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Penn Entertainment (PENN) reported its second-quarter earnings Wednesday and highlighted the presentation with the new ESPN partnership.
For the quarter which ended on June 30, Penn reported $1.67 billion in revenue, up 2.9% year-over-year.
In addition to the profitable quarter, Penn announced it would divest Barstool Sports after signing a $1.5 billion deal with Walt Disney’s ESPN to use the ESPN Bet name.
PENN Q2 Highlights
During its Q2 earnings call, Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden said the company experienced stable property level performance, with each month showing sequential improvement.
“We are excited to have successfully re-launched our sportsbook app, which features major product improvements that significantly upgrade the user experience.”
The company’s Q2 performance was similar to last quarter, when the company reported 7% growth.
2023 Q2 Financials:
- Net income: $78.1 million
- Revenue: $1.67 billion
- Adjusted EBITDA: $330.4 million
On July 14, Penn completed the updates to its Barstool Sportsbook app, which was offline for roughly 72 hours. Upgrades featured streamlined navigation, faster load times, expanded wagering markets, enhanced promotions and deeper media integrations.
“The migration reflects a significant achievement for our company that was completed seamlessly and with minimal disruption to our customers,” Snowden said.
Barstool Sportsbook to rebrand
On top of financials, the most significant news was Penn’s partnership with Walt Disney for sports betting. It announced in the release that its online casino app would be rebranded as a Hollywood-branded iCasino product in the legal online casino states it is operating.
PENN said it would rebrand its Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet, ending its partnership with Barstool founder Dave Portnoy.
“As we announced yesterday, in connection with our agreement with ESPN, our online Barstool Sportsbook will be rebranded ESPN Bet in Fall 2023. The powerful combination of our operational expertise, improved product — will create a best-in-class user experience and allow us to significantly expand our digital footprint and more efficiently grow our customer database.”
Following the ESPN announcement, Portnoy said he repurchased all remaining Barstool shares from Penn and became the company’s majority shareholder once more.
In a statement, Snowden thanked Portnoy and the Barstool team for helping Penn “rapidly scale” its digital footprint.
“Barstool has been a great partner and we are thankful to Dave Portnoy, Erika Ayers, Dan Katz and their team for helping to rapidly scale our digital footprint across 16 jurisdictions in the U.S. and introducing their audience to our retail and digital products. The divestiture allows Barstool to return to its roots of providing unique and authentic content to its loyal audience without the restrictions associated with a publicly traded, licensed gaming company.”
