ESPN Bet's Surprising Start in New York's Betting Market

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00:00Here's a number that shouldn't surprise a lot of people, but I think in the future,

00:07Matt, if ESPN bet is going to open up in markets and get less than 2% of the total handle in

00:15a state like New York, that's going to come off a little bit stunning.

00:19People may say, well, why is it stunning?

00:20Well, it's New York and it's ESPN branded.

00:23Now, should ESPN be concerned with this number?

00:27I know what they're going to say, Matt.

00:28They're going to say, oh, it's the first month, we have higher expectations.

00:32And by the way, what kind of market share would they find acceptable in a state like

00:37New York?

00:38Is it 10%?

00:39Is it 15?

00:40I mean, it ain't going to be 50.

00:41Is it 20?

00:42Is it seven?

00:43I don't know.

00:44I mean, I guess it's an opinion from either of us.

00:47Yeah.

00:48You know what, Craig?

00:49That's kind of hard to put a target on because you remember New York and it's 50% tax.

00:54on sports betting.

00:55So maybe ESPN, that doesn't really want to be that popular in New York.

01:01The other side of that, of course, is that these sports books are starting to build out

01:06their parlays and all of those kinds of programs that help build up your hold from sports

01:13betting.

01:14So it could go either way there.

01:16But their first week, the death of ESPN, that's going to be a big deal.

01:21But their first week, they definitely want more than the 1.8% they got from the first

01:26week.

01:27It was about 510 million bet in New York for ESPN best first week.

01:32And they took about 9 million of those of handle.

01:35Now, what's interesting, Craig, is Bet Rivers is right around that 1.8% mark as well.

01:42And we know that Bet Rivers is happy with that.

01:44Bet Rivers is iGaming led.

01:46New York does not have iGaming.

01:49So Bet Rivers is fine with being at that 1.8%.

01:53But ESPN, even though Bet Rivers has a casino in New York in Schenectady, it's ESPN.

02:00They say that they get 10 million viewers from ESPN or visitors to the website monthly.

02:08So they're definitely going to want to see more than this.

02:11And it's interesting, Craig, because they did say for the four days that they had in

02:16the third quarter that they could speak about in an investor update, they said that it was

02:21strong to date the New York customer compared to customers from other states.

02:27Average daily handle was up almost 300%.

02:31And what they deposited was double the average.

02:35So they're seeing good metrics from the New York customers.

02:40They just want to see more of it at this point.

02:43And remember, we talked about ESPN, that Penn Entertainment said that they are lowering the expected losses

02:51they will see from or that they will report for the third quarter.

02:56They were able to cut in some areas.

02:58Parlay is improving in some areas.

03:01Certainly help with that as well.

03:03And they say that they're overindexing with the mass market.

03:05And that's exactly what you kind of want to do in New York, right?

03:09You want to overindex with those casual players.

03:11You definitely want to have people betting those parlays.

03:14But, yeah, Craig, it's a state launch for them.

03:18It's a well-established state for DraftKings and FanDuel.

03:22FanDuel has 39%.

03:24DraftKings has 36% of the market.

03:26And the high taxes mean that you don't want to go in there and, you know, promo your butt off to everybody

03:32and basically rent market share if they're just going to go back to DraftKings and FanDuel anyway.

03:38So we're keeping an eye on this.

03:40One week doesn't tell the whole story.

03:42But it does give us some insight that they're seeing what they like so far is what they're seeing.

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