TKO Group Holdings President Mark Shapiro, a former ESPN veteran, didn’t hide his satisfaction after hearing ESPN’s sports betting partnership with PENN Entertainment had officially come to an end.
PENN and ESPN announced early Thursday morning that they had mutually agreed to terminate their 10-year, $1.5 billion deal just two years after launching ESPN Bet. The breakup frees PENN from a $150 million annual advertising commitment to the network, while ESPN moves on to a new exclusive sponsorship and promotion deal with DraftKings.
For Shapiro — who began at ESPN as a production assistant before rising to executive vice president of programming and production — the news brought a sense of relief.
“I just hope this means we will not have to endure sports betting conversation infiltrating ESPN’s programming in the way it has, especially this football season,” Shapiro told Sports Business Journal. “It’s just bad programming. Of course, young sports fans are betting. But they are not tuning in from an appointment perspective to see non-stop conversation on every game with props and parlays and over-unders. It’s just not the case. In fact, it’s a total turnoff.”
The former ESPN executive singled out the network’s morning show Get Up, hosted by Mike Greenberg, as an example of how ESPN’s content strategy had drifted too far into wagering talk.
“[For Greenberg] to have to sit next to a sports betting expert and talk about props and betting non-stop just so they can truly accomplish what they’re really trying to do, which is push people to ESPN Bet, is abysmal,” Shapiro said. “I just hope this new DraftKings arrangement doesn’t call for this to continue.”
Meanwhile, PENN Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden told analysts the companies chose to end the deal now rather than wait until next summer’s option window. He said it became evident ESPN Bet wasn’t on pace to meet performance targets, despite improvements across several areas.
“We could see through the first couple of months of football season that we weren’t on a trajectory to get to that level of market share,” Snowden said on a conference call. “Why string this along? Let’s get together and figure out the best path forward for both companies.”
Recent state data showed ESPN Bet held only a 3.2% market share across 14 states that report sportsbook-specific figures — tied for sixth with Bet365.
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