You know ESPN the sports media giant. Now brace yourself for ESPN Bet, a rebranding of an existing sports-betting app owned by Penn Entertainment, which is paying $1.5 billion plus other considerations for exclusive rights to the ESPN name.
The deal, announced Tuesday, could take Walt Disney Co.-owned ESPN into uncharted waters. Disney is fiercely protective of its family-friendly image, not typically associated with the world of sports gambling.
Penn will operate ESPN Bet, which ESPN has agreed to promote across its online and broadcast platforms in order to generate “maximum fan awareness” of the app. ESPN Bet will also have unspecified “access” to ESPN talent, the companies said.
Penn's rights to the ESPN brand will initially run for a decade and can be extended for another decade by mutual agreement. In addition to the $1.5 billion licensing deal, which will be paid out over a decade, Penn will also grant ESPN rights worth about $500 million to purchase shares in Penn.
“Penn Entertainment is the perfect partner to build an unmatched user experience for sports betting with ESPN Bet,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement.
Disney has wrestled with the issue of adult-oriented entertainment in the past. Until about 15 years ago, its Walt Disney World park in Orlando, Florida, featured a gated late-night area known as Pleasure Island — actually a reference to the 1940 film “Pinocchio,” whose characters visited a den of iniquity by that name. Pleasure Island featured bars, music venues and nightclubs in addition to restaurants, shopping and a nightly countdown to “New Year's Eve” complete with fireworks.
When attendance waned, Disney closed down the Pleasure Island nightclubs in 2008 and redeveloped the site as a restaurant and shopping district now known as The Landing at Disney Springs.
ESPN added that it will use its platforms “to educate sports fans on responsible gaming” — for instance by continuing to cover the sports betting industry with “journalistic integrity,” creating a “responsible gaming” committee within the company and developing marketing guidelines that “safeguard” fans.
Penn also announced that it sold Barstool Sports, an irreverent sports media site, back to its founder Dave Portnoy. Penn took a 36% stake of Barstool Sports in February 2020 for about $163 million and subsequently acquired the remainder of the company for about $388 million in February 2023. Neither Penn nor Portnoy disclosed terms of the divestment deal.
In a video posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, Portnoy radiated excitement over the site's regained independence. The regulated gambling industry, he said, “was probably not the best place for Barstool Sports and the kind of content we make.” Portnoy added that he will “never” sell the company. As part of the divestment deal, Penn would be owed 50% of the gross proceeds from any future sale or “monetization” of Barstool.
With the Beijing Winter Olympics set to get underway on Friday, Dan Wolken, a national columnist for USA Today, joined Cheddar News to break down the big storylines as the pandemic and international conflicts threaten to cast a cloud over the event that is aspirationally seen as a beacon of international cooperation. Wolken noted specific issues over cybersecurity for visiting athletes and disputes over human rights leading to a diplomatic boycott have been making waves even before the opening ceremony. "So you've got sort of these barbs going back and forth already between the Americans and the Chinese, and things haven't even started yet," he said. "We don't even know what's going to happen once the games start and people actually start winning medals."
We are a week away from the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and China has already faced a host of problems leading up to the opening ceremony of the Beijing games. DJ Peterson, president of Longview Global Advisors, joins Cheddar News to discuss the many concerns and controversies surrounding the event.
The Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals will be the two teams competing at Super Bowl LVI after both survived their respective nail-biting conference championships. The Big Game will be held at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, home of the Rams, potentially granting them a home-field advantage. Frank Schwab, a sportswriter for Yahoo Sports, joined Cheddar to discuss what bettors should be looking for at this year’s NFL finale. "Super Bowl, unlike any other game on the NFL schedule, where if people bet once a year, it's going to be on the Super Bowl, especially with so many states having legal betting now," Schwab said.
It's a big weekend for sports betting, with the NFL conference championships and Australian Open finals expected to bring the industry even more traffic. And if record viewership of the divisional playoff game between the Chiefs and Bills was any indication, sports betting will only continue to grow as football season comes to an end. Joe Raineri, sports betting analyst at SportsGrid, joined Cheddar to discuss how these sporting events could impact the industry, which is expected to get even bigger in 2022.
Trysta Krick breaks down the Bengals-Chiefs matchup while Lester Ricard Jr. dissects what will be the third meeting of the season for the 49ers and Rams. Meanwhile, on the hardwood, Brian Bennett says that college basketball bettors should focus on a team's road wins as an early indicator for success in March.
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Trysta Krick, host of BetMGM Tonight, joins Cheddar Bets to break down her best plays in the AFC Championship game and gives a fix for the NFL OT rules.
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Wednesday marked two years since the basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a tragic helicopter crash. In remembrance, a bronze statue has been temporarily placed at the site with all of the passenger's names included on the memorial.
With the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics right around the corner, experts are warning that climate change is threatening not only the event but also the future of snow sports. Despite being the world's top polluter, China is hoping to use the event to demonstrate the country's commitment to fighting climate change, and pledging to host a "low carbon" games. Xubin Zeng, professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, joins Cheddar News.
As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics inches closer, sponsors are facing mounting pressure to pull out of the games with China is under fire for controversies like the alleged human rights abuses against its Muslim minority population and the disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai. Rick Burton, professor of sport management at Syracuse University, joined Cheddar to discuss what he expects to happen once the games begin. Burton said China is too large of a market for American advertisers to ignore, and he doesn't expect any of them to pull out of the games. "Olympic sponsors right now I think are really just trying to hang on and get through these 17 days, come out the other end," he said.
As controversy dogs the run-up to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, China is hiring TikTokers and other social media influencers to promote the nation's history, culture, diplomatic efforts, and current trends.
