Penn Entertainment Strikes Deal With ESPN
I’ll be honest; I did not have this one on my bingo sheet for news today. In case you missed it, Dave Portnoy has bought 100% of Barstool Sports back from Penn Entertainment. As Portnoy hinted at in his video (as can be seen in the linkback in the prior sentence) Penn has now pivoted and has struck a deal with ESPN.
Bet ESPN is coming soon.
Dave Rovell of Action Network had the following details:
ESPN also put out a statement on its website:
“ESPN today announced an agreement with PENN Entertainment to launch ESPN BET, a branded sportsbook for fans in the United States. PENN Entertainment will rebrand its current sportsbook and relaunch as ESPN BET, effective this Fall in the 16 legalized betting states where PENN Entertainment is licensed. The rebrand includes the mobile app, website, and mobile website.”
A few things we need to discuss.
It remains to be seen if the Barstool Sportsbook will cease to exist. All of the gambling licenses were through Penn. I’m not sure Barstool can get another deal like this to actually be a place where people make bets. That part remains to be seen but it looks unlikely that they will continue to host bets.
This is a really smart move by ESPN. The gambling stuff isn’t going away and companies like DraftKings / FanDuel have passed them. It’s going to be a challenge getting people to be through ESPN given the struggles of the company. More and more people continue to tune them out. Have you seen all of the layoffs? With all of the cord cutting, ESPN needed to find a way to create more revenue. This is one way to do it.
The funniest part of this is Ben Mintz may have changed the course of history forever. If his incident doesn’t happen where Barstool is forced to fire him, does this turn of events happen? Talk about a serious butterfly effect.
