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PENN Entertainment runs casinos and sportsbooks, both in physical buildings and on your phone.
PENN Entertainment is a gambling company. It runs dozens of casinos across the United States — places with slot machines, table games, hotels, and restaurants — and it also owns a large online betting business that lets people wager on sports and play casino games from their phones. Most of its money comes from people walking into its casinos and losing money at the games, plus a growing slice from online bets.
The casino side is the old, steady engine. PENN owns and operates a portfolio of casinos in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi, usually under brand names you'd recognize if you've driven through those areas. These properties make money in a simple way: the house keeps a small edge on every bet, and over millions of bets that edge becomes reliable profit. Casinos also earn from hotel rooms, food, and entertainment, but the gaming floor is the heart of it. The online side is the bet on the future. Through its ESPN BET brand — a deal with ESPN that launched in late 2023 — PENN offers sports betting and online casino games in states where that's legal. This is a much tougher business than running a casino. It competes against DraftKings and FanDuel, which have huge head starts and spend heavily on advertising and promotions to keep customers. Online sports betting is a scale game: the winners are the ones big enough to spread costs and keep players loyal.
PENN's story has a twist. It was built by racetrack and casino operators, and it spent years buying regional casinos and then pivoting hard into online betting. That pivot has been expensive and uneven. The company has lost money on the digital segment and has been cutting costs and rethinking the ESPN BET partnership as it fights for a foothold. The physical casinos generate the cash; the question is whether the online business can eventually earn its keep or keep dragging on the whole company. For now, PENN is a casino company that also placed a big, risky chip on the internet.
Saved answer · last researched 22 Oct 2026