ESPN Bet's Struggle Despite a Strong Media Presence

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00:00Okay, so, you know, ESPN bet. I mean, certainly they're hoping that their brand, you know,

00:09just lands people into their sports betting operator. We've talked about this a ton of

00:13time. They're having so many now primetime games on college football and Monday night

00:18football as well. Do you think there's any correlation here potentially to making this

00:21work?

00:22Craig, I don't know. I've been bringing these monthly numbers to you for a while now talking

00:28about how well ESPN is doing on the digital side of things and on social, and even on

00:33linear media, they broke all kinds of records. This is a press release, excuse me, talking

00:38about their fiscal year. And listen to some of this. Their social media reach, 8.5 billion

00:45social engagements, which was 50% more than its next closest competitor. Its digital and

00:51social reach, they call it massive. Between ESPN digital and ESPN social, they combined

00:58to reach 66% of the United States adult population and 82% of adults in the key 18 to 49 demographic.

01:08That's key for sports television, and that's a key demo for sports betting as well. Craig,

01:15these numbers are so incredible that you sit there wondering how ESPN can debut in

01:22New York with less than a 2% handle share. It just simply doesn't make sense to me when

01:28I see just how well ESPN is doing on the media side of things and how that gap just does

01:35not seem to be getting any closer to close when you move over to sports betting. I'm

01:42not sure what else it will take at this point, Craig, if I'm being totally honest with you.

01:47And if you remember, we talked about the investor meeting that they had in Las Vegas, and it

01:53seemed like they were moving the goalposts a little bit. You know, they had talked about

01:57one of their presentations had talked about market share up to 20% for sports betting.

02:01And then we saw in this most recent presentation, well, the bull case was actually 10%. So you

02:09have to wonder what's going on at ESPN. They've had layoffs at ESPN bet in the interactive

02:15division. Certainly, that is not great to see when the product itself isn't delivering.

02:21So there are a lot of unanswered questions for ESPN bet right now. Good news is, Craig,

02:28is that we get some of them answered on November 7th. That's the third quarter earnings call

02:33date for Penn. And Penn management is going to have to come in and kind of explain what's

02:40going on here if they don't have some good results to show. You know, they were able

02:43to curb their losses a little bit. They had some huge losses to start the year in interactive.

02:49Seems like they figured that out. And they are improving with the product a little bit

02:53and they're getting good playthrough. But it still just does not seem to reflect the

02:59amount of share they should get organically just from being ESPN bet. So I'm really looking

03:06forward to that call in a couple of weeks to see what they have to say.