Penn National Gaming is one of the top gaming companies in the United States. Penn currently operates 41 casinos in 19 states and controls a significant portion of the gaming market in the country.
With sports betting spreading rapidly across the United States, Penn National gaming has quite a task at hand as it prepares to launch sports betting operations in multiple jurisdictions.
The company is playing its cards wisely by signing multi-year partnership agreements with four sports wagering operators.
Penn National has come to separate agreements with DraftKings, theScore, PointsBet, and The Stars Group to give them access to Penn National’s online partnerships.
In exchange, the companies will give the company a combination of cash payment, equity, revenue sharing, and one-time market access fees.
The four companies are expected to divide operations between themselves. This should be easy, with eight of the states that Penn operates in having regulated sports betting. The one area that Penn is not committing to these four operators is its retail betting operations which is going to another company. William Hill US has been tapped to manage the various retail sports betting facilities across different states. This includes hot spots like Nevada and West Virginia.
All of the agreements were done through a Penn subsidiary, Penn Interactive Ventures. The deals will last for quite a long time with DraftKings getting a ten-year deal with a potential ten-year extension. The other three companies all signed 20 year deals.
In a statement, Jon Kaplowitz, Penn National Senior Vice President of Interactive Gaming, said
Sports betting represents an exciting new growth opportunity for Penn National. Our skin agreements announced today will help fund the cost of launching and maintaining our primary sports betting and iGaming operations.
According to the agreements, each partner will have the option to run their own online sports betting and casino offerings in the states they have been assigned to in their agreement. Besides this, Penn Interactive will be operating its own sports betting and Internet gaming initiatives. This will be done via a partnership with the Malta-based service provider Kambi.
Nevada, Delaware, New Jersey, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New York and Arkansas are the states that have fully legal sports betting at their casinos and race tracks. Indiana is also expected to launch its own operations soon along with Iowa. There are another 10 states discussing sports betting legalization and Penn National is fully prepared to tackle these new markets with its four partnership agreements.
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