00:00Meanwhile, Penn Entertainment certainly taking a different view on sports and sports betting with all of the opportunities that they've had to make a deep imprint in the sports betting market.
00:10It seems like they've gone the other way, but their CEO seems to be undeterred here, Sam.
00:16So what does the future hold for Penn?
00:18Do you think they jump back into the sports betting game or do they have some other opportunities that they could potentially help some of their investors out?
00:25Yeah, right now, it seems like Penn is very much committed to just moving their failed sports betting ventures off of Barstool, off of ESPN Bet onto The Score, which is another company they actually spent billions of dollars on over the past couple of years.
00:40But one that's actually helped it improve its technology, which had been a struggle for the company for a while.
00:45You had just this week, COJ Snowden, who has been pretty much lambasted by critics in the media as someone who has been responsible for all these failures in sports betting.
00:55He bought around $500,000 worth of his company's own stock after the news it was getting rid of ESPN and after the news that Penn would miss on earnings, which bumped up the stock price.
01:06It's always seen as a positive in the investment community when someone inside the company spends half a million dollars on the stock.
01:14So largely probably did that to pump up the price at a time when, you know, everyone is criticizing them for losing ESPN Bet.
01:22That was a deal that they spent almost half a billion dollars on and got less than 3% market share in sports betting.
01:28They kind of sold everyone as that is our big move after the Barstool debacle, which again cost them about another half a billion.
01:35And meanwhile, there's a bunch of investors who are trying to get Snowden removed from the board in a proxy fight.
01:40So there's a lot of like kind of political behind the scenes financial battles going on within Penn right now, underneath the entire mess of ESPN Bet and Barstool.
01:50That's already a mess in and of itself.
01:51But beyond that, when you talk about the financials of the company and, you know, the dynamics between different investors and shareholders, it's very, very messy.
01:59And I wouldn't be surprised if at this time next year we're talking about an entirely different path for Penn yet again, one that is hopefully not paying a company half a billion dollars just to use their name.
02:10And one that is, you know, focusing more on its core casino business, which is kind of going under the radar.
02:16Their casinos are doing really well right now, but when the headlines are billion dollars on sports betting failure, it kind of overshadows that.
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