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SportsTranscript
00:00Let's start off here with Penn opening a new sports book, so to speak, new app.
00:09I know it's based around the Hollywood Casino.
00:11You'll have to tell us a little bit more about what that is and how it works.
00:16But for those people unfamiliar, Penn, Penn Entertainment, Penn Gaming, now part of ESPN
00:20Bet.
00:21So I'm guessing they are fronting this entire thing.
00:24Yep, you're 100% right, Craig.
00:26Ahead of the holidays, Penn decided now was a good time to launch its standalone iGaming
00:32app, which is an app you can play online blackjack or another kind of game on from your pocket.
00:39They launched it in Pennsylvania, and previously it had been pretty hard to actually get to
00:46any of Penn's iGaming apps.
00:48You had to go through the ESPN Bet app, which you alluded to, and then somehow there was
00:53some place in the app you would have to find it and then translate, essentially switch
00:57you over to this new app.
00:58So if you know anything about tech, if you know anything about gambling, it's wanting
01:02to make things as frictionless as possible.
01:04This is Penn's sort of attempt to do that, is having their own separate app.
01:08A lot of sports betting is, frankly, all been about how do we get people to become people
01:13who play online casino, people who play online games.
01:17If you listen to any of these companies' earnings calls, what they tell investors, it's really
01:21the endgame strategy for all these folks.
01:24Sports betting is great, but for a lot of them, it's not this huge cash cow.
01:28It's more of a way to funnel people over to this other form of gambling.
01:31It's a lot higher margin when you're playing a blackjack game against the house versus
01:35betting on the spread of a college football playoff, for example.
01:38So you see Penn expand.
01:41Pennsylvania is obviously their biggest state.
01:43They have a bunch of properties there.
01:44The name is Penn, Pennsylvania.
01:47That's where their brand is.
01:49They've kind of taken a long time over the past year to roll out a lot of their new features.
01:54Obviously, they switched over from Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet.
01:58That might have taken a little bit longer than maybe some people had hoped.
02:00We've talked about other technology developments with the app and tying it to ESPN.
02:05That's taken a little bit longer, but launching the standalone Hollywood Casino brand app
02:09is actually ahead of schedule.
02:10They were hoping to do that over the first few months of 2025.
02:14I would say that's notable because Penn usually takes a long time.
02:18In this circumstance, they were ahead of expectations.
02:20So we'll have to see if this is a good rollout and if they can translate it over to other
02:24states where they have their brand, like Michigan and West Virginia.
02:28But a good sign of things to come, I would say, for Penn, a company that's had a tough
02:32go of the whole gaming experience so far as they hope to get back on track.