Dave Portnoy said he’s not selling his stake in Penn Entertainment Inc. after the casino company registered most of his holdings for possible sale.
(Bloomberg) — Dave Portnoy said he’s not selling his stake in Penn Entertainment Inc. after the casino company registered most of his holdings for possible sale.
“I ain’t selling $penn at this price, that’s for sure,” the founder of Barstool Sports said Friday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Penn registered up to 1.25 million of its common shares held by Portnoy, who is buying back Barstool Sports, an online media business, from the casino company. He owns a total of 1.48 million Penn shares, or about 1% of the company, according to a regulatory filing.
According to Portnoy, his shares in Penn became vested when the company reached its agreement this week to license the ESPN brand for its online betting and sportsbook operations.
“I still own them. I can just sell now if I wanted to,” he wrote on X.
Penn stock was trading at around $23.50 Friday, making Portnoy’s total holdings worth about $35 million.
Penn this week agreed to sell Barstool Sports back to Portnoy for $1, after sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into the business in the hope of turning it into a sportsbook and online-betting powerhouse.
Penn jettisoned those plans this week when it agreed to license the name of Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN sports network for its sports betting operation in a 10-year, $2 billion deal.
Read More: Portnoy Pays $1 for Barstool as Penn Warns of Loss
(Updates Portnoy comment starting in fourth paragraph.)
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