Score Media and Gaming
Score Media and Gaming Inc. is a Canadian digital media and gaming company based in Toronto. A subsidiary of Penn Entertainment, it operates the sports news application theScore and the sportsbook theScore Bet. The company maintains American offices in New York City.
The company was formed in 2012 as a spin-out of Score Media after the sale of its television business to Rogers Media.
History
In 2012, Score Media reached an agreement to sell its Canadian television operations to Rogers Media. The remaining digital assets, including theScore.ca and its mobile apps, were spun off into a new entity known as theScore Inc. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the sale of the television business to Rogers in 2013.The company was spun-out from Score Media immediately prior to Rogers' acquisition. As a result of the transaction, former shareholders of Score Media received one share of the new company for each share held in Score Media, meaning that Score Media founder John Levy and family are the largest single voting shareholders in the company, as was the case with Score Media, though Rogers received additional shares yielding an ownership stake of 11.8%. Rogers subsequently sold its shares in the company in June 2014.
In December 2018, following the legalization of sports betting in the United States via Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, theScore partnered with Monmouth Park Racetrack in Oceanport, New Jersey to launch its first mobile sportsbook in the United States via a 15-year market access agreement. The service launched in September 2019 as theScore Bet; the service would focus on integrations with theScore's sports news app.
In July 2019, Penn National Gaming announced a 20-year market access agreement with the company, now known as Score Media and Gaming, in 11 states; as a condition of the deal, subsidiary Penn Interactive Ventures would take a 4.7% equity stake in the company.
The company was publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange; in September 2020, it moved to the Toronto Stock Exchange. In October 2021, Penn acquired theScore for $2 billion in a cash and stock deal; the company was subsequently delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
In April 2022, as part of the province's regulated online gambling market, theScore Bet expanded into Canada by launching in Ontario. It would subsequently announce a partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays to become its official gaming partner.