Ontario Fines theScore Bet the Maximum Over Cash-Out Offers It Never Paid

theScore Bet has been hit with a C$200,000 penalty in Ontario after it twice offered a bettor a six-figure cash-out, took the acceptance, and paid neither. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario announced the order on Tuesday, October 6, against Score Media and Gaming Inc., the Penn Entertainment company that runs the sportsbook.

The AGCO, the province’s gaming regulator, says it is the most it could charge. Its schedule of monetary penalties caps an operator at C$200,000 for failing to comply with the Registrar’s standards, and the regulator went all the way to that ceiling.

A C$1 Million Parlay, One Leg Short

The case goes back to a C$1,000 bet placed on March 14, 2025. It was a multi-leg parlay on NHL, NBA and NCAA basketball games all played that day, and the AGCO’s release says the potential payout was more than C$1 million if every pick landed.

All but one leg had won when theScore put a cash-out offer of about C$380,000 in front of the player. The player accepted immediately. The sportsbook then rejected the transaction during automated verification, after the odds changed.

Four minutes later a second offer appeared, this time for almost C$100,000. The player accepted that one immediately too, and it also wasn’t paid. The last leg lost, the bet settled as a loss, and the player received no payout.

What the Rule Says

The Registrar found that neither offer was “achievable as presented to the player.” That matters because of Standard 4.07 of the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming. It says information given to players before and during play must not mislead them, and must not describe “outcomes, prizes, or features that are not achievable.”

The wording of the order is careful. It says theScore “is alleged to have failed to comply” with that standard, contrary to section 3.8 of the Gaming Control Act, 1992. An operator served with a penalty order has 15 days to request a hearing before the Licence Appeal Tribunal, which is part of Tribunals Ontario and independent of the AGCO.

“These Expectations Are Not Optional”

Dr. Karin Schnarr, the AGCO’s chief executive officer and registrar, said: “By imposing the maximum monetary penalty available, we are sending a clear message that these expectations are not optional.” She said the regulator will hold operators accountable when they “fail to uphold commitments made to players.”

The penalty doesn’t put money in the bettor’s pocket. The AGCO says its enforcement is “separate from any other avenues available to players to seek resolution of individual disputes,” and that operators stay responsible for handling complaints under Ontario and Canadian law. So the fine and the bettor’s claim are two different things.

The money does not go to players either. The AGCO is required to spend what it collects in monetary penalties on education and training for the businesses it regulates and on public awareness campaigns.

Second Penalty in a Year

It’s theScore’s second AGCO penalty in 12 months. On October 7, 2025, the regulator issued C$105,000 in penalties over a customer who wagered C$2.5 million and lost about C$230,000 in eight months, including roughly C$100,000 in the first month, while the operator failed to step in. The two orders together come to C$305,000.

FanDuel drew a larger total in January. The AGCO ordered FanDuel’s Ontario operation to pay C$350,000 for failing to identify and report 144 bets on Czech table tennis matches that showed signs of match-fixing, and that order cited two standards where theScore’s cites one.

A month later the regulator proposed suspending PointsBet Canada’s registration for five days over suspicious NBA bets tied to Jontay Porter. It called that a first for Ontario’s regulated market.

Small Change Against the Market

Score Media and Gaming is a Toronto company that Penn acquired in October 2021, and theScore Bet launched in Ontario in 2022, the year the regulated market opened. Penn said last November that it would rebrand its US online sportsbook from ESPN Bet to the same name, with a target date of December 1, 2025, after it and ESPN agreed to end their deal early.

Ontario now has 49 operators running 84 gaming websites, according to iGaming Ontario. In August, the newest month it has published, betting brought in C$54.4 million of revenue on C$843 million in wagers across all of them.

The C$200,000 maximum is a little over half of the first cash-out offer theScore made and never paid.