The vast majority of the sports world wants to be on the Las Vegas Strip.
That started when the Supreme Court made it legal for every state in the country to legalize sports betting. Many have, and that removed the stigma that was keeping the four major U.S. sports leagues and the biggest sporting events from coming to Las Vegas.
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The National Hockey League (NHL) moved first, bringing the expansion Las Vegas Golden Knights to a Strip arena nestled in the heart of the area dominated by Caesars Entertainment (CZR) -) and MGM Resorts International (MGM) -). That move was followed by the National Football League's (NFL) Oakland Raiders moving to a just-off-the-Strip stadium and a second Oakland team, the Athletics, making a deal to move to a soon-to-built Strip stadium where the Tropicana currently sits.
It seems like it's only a matter of time before the National Basketball Association (NBA) expands into Las Vegas, and the league already holds its summer league in Sin City. And, in addition to the teams that call Las Vegas home, the Strip will host a Formula 1 (F1) race in November, the Super Bowl in February and it has hosted the NFL draft and the NBA All-Star Game in recent years.
Every major sports brand wants a piece of Las Vegas for obvious reasons. The city has an endless supply of wealthy tourists ready to buy tickets. The F1 race will almost certainly be the city's biggest revenue-driving event in its long history and it's possible that the city will beat those numbers just a few months later.
It's fair to call the Las Vegas Strip the new center of the sports world, but one major company has decided to leave its Strip home and head for a much-less-prestigious address.
Image source: Caesars Entertainment
Walt Disney's ESPN is leaving Las Vegas
Walt Disney's (DIS) -) ESPN has taped its daily sports betting show, "Daily Wager" from a studio at Caesars Linq for three years. That arrangement made sense because while sports betting is legal in more than half of the United States, Las Vegas remains the de facto home for sports books.
ESPN, however, recently made a deal with Penn National Gaming (PENN) -) for the casino operator to gain exclusive rights to the ESPN brand for sports betting. Penn has not had a presence on the Las Vegas Strip since it sold Tropicana to Bally's in 2022.
Under its deal with Disney, Penn will pay the Mouse House $150 million per year for 10 years and grant the company $500 million in share options. That deal did not require Disney to leave its studio at The Linq, but taping a daily show at a property owned by a company that's now a competitor puts the hosts in an awkward position.
Disney has no reason to promote the Caesars brand and the casino giant likely does not want to give added publicity to its new rival. To avoid that awkwardness, Disney has decided to move "Daily Wager" to the much less glamorous location of Bristol, Conn. where the company's main campus has been located since its founding.
"ESPN created some great content and incredible memories during our time at the Las Vegas studio. With our new ESPN BET deal set to launch this fall, we felt it was best to return to our headquarters. We cannot thank everyone we worked with at Caesars Entertainment over the past few years, and we wish them the best into the future," ESPN Sports Betting Vice President Scott Clark said in a statement to Casino.org.
Caesars and the sports betting/daily fantasy app DraftKings (DKNG) -) signed a large advertising deal in 2020 that put those two brands on a number of ESPN properties including its app.
