ESPN BET, the new online sports betting app, launches today at 3:00 p.m. Today’s launch represents the first official foray into sports betting by arguably the top brand in American sports, ESPN.

Sure, ESPN has evolved over the years, increasingly introducing sports betting odds, personalities and content across its platforms both broadcast and digital. But it wasn’t until today, November 14, 2023 that ESPN jumped into the arena with an actual sports betting product where users can bet on sports.

That’s right, the new ESPN BET app launches today at 3:00 p.m. eastern time.

How did we get here? PENN Entertainment made a huge splash in August, when they announced that they were parting ways with Barstool Sports – including the branding for their online sportsbook product – and were instead signing a deal to license the ESPN brand moving forward. This landmark announcement meant that the Barstool Sportsbook product was going to be rebranded and relaunched in November as ESPN BET.

ESPN BET is an online sportsbook, owned and operated by PENN Entertainment, live in 17 states including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

While PENN owns and operates the sportsbook, PENN will pay Disney and ESPN annual payments to license the ESPN brand and also to fund promotion and marketing across the ESPN properties. Yep, that means that you’ll likely see ESPN BET odds all over the ESPN digital properties and across the marquee shows on ESPN broadcast channels. Scott Van Pelt’s “Winners” and “Bad Beats”? You can expect some heavy promotion of the ESPN BET app across these segments and shows.

But many believe ESPN has been late to the party. Former ESPN personality and podcaster Bill Simmons mentioned on a recent podcast he thought ESPN should have acquired DraftKings a few years ago. The U.S. sports betting marketing is considered to be mostly dominated by the big two brands of FanDuel and DraftKings with respect to betting handle in most major legal betting states. Can PENN + ESPN gain enough market share to become a third major player in the space? We won’t know that answer until well into 2024, but the PENN and ESPN are pulling out all the stops to make a real run at it.

PENN CEO Jay Snowden and his team have put out aggressive market share targets as part of the announcement in August and lead up to today’s launch of the ESPN BET app. While partnering with arguably the biggest brand in sports is a good start, the PENN team knows the product has to be quite good as well. Many of the streets of the competitive sports betting landscape are littered with the bodies of companies that did splashy branding and promotional campaigns but failed to back up initial user acquisition with a quality product. Users came from the promotions and the bonuses, but felt the product and user experience was lacking and ended up not sticking around.

PENN knows this and has invested quite a bit on the product side, leveraging the platform and product from its previous theScore acquisition. It’s a sound strategy. Leverage the biggest brand in sports to get users into the app. Keep users with an excellent product that satisfies users and keeps them betting. A war chest of cash earmarked for marketing and promotion doesn’t hurt either.

Put it this way: If this doesn’t work, one might think that nothing will?

Both PENN and Disney/ESPN are heavily incentivized to make this a successful venture. The annual payments to ESPN are planned for the next ten years, but there are outs for the company if certain market share metrics aren’t hit. Moreover, ESPN received warrants and equity options with PENN that kick in based on certain success thresholds. Again, both sides are aligned to make ESPN BET a smashing success.

So, as a user of ESPN BET, what might we expect with this new app and this new partnership?

I’m interested to see how ESPN personalities such as Scott Van Pelt and Pat McAfee are utilized. Snowden mentioned that the app will take advantage of ESPN talent, and the app will utilize parlays from the various parlay personalities that users can place wagers on.

Worth noting is that ESPN has already addressed the potential conflict of interest issue and has issued guidelines to its staff, ranging from insiders and reporters to production assistants on what they can and cannot bet on in order to maintain journalistic integrity. Don’t expect ​​Adam Schefter to place a wager against a team just prior to reporting that a major QB is out for the season.

Will there be some bumps along the way? Undoubtedly. Just as we’ve seen missteps all over the place as we’ve witnessed the roll out of legal sports betting across multiple states each with unique rules and regulations.

PENN is certainly used to handling challenges as the association with Barstool Sports opened the door to various regulatory challenges and PR-related issues. We can clearly expect PENN to be quite buttoned-up with its new partner in ESPN. After all, the mouse still reigns supreme over at ESPN and parent company, Disney.

But today is a good day for American sports fans and sports bettors. Users will benefit by increased competition with another major brand in the space fighting for your business. The specifics of the PENN + ESPN deal make it obvious that the companies are going all in to make this a successful product and venture.

Today, the sports betting public will have the opportunity to cash in on great value with upcoming ESPN BET promo codes. PENN and ESPN know that you need an extra incentive to try out the new app. ESPN BET promos will give users great value either in the form of deposit matches or bonus bets for joining the platform. Stay tuned for more information throughout the day.

We’ll conclude with the following quote from PENN CEO Snowden: “We’re in this space to win. And when I say ‘we,’ that’s PENN and that’s ESPN. Jimmy said it a bunch, that ‘we don’t launch ESPN branded products with partners. When we do anything with ESPN, we do it to be best in class.’ We share that. There’s a tremendous amount of pride on both sides.”