Sports media giant ESPN, in a recent development, struck a deal with Penn Entertainment for $1.5 billion. The partnership comes amid rebranding an existing betting app to ESPN Bet.
With this deal, Penn will have the exclusive rights to ESPN’s brand name. Additionally, it will operate betting services under the same. Walt Disney Co., owner of ESPN, has also agreed to promote the brand, which is quite contradictory to its family friendly reputation.
The current deal for ESPN branding will run for a decade and may be extended further with a mutual agreement between both parties. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro came to say that partnering with Penn Entertainment was the perfect recipe to provide users with an unmatched experience.
“Penn Entertainment is the perfect partner to build an unmatched user experience for sports betting with ESPN Bet,” Pitaro said.
The Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek previously revealed that Disney is working on developing an ESPN sports-betting app. He, in his statement, claimed that young generation wants betting as part of their sports lifestyle.
The company further added that it will also promote responsible gaming to its fans. This is done through various covering the sports betting industry along with responsible gaming in Oder to safeguard friends.
Penn sells Barstool Sports back to founder Dave Portnoy
Penn Entertainment also recently sold Barstool Sports back to its founder Dave Portnoy. Barstool Sport owner has expressed his excitement, saying that they are excited to regained independence. Portnoy said that regulations in the industry did not match Barstool and its content type.
“The regulated gambling industry was probably not the best place for Barstool Sports and the kind of content we make,” he said.
The switch to online bets is quite understandable, as the online betting market is quite large and can easily reach higher profit rates. One thing to lookout for sure is the people’s reaction on Disney giving online betting a shot.
ESPN currently does not operate in India. In case the company may plan expansion they may need to acquire licence from the government which can be quite hard as the services provided by ESPN bet are purely betting.