00:00I think that this is a very big year for Penn in general.
00:03ESPN bet part of this mix as well to see how, you know, sort of they make any progress before the end of the year.
00:09And I feel like football season will probably determine that.
00:11But shareholders, of course, are involved in these conversations.
00:14And, you know, there's no stranger to, you know, sort of seeing how this is going to play out.
00:19In your mind, is this something that could come to a head at the end of the year?
00:23Because they just simply put are not making enough progress to be in the same category as FanDuel, as DraftKings, and maybe some of the others.
00:32Yeah, absolutely, Craig.
00:34You have sort of what most sports bettors see is the sheer amount of money and investment and time, quite frankly, put into Penn's online sports betting strategy.
00:44Which, of course, first started with Barstool and then famously went over to ESPN about a year and a half ago.
00:51But behind the scenes, the investors at Penn are getting fed up, quite frankly, at the lack of progress Penn has made, ESPN bet has made.
01:00And you have this investor, HG Vora, which is now suing the company amid a proxy battle where they're trying to take over seats and then remove CEO Jay Snowden as the leader.
01:11The latest that just happened this week is HG Vora filed a long report criticizing ESPN Bet's failures.
01:18They have only about 3% of market share in the entire country, which, compared to FanDuel and DraftKings, is really just, you know, very small numbers we're talking about here.
01:28They've accused Jay Snowden of excessive pay, of selling stock options at a bad time for the company, and of misuse of the company's private jet.
01:39So then, of course, Penn felt the need to respond, saying that those stock sales were actually mostly to cover company expenses, taxes, options, and fees.
01:49And he really hasn't sold much stock in the company.
01:52And then they responded to the claim that he's been using the private jet, mostly just to go back to his home in Boston and New Jersey, where another executive lives.
02:01They said those reports are actually third-party leases out to people who don't even work at the company.
02:06So they're saying HG Vora is trying to sort of mislead people in this lawsuit, mislead regulators.
02:12And then HG Vora came back and said that Penn essentially has asked state regulators to not allow them to settle the lawsuit by allowing them to get rid of ESPN Bet.
02:23They said that they're using state regulators to prevent that from happening.
02:26And Penn comes back and says that, actually, we can't do that.
02:30State regulators would never allow us to do that.
02:32So it's a lot of he said, she said in this fight right now.
02:35But you're very right, Craig, that sort of while this background stuff is going on, you have the very real here and now of football seasons coming up.
02:42How do we expand?
02:44They're certainly trying to do a lot with the ESPN activations, with fantasy football, with becoming more part of the broadcast this season.
02:51We've yet to really see those numbers amount to anything, some adoption to increase and help their sports betting outcomes there.
03:00So it's going to be a make or break football season, of course, for Penn, as all this kind of comes to a head.
