I was going to wait a bit before I launched a podcast on The Finder. And then on Tuesday, ESPN went ahead and announced ESPN The Sportsbook! Kinda.
I had lots of questions so I asked my two industry buddies/gurus to hop on — the Bens.
Ben Fawkes — formerly of ESPN Chalk, the gambling section of ESPN.com, and VSiN — came to us from Vegas to share his sports betting expertise from the inside.
Ben Aronson, a longtime media/marketing executive, weighs in on the sports business side.
A little rundown …
🔦 Why did this happen now? Was it the earnings call?
🔦 Why Penn? How much market share do they have?
🔦 How does this impact newsbreakers like Adam Schefter and Adrian Wojnarowski? Is this why Woj all of a sudden stopped tipping his NBA Draft picks?
🔦 Will this make ESPN’s app indispensable?
🔦 Should ESPN restrict what kind of bets ESPN Bet offers? Should employees be allowed to gamble on sports?
So … what’s your bet on how this plays out?
Do you plan on the pod going private only soon? Will this have any impact on Bball Illuminati? I heard you said you’d publish some stuff talked about there on here, but I was wondering if there’s be anything further...such as that pod being made private behind paywall? I already pay for too many subscriptions, (I’m sure most of us do) so I was curious.
I’m not a huge reader of written work, but I’m a podcast/audiobook junkie. I would love to have access to your podcast, and Basketball Illuminati...but to be honest I wouldn’t pay for the written content. I’ve subscribed to stuff in the past, but I never really used it, even if it had an audio component. I love having my podcast platform with my playlists etc.
So if you did release the pod in a way it could be purchased separately, (a private link to the feed you could paste in to a podcast player, such as Dunc’d On) and there were a reasonable number of episodes for the price, I’d pay for that. I hope bball Illuminati stays free, but if not maybe the two bundled, I don’t know.
Just asking questions and throwing out ideas. I appreciate your work and the time/effort you put in to it. I’m sure I’m in the minority...you clearly have a large amount of supporters who’ll pay for, and consume the written work. You obviously deserve to be well compensated for all of it.
Thanks Tom.
-Brandon