ESPN is making significant changes ahead of the 2025 college and NFL football seasons, and its new campaign from ESPN Bet Sportsbook is guiding fans through the tunnel, connecting games, gaming, and content.
Today, ESPN Bet is launching its “Sportsbook for Sports Fans” marketing push, with new ads showing fans navigating data and bets from the couch, changing up their fantasy football roster at the bar, and making parlay bets in a laundromat with picks from ESPN personalities—including ad narrator and ESPN First Take host and executive producer Stephen A. Smith.
Developed with help from creative agency Prophet, the spots showcase the sportsbook’s recently introduced FanCenter, which personalizes offerings based on wagering history, ESPN app favorites, and players on their fantasy rosters. The ads also highlight updating player stat cards and game logs, as well as featured bets from Smith and First Take, host Mike Greenberg and his Get Up show, ESPN Bet Live, and other programming.
In a nod to one of ESPN’s biggest recent moves, the campaigns show bet-tracking features that allow fans to follow their bets on screen while watching games on the recently launched ESPN streaming app. As ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro told The Athletic during the app’s launch earlier this week, “it is the first inning” of the company’s digital and streaming innovations and integrations.
“There are millions of people who use ESPN to get their stats, their stories about their favorite players, and the biggest fantasy sports product in the world,” said Gadi Rouache, head of design and creative at PENN Interactive. “What we’re creating is a seamless experience to connect sports fans to sports betting in a way that is intuitive and at your fingertips.”
In the first ad, “Tools,” ESPN Bet argues that it’s streamlining the game day experience by showing a fan doing fantasy football research in front of multiple monitors before eventually grabbing a smartphone and using the sportsbook to browse stats. In the same ad, another fan watching an ESPN studio show opens the sportsbook app to find bets related to what’s being discussed on screen.