Disney and ESPN aren’t getting out of sports betting. But they’re going to stop trying to compete with the industry’s biggest players.
Less than a year after launching its own sports-betting brand, Disney is walking away — but not from sports betting.
Instead, Disney is replacing Penn Entertainment, the regional gambling company it teamed up with to launch „ESPN Bet“, with DraftKings, one of the two dominant sports-betting companies.
In practice, that means that starting next month, ESPN will direct viewers who want to bet on sports to DraftKings, instead of the ESPN-branded app that Penn operated. Disney says ESPN Bet will live on as a „content brand“, meaning a TV show and „social and digital channels.“
It would be understandable to think this is a reaction to the sports-betting backlash — one that got louder last month, when a gambling scandal engulfed NBA players and coaches. The real story is simpler: ESPN tried to push its way into the sports-betting market, and sports bettors didn’t care.
