ESPN Bet and Penn Collaboration Seek to Improve Parlay Offerings
New Sportsbook Tries to Make Inroads
It certainly has been a rocky start for the partnership between the new ESPN Bet sportsbook and Penn Gaming, which formerly operated the now-defunct Barstool Sportsbook. ESPN Bet officially launched in mid-November but has yet to open in many key states, like New York and Florida, and in the states where it is currently operating, the book hasn’t been able to gain much ground on the likes of DraftKings and FanDuel. Still, it’s early and there is plenty of time for the ESPN Bet and Penn collaboration to bear fruit.
One area which the operator and gaming company are working to improve are parlay offerings. Parlays are an enormous money-maker for online legal sportsbooks because they have such a low hit rate for bettors, who might be induced into taking traditional parlays — like when you pick the spreads of five NFL games and need all of them to hit for the bet to cash — or same-game parlays — a relatively new invention of operators in which (often prop) bets on one game are parlayed together — because of the draw of big wins. But, in reality, parlays are often loser bets which is why online sportsbooks love them.
The issue is that ESPN Bet just hasn’t introduced enough parlays, especially those operator-pushed same-game parlays that are front and center on the DraftKings and FanDuel user interfaces right when a bettor opens the app. The issue that it takes time and resources for sportsbook to come up with and price those parlays so ESPN Bet is behind the curve. But, they’ll need to hurry up and increase those offering in time for football season, where parlays are even more commonplace.
ESPN Bet Will Roll Out More Parlays
At a JP Morgan event in Las Vegas last week, Penn CEO Jay Snowden noted that 60% of bets placed are parlays but admitted that ESPN Bet’s parlay offerings are not nearly as robust as those on competitors sportsbooks. The implication here, of course, is that ESPN Bet is leaving a lot of money on the table by not coming up with more parlay ideas for bettors to take on its site. If the ESPN Bet and Penn collaboration is going to work, all revenue sources need to be maximized.
Snowden said that ESPN Bet has done well at attracting users to its platform but hasn’t been particularly successful at collecting its “fair share of handle and spend per user.” In corporate betting speak, this translates to “not making enough money off each individual bettor.” If bettors are using ESPN Bet to make relatively low-risk simple wagers, then the platform just won’t be making too much money off of them.
But, if ESPN Bet can produce appealing same-game parlays and other higher-risk offerings that hook bettors, then that’s when they and Penn can start to really compete with the more-established names in the space. Unless and until they do so, it’s going to continue to be a struggle for ESPN Bet to stay ahead of the major betting trends and profit.
How Will ESPN Bet Leverage The ESPN Platform?
A common criticism levied at ESPN Bet thus far is that it just hasn’t been sufficiently integrated into the user experience of its behemoth parent company. ESPN does post odds on its webpages, articles and mobile app but there often isn’t a clear link to go from that page to the ESPN Bet page. That seems like a huge missed opportunity for ESPN Bet to not only grab new potential bettors from the huge group of people who rely on ESPN for news and scores but also to promote bets that those bettors can take.
The ESPN Bet and Penn collaboration needs to do a much better job of actually utilizing the huge built-in advantage it has with the ESPN fanbase and platform. ESPN is synonymous with sports and ESPN Bet should try to become as synonymous with sports betting. They might not want to go full-Barstool and have ESPN personalities constantly pushing ESPN Bet lines and promo bets on air or in text but that might need to be done if ESPN Bet wants to keep growing. That’s just the nature of the beast when you’re trying to break into an already very-established marketplace.
Providing expert picks that bettors can then tail is another really strong idea that has been done to perfection by DraftKings and FanDuel. Bettors on those sites can tail Bill Simmons and the like so they can bet what their favorite personalities are betting. There’s no reason to think why ESPN Bet can’t do the same considering how many well-known personalities are employed at the network across its various platforms. There is a lot of meat left on the bone here for ESPN Bet and the operator really needs to start utilizing all of it.
