After agreeing to an eye-popping $1.5 billion, 10-year licensing agreement with Penn Entertainment in August, ESPN Bet officially launched on Tuesday with much fanfare.
Ads for the new sportsbooks have popped up all over ESPN’s family of properties as they look to build a user base and the slate of games yesterday made it enticing enough to place a few bets.
But what about the app itself? How does it hold up compared to the bigger competitors on the market like FanDuel, BetMGM, DraftKings and Caesars Sportsbook?
The crew at BetFTW picked up their phones, downloaded the new app and took it for a spin. Here’s a look at some of our first impressions.
Blake Schuster
I’m a little bit underwhelmed by the interface, but what it lacks in style it more than makes up for in it’s familiarity and how simple it is to navigate.
The $200 in bonus bets were quickly in my account after I placed my first wager. Always nice to have that quickly and it definitely made me more likely to place a few more wagers instantly.
I’m not sure why, but I thought there would be a bit more integration with ESPN content and streaming. Aside from having First Take and Mike Greenberg-themed parlays, there’s not much that really screams ESPN about it all. Maybe that changes with time. It’d be nice to have a live feed of game I’m betting on if ESPN is broadcasting it.
Basic doesn’t have to be bad necessarily, but that’s also the best way to describe Day 1 for ESPN Bet.
Caroline Darney
My biggest problem with the ESPN Bet app is that it’s far too difficult to find in the app store.
Once you scroll for days and find it, however, I liked the interface. It’s clean and clear, and I like the bar across the top with all the sports listed. I found it a bit easier to navigate on first look than like, DraftKings, but it had a lot of similarities to all the ones we’re used to.
Is it weird I kind of wish there was a way to access the analysis side of things? Like if you could read an ESPN post on that game or player.
Prince Grimes
The $200 in bonus bets help with that a lot more. My small gripe is I would have preferred they come in eight $25 bets than four $50 bets, which really forces you to decrease your risk to turn a profit. Overall, though, I think ESPN has a good product to get started with.
