ESPN Bet bites the dust

Penn Entertainment and ESPN have terminated their US online sports betting deal just two years after launching ESPN Bet.

ESPN was rumoured to have interest in entering the online sports betting space for a number of years before finally entering into what was described at the time as "long-term, exclusive strategic alliance."

It hasn't proved to be so, and the agreement will terminate from December 1 this year.

Details of the deal included Penn paying ESPN $150m a year in cash payments in exchange for rights to the ESPN trademark.

And while the initial term was 10 years, both partners had high ambitions for what could be achieved and how quickly, therefore, both parties retained the right to terminate the agreement after the third year if specific market share performance thresholds were not met.

ESPN Bet has not even made it this far - Jay Snowden, CEO and President of Penn Entertainment, said: "Although we made significant progress in improving our product offering and building a cohesive ecosystem with ESPN, we have mutually and amicably agreed to wind down our collaboration." Penn will now seemingly focus efforts on its iCasino segment."

For ESPN, the future in gambling is now uncertain, though it seems there are no current plans to abandon the industry altogether.

Jimmy Pitaro, Chairman of ESPN, said: "We appreciate the collaboration we had with PENN and are now pursuing other media and marketing opportunities within this space."

With hopes of emulating the success of FanDuel and DraftKings, ESPN Bet launched into the fantasy sports sector, intending to leverage its huge pre-existing customer base to acquire a significant market share.

This never came close to being realised and figures at the start of 2025 showed FanDuel with a 43% share of sports betting in the US, DraftKings with a 25% share and ESPNBet languishing in a group of competitors with less than a 10% market share.

The announcement notes that Penn will continue to be an ESPN advertising client as the operator looks towards rebranding its online sports betting product to "theScore Bet".