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SportsTranscript
00:00Here's a number that shouldn't surprise a lot of people, but I think in the future,
00:07Matt, if ESPN bet is going to open up in markets and get less than 2% of the total handle in
00:15a state like New York, that's going to come off a little bit stunning.
00:19People may say, well, why is it stunning?
00:20Well, it's New York and it's ESPN branded.
00:23Now, should ESPN be concerned with this number?
00:27I know what they're going to say, Matt.
00:28They're going to say, oh, it's the first month, we have higher expectations.
00:32And by the way, what kind of market share would they find acceptable in a state like
00:37New York?
00:38Is it 10%?
00:39Is it 15?
00:40I mean, it ain't going to be 50.
00:41Is it 20?
00:42Is it seven?
00:43I don't know.
00:44I mean, I guess it's an opinion from either of us.
00:47Yeah.
00:48You know what, Craig?
00:49That's kind of hard to put a target on because you remember New York and it's 50% tax.
00:54on sports betting.
00:55So maybe ESPN, that doesn't really want to be that popular in New York.
01:01The other side of that, of course, is that these sports books are starting to build out
01:06their parlays and all of those kinds of programs that help build up your hold from sports
01:13betting.
01:14So it could go either way there.
01:16But their first week, the death of ESPN, that's going to be a big deal.
01:21But their first week, they definitely want more than the 1.8% they got from the first
01:26week.
01:27It was about 510 million bet in New York for ESPN best first week.
01:32And they took about 9 million of those of handle.
01:35Now, what's interesting, Craig, is Bet Rivers is right around that 1.8% mark as well.
01:42And we know that Bet Rivers is happy with that.
01:44Bet Rivers is iGaming led.
01:46New York does not have iGaming.
01:49So Bet Rivers is fine with being at that 1.8%.
01:53But ESPN, even though Bet Rivers has a casino in New York in Schenectady, it's ESPN.
02:00They say that they get 10 million viewers from ESPN or visitors to the website monthly.
02:08So they're definitely going to want to see more than this.
02:11And it's interesting, Craig, because they did say for the four days that they had in
02:16the third quarter that they could speak about in an investor update, they said that it was
02:21strong to date the New York customer compared to customers from other states.
02:27Average daily handle was up almost 300%.
02:31And what they deposited was double the average.
02:35So they're seeing good metrics from the New York customers.
02:40They just want to see more of it at this point.
02:43And remember, we talked about ESPN, that Penn Entertainment said that they are lowering the expected losses
02:51they will see from or that they will report for the third quarter.
02:56They were able to cut in some areas.
02:58Parlay is improving in some areas.
03:01Certainly help with that as well.
03:03And they say that they're overindexing with the mass market.
03:05And that's exactly what you kind of want to do in New York, right?
03:09You want to overindex with those casual players.
03:11You definitely want to have people betting those parlays.
03:14But, yeah, Craig, it's a state launch for them.
03:18It's a well-established state for DraftKings and FanDuel.
03:22FanDuel has 39%.
03:24DraftKings has 36% of the market.
03:26And the high taxes mean that you don't want to go in there and, you know, promo your butt off to everybody
03:32and basically rent market share if they're just going to go back to DraftKings and FanDuel anyway.
03:38So we're keeping an eye on this.
03:40One week doesn't tell the whole story.
03:42But it does give us some insight that they're seeing what they like so far is what they're seeing.