ESPN BET Unveils Mint Club for Smarter Betting

A Fresh Spin on Sports Betting

This free feature, open to users linking their ESPN and ESPN BET accounts, offers weekly promotions, deposit bonuses, profit boosts, and merchandise giveaways.

“Bringing this new feature to market is an important step as we work to create a fully interconnected media and betting ecosystem between ESPN and ESPN BET,” said Aaron LaBerge, Penn’s Chief Technology Officer.

The Mint Club aims to hook recreational bettors, who drive 70% of ESPN BET’s $2 billion quarterly wagers, by blending betting with ESPN’s 28 million monthly app users.

With a 2.6% market share, Penn’s banking on this to climb ranks in the $120 billion U.S. betting market. “Account linking allows us to better serve and engage our users by unlocking key personalization and promotional capabilities,” LaBerge said, noting it’s the first of deeper integrations to come.

What Mint Club Offers

Mint Club packs features for smoother betting. A favorites ticker, built from teams picked in the ESPN app, sits atop ESPN BET’s home screen, letting users quickly find and wager on preferred squads. Bet tracking in ESPN’s “Scores” section shows live updates on wagers, including parlays, with filters to focus on bet-on games.

“Rather than swipe back and forth between apps to get news and information, then look at lines and place wagers, we want to offer our users the ability to see odds and available wagers within the news and content they’re already visiting before easily transitioning over to place the wager in ESPN BET,” said Jason Birney, Penn Interactive’s vice president of operations.

Weekly promotions keep users engaged while the linked accounts create a tailored experience across both apps. Penn says more enhancements, like dynamic in-game bet tracking and deeper in-app personalization, are coming, per LaBerge.

The setup’s a play to leverage ESPN’s reach, from its fantasy games to social channels, to keep bettors in the fold without leaving ESPN’s ecosystem.

Why It Matters

Penn’s under the gun to make its $1.5 billion, 10-year ESPN deal work, especially with a 2026 exit clause if performance targets falter, as CEO Jay Snowden noted.

“Either party has the right to exit the ESPN Bet agreement in 2026 if key performance targets aren’t met,” he said, underscoring the stakes. Mint Club’s launch targets casual fans, ESPN’s core, who want quick, fun bets, not just high rollers. It’s a bid to lift ESPN BET’s fifth-place ranking.

The feature’s early move in a broader plan to fuse media and betting. “This feature is just the beginning of deeper integrations that will further differentiate the ESPN BET experience,” LaBerge said, hinting at more tools to keep users clicking.