Though DraftKings is no stranger to sports betting, its agreement with ESPN focuses more on the Daily Fantasy Sports side of the business. DraftKings will be the exclusive DFS provider for the network to provide both content and offerings across ESPN’s digital platforms, most notably DFS segments that air on existing and future studio shows. ESPN is expanding its sports betting footprint with Monday’s debut of Bet, a new half-hour program that will stream three nights per week on digital platforms.Bet, co-hosted by Joe Fortenbaugh.
By Tony Rehagen
May 20, 2019The casino floor of The Palms, just off The Strip in Las Vegas, is an ecosystem with separate spheres of activity. The pits are filled with tourists jockeying for spots at blackjack, roulette, and craps. Among the clamoring slot machines, patrons wave down cocktail waitresses. But on this Wednesday night, the real action is over in the sportsbook, where a growing line of people wait to place bets on live sports.
Espn Sports Gambling
It’s the eve of the NCAA College Men’s Basketball Tournament, prelude to four solid days of first- and second-round games. The event, which seems to get bigger each year, now draws more than 3 million binge-gamblers to Las Vegas every March, to bet on winners, losers, point totals, and even the tip-off.
This year, Chad Millman, a former editor in chief of ESPN’s magazine and website, is hoping that they are all potential customers for the Action Network, his latest journalistic enterprise, which is devoted to sports gambling. Millman and his team have rented out a Palms restaurant, located on the way to the sports book, for a March Madness welcoming party. They offer a free drink, a t-shirt, and an Uber credit in an attempt to direct these casual bettors to their site and app, which both offer live odds, bet tracking, and trends, alongside news stories and features that focus on the business and culture of sports betting.
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It’s a growth industry—and not just in Las Vegas. In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state of New Jersey, which had challenged a ban on sports betting. The landmark decision effectively allowed any state to legalize the practice; since then, seven states have already joined Nevada, which has allowed bets since 1949, in offering legal sports wagering, and two others and the District of Columbia have legalized it. Twenty-one other states have introduced similar legislation.
Action Network’s mission, according to Millman, is to make sports betting accessible to the masses. “Every sports fan wants to be the smartest person in the room,” Millman says. “Sports betting is one of those topics that can be confusing. We want our readers to be able to understand it at the highest level.”
On September 18, 2017, Millman himself bet big and left a prime position at ESPN to help start the Action Network. He had been a writer and editor at the magazine for 18 years. One of his earliest assignments was to write about the men who set the Las Vegas point spreads for the NCAA Tournament. One of them, Joe Lupo, who ran the sportsbook at the legendary Stardust casino, became the subject of Millman’s second book, The Odds, a sacred text among regular sports bettors. “I was fascinated by the small group of people who have a domino impact on the billion-dollar industry of sports betting,” Millman says. “The book sort of got me into the industry and into the field. It got me sourced and helped me understand the psychology.”
At the time, betting on sports was a gray area—it happened in Nevada or else through local underground bookies and offshore betting websites. But Millman knew the money and audience was there. At ESPN he created the gambling beat, devoted an entire issue of the magazine to the subject, and set up “Chalk,” a vertical dedicated to odds, trends, and gambling culture. Readers responded. Gambling stories drove up web traffic and moved premium content subscriptions. Nonetheless, Millman calls ESPN’s relationship with gambling “anxious.”
“It was important for ESPN to recognize sports betting, and I think it had a big impact in the sports-betting community,” he says. “But there was a lot of trepidation to do any more than we were doing.”
So when Mike Kerns, president of digital at entertainment company The Chernin Group, approached Millman about starting the Action Network in 2017, Millman understood the potential. He decided to leave his safe corporate role to chase his growing, if still niche, passion. When the Supreme Court made its New Jersey ruling less than a year later, it must have seemed like an affirmation.
Guided by the belief that bettors want more than just the odds and analytics, The Action Network also offers journalism to help them understand why the pros are betting a certain way, why sports books are posting certain odds, what’s going on with the legalization of sports betting across the country, and personality-driven features to allow bettors to revel in a culture that has almost become a sport in itself.
