00:00All right, let's get to Penn and Penn making a very big move with their CEO, Jay Snowden,
00:07reducing some of his pay. And we know certainly Penn has been in the news a lot over the last
00:12few years surrounding the different ways and directions they have gone as far as sports
00:17betting is concerned. And I'm guessing that's primarily the reason for some salary reduction
00:21here. Yeah, it's definitely the reason. And you don't have to look far to figure that out.
00:27Shareholders have been kind of complaining about this the past two years as Penn bought
00:32Barstool Sportsbook, tried to launch that out, tried to make a big business out of that for
00:38online sports betting, failed miserably, sold it back to founder Dave Portnoy for $1, then
00:44pivoted and gave ESPN about $2 billion to use their name. Then that was a complete disaster,
00:50moved on from that and is now doing the score bet. But in the background of all of that,
00:54you've had the investors kind of saying, why is the CEO making so much money when this has been
00:59such an abject failure? Their words, not mine. So in response, Penn had a bunch of shareholder
01:05meetings these past couple of weeks, where shareholders, I think about 60% of them largely
01:10said they wanted his compensation to be more tied to the performance of the company, specifically
01:15with online sports betting. So he'll now make up to $8 million less next year, potentially.
01:21Again, more tied to the performance of the product, up from 70%, which is what it was previously. Now
01:2980% of his pay will be tied to the actual performance. Also interesting to note that they
01:34changed the compensation comparisons for Snowden away from CEOs of companies like Roku and Electronic Arts
01:44and other media and entertainment and more towards hospitality and gambling companies like Churchill
01:49Downs, like Hilton. So kind of reframing their strategy overall, too, we've seen here as they've
01:56moved away from those online sports betting brands. They've pivoted more towards being that hospitality
02:01company. They're trying to build a casino in State College around Penn State. They've seen a lot more
02:07success with iGaming lately as well. And they've kind of told us that we basically have conceded in trying
02:13to compete with DraftKings and FanDuel with these huge brands that we've grabbed and are now kind
02:18of fine trying to be humble and make more money out of our customers and differentiate ourselves as
02:23a brand that way, as opposed to the huge online sports betting saga, which now looks like it finally
02:29might be at an end with him taking a 30% pay cut and then pivoting more towards casino projects
02:34over
02:34the next couple of years. But Penn is still kicking. So it's always interesting to see what they're up to
02:38and what
02:39their plan is going forward.
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