PENN Entertainment CEO: ESPN Bet kicking off from “great starting point”
Jay Snowden suggests firm is targeting sustained market share growth asserting there is only “one chance” to make a good first impression
PENN Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden has talked up ESPN Bet’s chances of breaking into the upper echelons of the US sports betting market, suggesting the brand will launch from a “great starting point” on November 14.
Snowden spoke to analysts as part of PENN’s Q3 earnings report call and explained the rationale for the launch date, which is centred within a significant sporting fixture period for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and college football on the run up to Thanksgiving.
ESPN Bet will go live across PENN’s 17 operational US states on November 14, with the firm planning a series of exclusive integrations including the ESPN Bet Six-pack and personalized bet modules throughout the period to drive registrations.
Addressing the firm’s chances post-launch, Snowden was upbeat, drawing on PENN’s existing customer database and ESPN’s brand reach, with 200 million people accessing the firm’s websites.
“We have a great starting point. We have roughly two million digital customers within our ecosystem that we have from the Barstool Sportsbook and then we’ve got Hollywood Casino, the historical database there, as well as social gaming,” Snowden said.
“We’ve got the Penn Play loyalty program, so we’ve got a pretty big digital database that we’re going to be able to cross-sell those two million people to ESPN BET, and we know their history. We know them very well.
Snowden continued: “Of course, we have ESPN and its brand equity [and] we think that we can really grow the market on the side of casual bettors who maybe have bet once or twice or [are] intrigued by it.
“There’s also an opportunity to cross-sell from the ESPN media ecosystem into ESPN BET. We really like our chances there, particularly with the 12 million people in their fantasy database,” he added.
Snowden confirmed that all existing users of the Barstool Sportsbook, PENN’s old sportsbook skin, would be prompted to download the ESPN Bet app, with balances and customer account information “seamlessly transferring” to the new app.
Speaking on how PENN would measure the success of ESPN Bet post-launch, Snowden said: “One of the things that we’ve talked about internally, in terms of what success looks like, is [that] we want to see whatever that market share is in the first couple of months continue to grow over time.”
“If we don’t, that will speak to the product and the customer retention. What we don’t want is to have a giant splash in the first month or two, then you leak market share — that would not be deemed a success,” he added.
PENN’s launch of ESPN Bet comes three months after it announced the $1.5bn licensing partnership with the international sports broadcasting giant in August.
There had previously been speculation that ESPN Bet would be launched ahead of new NFL season, however for Snowden, a November launch was always on the operator’s roadmap, pointing to two motivations behind the decision.
“Let’s make sure that the product is first class when we launch. We have just one chance to make a first impression. We had several enhancements to the app that we wanted to make in advance of launch, which we’ve done,” he explained.
“The other factor driving the launch date was load testing, and our engineering team has done a great job in this area. We have had plenty of time to order additional servers and hardware to prepare for what we anticipate with volumes being the highest we’ve ever seen.
“To understand this sort of volume, we use information that’s out there from top players in the space and how many bets per second [are placed on the] on Super Bowl,” he added.
ESPN Bet will replace the Barstool Sportsbook as PENN’s sole online sports betting offering, however PENN EVP Todd George confirmed in the same call that PENN had “almost completely de-themed” Barstool’s retail sportsbooks ahead of a potential pivot to an ESPN Bet retail sportsbook offering.
“ESPN has sent their representatives to several of our properties and to date, the feedback has been great. Going forward, we’ll talk about where we can take this brand at our retail locations and find something that works for both of us,” George added.