Disney Bets On Sports Gambling; After This, The Deluge?

About a month ago, Bob Iger announced on a cable-TV business network that Disney wanted a partner to help run ESPN, because the business of cable TV networks is way worse than he anticipated. Now the Worldwide Leader has a partner, thanks to a $2 billion deal announced today with casino giant Penn Entertainment,

The deal marks another big, possibly inevitable, shift for Iger, long a bulldog protecting the vaunted family-friendly Disney brand. Even having subsidiary ESPN appear to enable demon gambling was seen as problematic for the bigger brand, Old Bob might say. Earlier this year, Old Bob allowed that he’d still “prefer to wait as long as possible.”

Welcome to the New Bob. The waiting is done, and it likely won’t be the last such explicit tie-up between gambling ventures and traditional Hollywood, with actual equity involved rather than, say, ad-sales commitments. Soon enough, everyone else, ahem, follows suit.

Gambling has been part of ESPN and other TV sports outlets in at least small ways since ESPN’s tractor-pull days. Now, with sports gambling legal in many states, you already can find detailed gambling information from ESPN and its competitors, for both fantasy sports and more traditional betting. This takes it to the next step, setting up the betting window inside the ESPN “stadium” for one favored brand.

Younger, more mobile- and streaming-friendly viewers – who’ve been cutting the cable cord with abandon – are particularly interested in that information. It’s a market that’s too big to ignore, especially for a CEO trying to secure his company’s future prosperity.

It’s a mark of how far Disney and the industry have come that Iger has reversed course. That said, though Iger said Disney is looking for “distribution or content” partners, in this deal they found neither.

After all, a $2 billion deal for cash and warrants isn’t much for a media giant with a market capitalization that, even in its current depressed state, hovers around $160 billion. In other words, this won’t transform the bottom line.

The deal does bring more than just a modicum of cash. Most notably, adding gambling to the ESPN mix could bring far more engagement by and data about a particularly fervent part of its audience.

Gambling (and videogaming) give viewers of all those pricey premium sporting events reason to stick around with ESPN for far longer than otherwise. Given Disney’s poor track record on videogaming and immersive experiences, this is what’s left to build fan engagement, for now.

The data, too, should improve Disney’s broader online presence with an audience that’s not the usual spandex and princesses crowd. It might even improve the bottom line for its legacy broadcast and cable operations, at least until Iger sells those.

Meanwhile, reinstated heirs apparent Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, who now run media rollup Candle Media, look like they still have plenty of work ahead in advising ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro.

As great as ESPN has been, who’s going to want to get in bed with Disney during ESPN’s declining years? That’s the tough nut Staggs and Mayer get to help crack.

The gambling deal that could be made has been made. It’s not enough. Other media companies seem unlikely to partner up on ESPN, because they’re all getting hammered financially too.

Maybe Amazon or Apple, which has a long relationship with Disney, would be interested. Both are expanding their sports programming, and both have been at it a couple of years. They know what they’re getting into. On the other hand, they know what they’re getting into.

All of which leaves private equity, like Blackstone, the trillion-dollar fund that backs Candle Media. If Disney ends up partnering with a big PE firm instead of, say, a tech or media company, that will send a pretty specific distress signal of its own.

It’s worth noting in passing that as part of partnering with Disney, Penn dumped its previous big media partner, Barstool Sports, the in-your-face startup known for its, ahem, “unfiltered” sports talk

Trading Barstool for Disney is both a rational move, given the relative scale involved, and filled with its own implications.

Bro culture, as personified by Barstool, hasn’t gone away. But in kicking Barstool out and moving in with Disney, Penn has signaled that it believes it can reach a far larger audience who may have a passing interested in sports and maybe occasionally gambling on it too. It’s likely Disney is betting the same way.