Millman hired a staff of veteran sports reporters such as Matt Moore, a former NBA analyst for CBS, and Jason Sobel, a former Golf Channel senior writer. The Action Network also partnered with Millman’s old employer ESPN+ and SiriusXM for a radio show. In February, the company announced that it had raised $17.5 million from private equity, team owners, and media and e-sports investors.
Other outlets such as Bleacher Report and CBS Sports have started to expand into the space. And the odds are strong that as legalized gambling spreads from state to state, other existing companies, as well as start-ups, will line up to compete with the Action Network.
Espn Sports Gambling Tracker
But Millman seems decidedly bullish about his chances. The welcome party at the Palms attracted quite a few people, many of whom left with a free green t-shirt that read: “YOU PUSH 100% OF THE BETS YOU DON’T MAKE.”
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Espn Sports Gambling Show
Correction: A previous version misspelled Mike Kerns’s name.
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Tony Rehagen has written for Pacific Standard, GQ, Bloomberg, and ESPN The Magazine. He is based in St. Louis and is on Twitter @trehagen.Through a partnership with Caesars Entertainment, ESPN's studio at The LINQ will house gambling content creation for all platforms
At the sports media industry continues to wrap its arms around the potential financial boon that is the expanded legalization of sports betting, ESPN is the latest to debut a new video production studio in Las Vegas to produce sports betting-themed content.
Cbs Sports Gambling
Located in The LINQ Hotel + Experience in the heart of the Vegas Strip, ESPN’s new studio is more than 6,000 square feet and includes three studios and features 12 cameras, including two exterior robotic cameras. It’s also notable in that it’s ESPN first studio built fully capable to support native 4K. It will launch in 1080p when it first hits air on Monday with produced segments for SportsCenter and select digital platforms.
ESPN’s new studio in Las Vegas is the network’s first built fully capable of 4K. It will launch in 1080p.
“Our new studio with Caesars is ideally located in the middle of The Strip and has been designed and built out with state-of-the-art UHD 4K-capable technology, a first for ESPN,” Chris Calcinari, SVP of Remote Production Operations, ESPN & ABC Sports said in an official release on Monday morning. “We will leverage this technology and our innovative REMI production model to serve this growing audience of sports fans with the quality content for which ESPN is known.”
The studio is also designed around REMI (or “at home production” workflows as the studio does not have an accompanying control room on site. Instead there are 24 transmit and receive paths to ESPN control rooms and technical operations around the country, including the mothership in Bristol and the network’s Charlotte facility.
ESPN’s studio overlooks the Las Vegas Strip and will serve as the epicenter to all of ESPN’s sports-betting-centered content.
ESPN is partnered with Caesars as its official sports book partner and will collaborate with the entertainment giant on various original content both centered around sports betting and other major sports events, like major boxing and UFC cards.
In addition, ESPN’s flagship sports betting show, Daily Wager, will move to the new LINQ studio full time. The show will return to ESPN2 from this studio with host Doug Kezirian beginning on Sept. 8 and airing daily at 6 p.m. ET. There’s also plans to launch a sports betting-themed digital show this fall that will originate from this studio.
“The appetite for sports betting content continues to grow among fans,” ESPN’s EVP of Content Connor Schell said in the official release. “Our new studio will not only operate as the headquarters for that content, but it will also anchor our year-round presence in Las Vegas – a city that has become a destination for the biggest events in sports. The LINQ studio allows us to meaningfully cover the lineup of major events on the horizon with our league partners like UFC and Top Rank, the NFL regular season with the Las Vegas Raiders – beginning with the Monday Night Football home opener on Sept. 21 – the Las Vegas Bowl, the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, NBA Summer League, and the rescheduled NFL Draft in 2022.”
“In our ongoing mission to serve sports fans, we are committing to a bigger presence both in Las Vegas and with our content across platforms to authentically serve a fast-growing, highly engaged audience,” ESPN’s VP of Business Development Mike Morrison said in the official release. “We are incredibly fortunate to work alongside a great partner like Caesars Entertainment to achieve this and look forward to collaborating on more opportunities in the future.”