00:00ESPN mostly making news this week because of this new partnership purchase with the National Football League.
00:07And ahead of that, you have some projections as far as where they're looking at financially.
00:12And it seems like for the first time, Sam, in a while, some positive news coming from their revenue.
00:18Yeah, ESPN bet, of course, you know, the sports book that is owned by Penn Entertainment but licensed to ESPN.
00:26They agreed to that deal for about $2 billion two Augusts ago.
00:30Like you mentioned, ESPN is making a lot of inroads with, you know, the NFL and football ahead of the NFL season.
00:37The ESPN bet app is actually going to have, you know, a new feature where it allows you to integrate your fantasy teams with your betting options.
00:44But beyond that, you know, executives came out this week and said they're actually projecting to essentially double their market share from last year,
00:51which was about 2% of handle during football season.
00:55And, you know, to put that in context, FanDuel had about 40% DraftKings, about 40% as well.
01:00So Penn only having 2% last year was really not going to cut it.
01:03They're projecting they might double that this football season.
01:06That would be big news or would be really encouraging if it wasn't so small to begin with.
01:11You know, projecting just about 3.5% to 4%, it's not really what they hoped for when they agreed to this deal.
01:18And now that we have these things that are coming to life, these integrations, these fantasy football rosters being a part of it as well,
01:25it's kind of surprising that they're not projecting more this football season.
01:29Maybe they just kind of realized that it's out of reach at this point.
01:33But I think it's very telling as well because both sides do have an opt-out clause next August where if they don't reach,
01:38it's been reported double-digit market share by then, then they can just walk away.
01:43And we've heard Penn talk about that as increasingly something that's on the table to maybe save them losses.
01:49ESPN, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, they're kind of awash with the sports betting experience.
01:54But the fact that they're only projecting 4% of handle this football season, you know,
01:59that doesn't leave much room or much time to increase that handle share for next August.
02:04Because, again, you know, you have Major League Baseball and NHL and NBA,
02:08but football is really where it's going to make or break you if you're going to make these inroads.
02:11So I guess it's encouraging that they're planning to double the market share,
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