Penn Ends ESPN Partnership, Relaunches theScore Bet in Tough US Market

Penn Entertainment will shut down ESPN Bet and end its partnership with ESPN. While it wasn’t one of the biggest sportsbooks in the US, ESPN Bet was licensed in 19 states and had amassed a prominent userbase as the official sportsbook of ESPN. Now, Penn Entertainment is pulling the plug on ESPN Bet, and is already looking forward to December, when it will rebrand and go all in on its other brand, theScore Bet.

It is expected to align with the Missouri mobile sports betting market launch, and this could be one of the most ambitious projects of the year. But, beneath the power move, it does bring the spotlight back to the woes of the American sports betting industry. It is a brutal business, and one that is punishing on new entries or anyone who is not one of the big dogs. Where sports betting is legal, it always seems to be the same big dogs who keep topping the revenue charts and powering forward, while everyone else is fighting for the few percentage points left.

Penn and ESPN License Deal Ended

When Penn Entertainment signed a deal with ESPN in 2023, it looked like they would cause major waves in the market. Penn agreed to pay ESPN $150 million a year to use the ESPN name, source their resources, and create an online sportsbook, ESPN Bet, for their users. Penn, a company that runs over 40 US landbased casinos in 20 states, is a big player in the gambling sector. It runs the Hollywood Casino brand across the US, and formerly own the Tropicana Las Vegas – Penn’s only Las Vegas Strip casino.

On November 6, Penn Entertainment published a press release confirming it mutually terminated its contract with ESPN. Penn would have been licensed to use the ESPN brand until 2033, but it cut its contract after just 2 and a half years.

Not Penn’s First Crack at Sports Betting

Penn had dabbled in sports betting before, when it purchased a 36% stake in Barstool Sports in 2020, and then launched the mobile betting Barstool Sportsbook. It purchased the remaining shares in Barstool Sports in 2023, and then rebranded the sportsbook ESPN Bet later that year.

But, over 2 years on, the sportsbook has failed to hit the targets, and now Penn Entertainment is reorganizing its strategy, without ESPN. ESPN Bet drove over 2.9 million users into the Penn ecosystem, but now the company wants to rebrand and give those users something entirely new.

theScore Bet to Take Over From ESPN Bet

Penn’s new flagship project, theScore Bet, has been live in the US since 2019, and part of Penn Entertainment since it was acquired in 2021. Originally a Canadian based company, theScore Bet has many of the same features as ESPN Bet right now, but it is going to get a makeover as Penn shifts its attention to the project.

theScore Bet will be relaunched in the US market by December 2025, and it should come in time to go live in the new Missouri sports betting market. Those 2.9 million users in the Penn Entertainment base will be retained, and they can expect the sportsbook to undergo momentous changes ahead of the Missouri sports betting launch.

theScore Bet – How It Will Be Different

Unlike the ESPN Bet sportsbook, which leaned heavily on brand association marketing, theScore Bet will be a more hands on, user-driven experience. It already has a loyalty system integrated with Penn’s retail casinos, and with the relaunch, it is expected to bring more player-centric features. Plus, there may be some crossover into Penn Entertainment’s iCasino products – where Penn is actually doing extremely well.

ESPN Moves on with DraftKings

And in the meantime, ESPN has wasted no time in moving on from Penn Entertainment. It announced a partnership with DraftKings, naming DraftKings as the official sportsbook and odds provider for ESPN. This is a major win for DraftKings, who are constantly expanding their product and looking to beat rivals FanDuel to the top spot in the American sports betting industry.

Recently, DraftKings also acquired Railbird, with the intention of launching its own prediction markets next. It may well have been a response to the FanDuel CME Group partnership, where FanDuel wanted to launch a similar product of its own.

America’s Brutal Sports Betting Market

Those two brands make up nearly two thirds of the US sports betting market, with FanDuel taking the edge with a 43% share to DraftKings’ 25%. This is not a new situation either, the two juggernauts have long held the majority of the online sports betting market in the US, and after that, brands like BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics, and (until recently) ESPN Bet all fought for the remainder.

The problem is that these two brands are nearly impossible to compete with, even for large landbased casino firms like MGM and Caesars. Numerous operators have quit the US altogether because of it. PointsBet left the US, selling its business to Fanatics, WynnBET shut down its operations in most states across the US, and 888 Holdings sold its online gambling assets to Hard Rock Digital.

US Diversifying Into DFS, P2P and Sweeps

To add cause for concern to sportsbook operators, alternatives like DFS platforms, sweepstake sportsbooks (also called social sportsbooks), and peer to peer betting exchanges have emerged as potential rivals. The US sports betting experience is growing for players, and with new and alternative angles to bet on sports cropping up all the time, traditional sportsbooks have to fight to maintain user engagement.

Another form of betting that has been the subject of much noise in America is prediction markets. Not defined as sports betting, they are offered by financial derivative exchanges and give players an altogether new way to stake their sports predictions. And perhaps more controversially, they are legal in all states as prediction markets are federally regulated and not governed by state authorities.

DraftKings and FanDuel in Driving Seat

DraftKings and FanDuel, which began as daily fantasy sports platforms, already had DFS products, Pick’Em contests, and now they both want to enter the race for prediction markets. So while Penn Entertainment goes back to the drawing board and preps for theScore Bet’s relaunch in America, the root of the problem may be something that’s already written on the wall.

That being said, if they can get their niche in and find innovative betting products, which they can do if they are scaling up and going all in on theScore Bet, we may see Penn Entertainment’s latest venture become a major hit. Who knows, in a years’ time it may be rubbing necks alongside BetMGM and Caesars, if not possibly breaking down the two thirds majority that belongs to FanDuel and DraftKings.