Ad Disclosure
ESPN Bet is No More
Published:
From Robert Linnehan at our sister site, Sports Betting Dime:
ESPN Bet is coming to an end in less than a month.
PENN Entertainment and ESPN today announced a mutual agreement for an early termination of their 10-year, $2 billion deal for an exclusive U.S. online sports betting partnership the two inked in August 2023.
ESPN Bet will officially end on Dec. 1, 2025, and PENN Entertainment will rebrand its U.S. online sports betting to theScore Bet.
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Under the terms of the original deal, both ESPN and PENN Entertainment had the right to terminate the agreement after its third year if specific market share performance thresholds were not met.
ESPN Bet struggled in the U.S., never reaching its goal of being a top-three platform. ESPN Bet consistently maintained a top-six spot and reported a market share of less than 5% in the U.S.
When the deal was announced in summer 2023, PENN Entertainment agreed to pay $1.5 billion to ESPN over the initial 10-year term and grant ESPN approximately $500 million of warrants to purchase 31.8 million PENN common shares. As part of the deal, PENN Entertainment included potential financial incentives for ESPN dependent on ESPN BET reaching performance thresholds for North American online sports betting market share.
You may recall that Penn first partnered with Barstool back in 2020. That original deal saw Penn take a 36% minority stake in the brand, which then led to the Pennsylvania launch of Barstool Sportsbook in September of 2020. After Penn acquired the remaining stake in Barstool in early 2023, for a total of $551 million, the partnership ceased later in the year, and Barstool was sold back to Dave Portnoy for one measly dollar. Barstool Sportsbook became ESPN Bet, and here we are now, with ESPN pivoting to a deal with DraftKings:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com