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00:00ESPN, ESPN bet thought they were going to smack ESPN's logo on a betting app and all
00:08of a sudden people were just going to flock to it, you know, Sam, this looks like it's
00:11going the other way.
00:12Uh, you know, I, I don't know where things are headed here, but you know, certainly the
00:16idea that they're going to jump into FanDuel and DraftKings territory doesn't seem reasonable.
00:20I think the only reasonable question to ask is, can they just maintain where they're at?
00:24Yeah, Craig, definitely a reasonable question.
00:28Maintain where they're at or even exist when we hop on this show next time.
00:32It's a, it was another day, another bad headline for Penn Entertainment yesterday.
00:36My colleague Matt Waters broke the news that they laid off a significant amount of their
00:41workforce and NBC just came out today saying it was actually a hundred people they laid
00:45off.
00:46Uh, my colleague Matt in his article detailed that a lot of that had to do with the part
00:52of the company that runs ESPN bet.
00:55Obviously Penn Entertainment has that partnership where they're running ESPN bet.
00:59So it couldn't have really come at a worse time for Penn, even though no, this is never
01:03a good time to be laying off all of your online sports betting workforce, but they have second
01:07quarter earnings coming up next week where they're going to have to field a ton of questions.
01:12You know, there's a push from a huge growing group of activist investors to sell the company
01:17because of how bad the online sports betting business has been for them.
01:21Uh, if you recall, they paid $3 billion to use the ESPN bet brand after selling back
01:26port, uh, Barstool to founder Dave Portnoy for $1, another brand that paid half a billion
01:31dollars for, and it also spent $2 billion trying to build out its own technology, which
01:36obviously has not worked because a lot of people are not staying on the app.
01:40So it has this 3% of market share so far, which is a far cry from the 10 to 12% it's
01:45been aiming for.
01:47It seems like this is all coming at a really bad time, especially when the CEO Jay Stoddard
01:52has said, no, it'll be okay.
01:54Just wait until football season.
01:55We have some more integrations coming.
01:56We have a lot kind of on the rise with how we're going to involve ESPN, but at this point
02:01they might not even make it till football season with everyone clamoring for them to
02:04sell.
02:05And obviously them laying off a ton of the workforce that was dedicated to this very
02:10project.
02:11Uh, it's really kind of a crazy story to think 11 months ago, they paid, they're obligated
02:16the $3 billion for ESPN.
02:18And now this is where we are less than a year later talking about them selling, getting
02:22rid of ESPN.
02:23And, you know, ESPN is one of the biggest brands.
02:25If they can't do that with them, who could they do it with?