house will be worth about 45% of the actual advertised value. So if it’s a max of $1,000, you can expect to win $450 cash over the long run.

4. Deposit Match

Deposit matches are often the most intensive promos, often the highest value, and often a little tricky to calculate the true value of.

With a deposit match, you’ll be given a percentage of your deposit in bonuses. So if you get a 50% deposit match up to $500, that means if you deposit $1,000, you’ll get $500 in bonuses. If you deposit $100, you’d get $50 in bonuses, and so on.

But deposit matches often come with what’s called a “play-through requirement” or “rollover.” This is designed to prevent users from depositing, taking the bonuses, and then withdrawing and leaving without actually betting much on the platform.

If your deposit match comes with a 10x rollover (like the one BetMGM sometimes runs) on the bonus amount, that means you have to wager 10x whatever you got in bonuses to keep them at the end of the rollover period. So on $500 worth of bonuses, you’d have to wager $5,000.

This decreases the actual value because it’s assumed that as you try to hit that wagering requirement, you’re going to lose money.

How to determine the actual value: There are a few steps here. First, take the bonus amount and apply the same 60-70% estimate we did for bonus bets. So if you get $500 worth of bonus bets, we estimate that will be worth about $300-$350.

Next, you’ll need to figure out how much the sportsbook is expecting you to lose during the rollover period. Let’s stick with our same example.

If you have a 10x rollover on the bonus amount of $500, that means you have to wager $5,000. Let’s say you have 30 days to hit it.

If you place 50, $100 bets, you’ll hit your rollover. And assume you go 25-25, with all bets placed at -110. You’ll lose $227, significantly eating into your bonus amount.

	Profit/Loss
Bonus	$325
10x Rollover Losses	-$227
Total	$98

If you have a 5x rollover, or a 1x rollover, your losses here will drop, but most sportsbooks aren’t giving out 1x play-through deposit matches these days.

There are ways to minimize your rollover losses by hedging in low-hold markets — which means you’re betting opposite sides of the same game at different sportsbooks at close prices (i.e. -102 on one side and -104 on the other) to minimize your losses.

5. Site Credit

There aren’t many sportsbooks giving out site credit anymore. It (was) like a bonus bet, except you kept the stake of the bet. So if you had $200 in site credit and hit a bet at +200 with it, you’d profit $400, and keep your $200, then you could withdraw it.

How to determine the actual value: You can value site credit almost exactly like cash, since you’re keeping the stake and can withdraw it after betting once. If you had $100 in site credit and made two, $50 bets that went 1-1, you’d end up with just under $100.

6. Profit Boosts

Profit boosts are probably the least-valued sign-up bonuses by users, because there’s no tangible dollar amount you can point to. A profit boost is just additional money added onto the winnings of a bet, should it win.

Say you’re getting a 100% profit boost with a max bet of $25. If you bet something at +300, you’d normally profit $75 off a $25 bet. With the 100% boost, you’ll make another $75.

Profit boosts often also have max winnings, so even if you boosted a 150-1 parlay to 300-1, you might not get the full amount if it wins.

How to determine the actual value: It’s impossible to boil this down into one answer — for example if you have a 100% profit boost on a $50 wager, I’d need to know what the wager would be before making that calculation.

These are among the lowest-risk sign-up offers and can be fun for users just dabbling in sports betting, but they’re not super valuable from a cash perspective.