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SportsTranscript
00:00Okay, so, you know, ESPN bet. I mean, certainly they're hoping that their brand, you know,
00:09just lands people into their sports betting operator. We've talked about this a ton of
00:13time. They're having so many now primetime games on college football and Monday night
00:18football as well. Do you think there's any correlation here potentially to making this
00:21work?
00:22Craig, I don't know. I've been bringing these monthly numbers to you for a while now talking
00:28about how well ESPN is doing on the digital side of things and on social, and even on
00:33linear media, they broke all kinds of records. This is a press release, excuse me, talking
00:38about their fiscal year. And listen to some of this. Their social media reach, 8.5 billion
00:45social engagements, which was 50% more than its next closest competitor. Its digital and
00:51social reach, they call it massive. Between ESPN digital and ESPN social, they combined
00:58to reach 66% of the United States adult population and 82% of adults in the key 18 to 49 demographic.
01:08That's key for sports television, and that's a key demo for sports betting as well. Craig,
01:15these numbers are so incredible that you sit there wondering how ESPN can debut in
01:22New York with less than a 2% handle share. It just simply doesn't make sense to me when
01:28I see just how well ESPN is doing on the media side of things and how that gap just does
01:35not seem to be getting any closer to close when you move over to sports betting. I'm
01:42not sure what else it will take at this point, Craig, if I'm being totally honest with you.
01:47And if you remember, we talked about the investor meeting that they had in Las Vegas, and it
01:53seemed like they were moving the goalposts a little bit. You know, they had talked about
01:57one of their presentations had talked about market share up to 20% for sports betting.
02:01And then we saw in this most recent presentation, well, the bull case was actually 10%. So you
02:09have to wonder what's going on at ESPN. They've had layoffs at ESPN bet in the interactive
02:15division. Certainly, that is not great to see when the product itself isn't delivering.
02:21So there are a lot of unanswered questions for ESPN bet right now. Good news is, Craig,
02:28is that we get some of them answered on November 7th. That's the third quarter earnings call
02:33date for Penn. And Penn management is going to have to come in and kind of explain what's
02:40going on here if they don't have some good results to show. You know, they were able
02:43to curb their losses a little bit. They had some huge losses to start the year in interactive.
02:49Seems like they figured that out. And they are improving with the product a little bit
02:53and they're getting good playthrough. But it still just does not seem to reflect the
02:59amount of share they should get organically just from being ESPN bet. So I'm really looking
03:06forward to that call in a couple of weeks to see what they have to say.