00:01Big news in the National Football League and ESPN yesterday as the NFL and, you know, certainly ESPN have decided basically to package all of the NFL Network's material over to ESPN.
00:14And look, at this point, I think the commodity here is the Red Zone channel, honestly, Sam.
00:20I think it's probably the most popular channel around, maybe even in the world during the National Football League season.
00:26And, of course, equity is involved as well.
00:28Not a lot of talk about sports betting, but I got to tell you, Sam, if you don't think that that's not important to ESPN bet, getting the Red Zone, oh, you haven't seen anything yet.
00:38We're going to see that plastered all over the place.
00:42Yeah, last year was really their first season where they tried to ramp up things before the season.
00:48They launched in New York, ESPN bet, of course.
00:50And now, you know, tied right around the day that we get the news that ESPN was going to be purchasing NFL Network's assets, which, like you mentioned, Red Zone is probably the crown jewel there.
01:00ESPN bet announced some new features.
01:02They're going to have what's called a fan center hub, which they're saying merges betting media and fantasy like never before.
01:08So that middle part, media, you have to wonder what NFL content, how is that going to be a part of it?
01:15Really important here is that this is going to be the first time that if you're an ESPN bet user and you also play ESPN fantasy football, you're in a league, you're going to have bets that are served to you, custom parlays that pop up on your page that are tied to the players on your own team that you draft.
01:31So this goes back to when the deal was originally agreed upon between Penn Entertainment and ESPN.
01:37Back in August 2023, they said, you know, we're going to have all these integrations and use ESPN's assets.
01:43It's taken a long time to get there.
01:45This is kind of the first big milestone, I would really say, in that jump.
01:49Of course, it takes people, you know, linking and integrating their accounts.
01:52So you have to wonder how frictionless this is all going to move.
01:55But it's certainly taken some time.
01:57And football season is really going to be make or break for ESPN bet.
02:01They have this opt-out clause next year where if they don't hit their market share goals, ESPN can just walk away.
02:06And that's something that Penn has talked about as well in terms of saving money.
02:09You know, when they've only had 3% market share, they've really been aiming for, you know, 10 to 15.
02:13So it should be a make or break football season for both ESPN and Penn.
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