All 7 Ohio bonuses, best to worst
Ordered by the cash value each offer converts to, considered alongside the stake required to claim it and the work involved in converting it. Advertised headline figures are listed for reference but are not what the ranking is based on — the method is set out on the About page.
Every offer requires money at risk
None of the promotions listed on this site are free, and none are described as such. Each one requires a qualifying wager placed with your own funds. On the four bet-and-get offers the amount is small — — in total, for approximately — in converted value. The first-bet offers from BetMGM, Caesars, and Fanatics are structurally different: they require a substantially larger stake on a live event, and the bonus is credited only if that wager loses. These are marked Advanced in the rankings. Winnings are also taxable, and operators may restrict or close accounts that engage only with promotions.
Where the approach can fail
Covering both outcomes of a market reduces exposure but does not eliminate it, and none of the figures on this site are assured outcomes. Common failure points:
- Odds move between the placement of the first and second wager, reducing or eliminating the margin.
- A leg is voided, pushed, or cancelled, leaving the remaining position uncovered.
- A market is misread, a stake is incorrectly sized, or an expiry date is missed.
- An operator restricts stake limits or closes the account before the credit is converted.
- On first-bet offers, the qualifying wager wins — in which case no bonus is issued at all.
Welcome offers are available once per person per operator. This is not a repeatable source of income, it requires a meaningful time commitment, and individual attempts can end at a loss.
Types of bets
A reference guide to the wager types available at Ohio sportsbooks, the built-in margin each one carries, and the wagers Ohio does not permit. The choice of wager also determines how readily a bonus can be converted, which is covered at the end of this section.
Reading the price
American odds are quoted against $100. A minus number is the favourite and shows what you must stake to win $100; a plus number is the underdog and shows what $100 wins. Convert to implied probability to compare them:
Implied probabilities across a two-sided market sum to more than 100%. The excess — 4.8 percentage points in this example — is the sportsbook's built-in margin, known as the vig, juice, or hold. On a standard two-way market this works out to roughly 4.5% of the total staked. The wager types below differ largely in how much margin they carry.
Straight bets
A single wager on a single outcome, settled independently of any other bet.
A moneyline is a wager on which side wins; the margin of victory does not affect it. A point spread applies a handicap to the favourite so that both sides are priced near even money — at −6.5, the favourite must win by 7 or more, while the +6.5 side wins if the underdog wins, draws, or loses by 6 or fewer. A total is a wager on whether the combined score of both teams finishes above or below a posted number, independent of which side wins.
Spreads and totals are frequently posted at half-point increments (commonly called “the hook”) so that a tie is not possible. On a whole number, a tie results in a push: the wager is void and the stake is returned.
Why pushes matter
A push returns the stake with no gain or loss. Where a wager is being used to cover a position placed elsewhere, however, a push removes one side of that cover and leaves the remaining position exposed. Whole-number spreads and totals are the usual source. Half-point lines, and moneylines in sports that cannot end in a draw, are not affected.
Every wager type at a glance
Why parlays cost so much more
A parlay combines several separate wagers on a single ticket. All legs must win for the ticket to pay; a single losing leg voids the entire wager. The odds of each leg are multiplied together, which produces a large advertised payout — but the margin contained in each leg is compounded in the same operation.
The margin rises with each additional leg: from roughly 4.5% on a single wager to approximately 20.8% on a five-leg parlay. The advertised payout increases, but the proportion of the true value returned to the bettor falls at every step. Parlays are prominently promoted by most sportsbooks for this reason.
Same game parlays
An SGP puts multiple legs from a single game on one ticket — the team to win, a player to pass for 250 yards, and the game to go over 44, all in the same match.
A normal parlay can't do this, because the legs are correlated. If a quarterback throws for 350 yards, his team is more likely to have won and the game more likely to have gone over. Multiplying those prices together would badly underprice the risk to the book, so the operator prices the whole ticket from its own in-house correlation model instead.
SGP pricing cannot be compared across sportsbooks
A standard market can be checked against the same market at other sportsbooks to establish whether the price is competitive. A same game parlay cannot: the specific combination of legs exists only within that operator's platform, at a price generated by that operator's own model. There is no external reference price.
Independent analyses generally find that same game parlays carry a higher effective margin than a standard parlay of equivalent length.
What Ohio does not allow
Ohio's permitted wager types are narrower than those of several other states. Guidance written for a national audience may therefore describe wagers that are unavailable here.
Which of these work for converting a bonus
Converting a bonus bet into withdrawable cash generally involves covering both outcomes of a market, which requires a wager type that can be priced, compared across operators, and matched at a second sportsbook.
Workable
- Moneylines in sports that cannot end in a draw — two outcomes, directly comparable prices, no push risk
- Half-point spreads and totals — no push is possible, though the wager covers a margin rather than a result
- Markets with liquidity at multiple sportsbooks, so a second price is available for comparison
Avoid
- Parlays — margin of 13–21%, and no practical way to cover the ticket as a single unit
- Same game parlays — highest margin, with no external price available for comparison
- Futures — may not settle for months, so a qualifying wager will not trigger the offer
- Whole-number spreads and totals — a push removes one side of the cover
- Thin or specialist markets — no matching market at a second sportsbook
Important
Every wager type described above carries a built-in sportsbook margin. Selecting a lower-margin wager reduces the expected cost of betting; it does not make the expected return positive. Welcome promotions are one-time offers with defined terms, and claiming one still requires placing your own money on a settled wager. Betting involves risk and you can lose money. Nothing on this site is a guarantee of any outcome.
Rules summarised as of —; regulations change, and the Ohio Casino Control Commission's published rules govern.