ESPN Bet Making Moves in New York State Betting Market
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SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - We got into the New York betting market
00:04 through PointsBet, we know that.
00:06 And not everybody is in,
00:09 but a new company wants to make their mark.
00:12 Who is it, Matthew?
00:12 And do you think they end up getting it done?
00:15 - Yeah, it's ESPNBet.
00:17 And honestly, I think they do.
00:19 We found out Truist held their 11th annual
00:23 Truist Security Summit in Boston last week.
00:26 They hosted like 16 gaming companies
00:27 and this was really the top news to come out of it.
00:31 We knew that when the deal with Disney was announced by Penn
00:35 that they wanted to be in New York.
00:38 Penn looks at ESPNBet as becoming the de facto
00:43 mass market sports book, right?
00:45 For those people that just wanna bet every once in a while.
00:48 They're not necessarily out there chasing down prices.
00:51 They're not researching their parlays every day
00:54 to try to come up with a big winner.
00:56 It's just the people that wanna get on there
00:58 and drop a couple bucks on a game and make it interesting.
01:01 That's who they see as their core customer.
01:04 And so they think that operating in New York
01:07 is really imperative to the business right now.
01:09 Now it's interesting because Penn Entertainment
01:14 back in 2021, they did bid
01:16 for a New York sports betting license with Fanatics.
01:19 Yes, it was the first that we had ever heard
01:21 about Fanatic Sportsbook.
01:24 Their bid lost and the Penn CEO, Jay Snowden,
01:29 sounded like a bit of a jilted lover
01:31 right before it was announced that they didn't get a license.
01:35 It was like four days beforehand.
01:36 So I have to assume that they knew at that point.
01:39 And he said, "Nobody's gonna make money in New York.
01:42 "51% tax rate, it's just too much going on.
01:45 "So would we like to be there yet?
01:47 "Are we heartbroken about being there?
01:49 "You know, no."
01:50 And now that they see what ESPN Bet can do,
01:55 now that they really have a huge brand behind it,
01:58 I think they're willing to say, you know,
02:00 "Look, yeah, New York, maybe we will lose some money,
02:03 "but it's bigger than that at this point with ESPN Bet."
02:07 And you know what?
02:09 We're getting some really good initial numbers
02:12 from ESPN Bet.
02:14 They ranked fourth in handle in Maryland.
02:19 They ranked fifth in handle in Indiana for November.
02:22 And remember the ESPN Bet brand was only live for,
02:27 you know, 16 days.
02:29 So that's really impressive so far.
02:32 So I think the early returns
02:35 from what they're seeing from ESPN Bet,
02:37 I think they know that they wanna go out
02:40 and be a little bigger than they were with Barstool.
02:43 And we're looking, there's like three people
02:44 that they could buy the New York license from, right?
02:48 Resource World Bet is an interesting one,
02:50 but they're actually expanding into New Jersey
02:53 as their second market.
02:54 So I don't know that they would sell out of New York.
02:57 Bally Bet is an interesting one.
02:59 Remember they spent a ton
03:01 on building out their own sports betting platform
03:03 only for it to fail, essentially.
03:05 Now they're working with Canby,
03:07 and you know, they're trying to save money
03:09 through that third party deal with Canby
03:11 instead of doing it on their own tech.
03:13 And selling the New York license
03:15 would help them get some of that back for sure.
03:18 WinBet to me personally sounds like
03:20 the one with the most potential to sell.
03:23 If you remember WinBet had shut down
03:25 a bunch of states recently,
03:27 and they said that only states where they have casinos,
03:30 which is Nevada and Massachusetts,
03:32 only those states are safe to stay open long-term.
03:35 Right now, New York and Michigan are still both open,
03:38 and they're basically saying, you know, we can sell,
03:41 we don't have to sell, but we can.
03:43 And so if I was putting money on it,
03:45 I think I would say that Penn is gonna try to go after
03:48 WinBet's license, but Truist did specifically say
03:52 that they are in active discussions
03:54 with multiple license holders.
03:56 So don't know where that's gonna shake out,
03:58 but I do think that at some point next year,
04:01 we're gonna see ESPNBet taking bets in New York.
04:05 (upbeat music)
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