ESPN fantasy players and ESPN Bet users are about to get the peanut butter and chocolate treatment — two great tastes that taste great together. The days of screenshotting rosters, hunting through sportsbooks for player names, and spending 30 minutes building bets around the athletes they already follow obsessively are about to become a relic of the past.
In the coming weeks, ESPN Bet is launching FanCenter, a feature that creates a personalized betting hub within the sportsbook app, seamlessly integrating users’ favorite teams, players, and most importantly their fantasy rosters into one streamlined betting experience.
“This is literally a dream product for people that like betting and love to play fantasy, because your entire roster is in one place,” said Aaron LaBerge, chief technology officer and head of interactive at Penn Entertainment, during a recent preview of the feature. “This makes it completely seamless and frictionless.”
FanCenter represents the first major product to leverage the deep partnership between ESPN and ESPN Bet, tapping into data from ESPN’s massive fantasy sports platform to create what LaBerge calls “a hyper-personalized environment.” The feature is possible because ESPN operates one of the largest fantasy games platforms in the United States, with over 13 million fantasy football players last year alone.
Two-way integration
The integration works in two directions. Within ESPN Bet, users will find a new “FanCenter” navigation chip at the top of the app, leading to a dedicated section with two main components: a “For You” page featuring curated content based on viewing and betting history, and a fantasy tab where all linked fantasy teams appear automatically.
“Your fantasy teams just magically appear on ESPN Bet,” LaBerge explained. “They’ll constantly be in sync in real time with ESPN. If you change your roster, do a waiver wire pickup on ESPN, that’s reflected here.”
For users managing multiple fantasy teams, FanCenter aggregates all rosters, allowing them to scroll through players across all of their teams and quickly build parlays featuring their various starters. The feature also includes instant stats functionality, showing users each player’s performance over their last five games to inform betting decisions.
The integration extends into ESPN’s fantasy app itself, where a new “Find a Bet” button appears alongside traditional fantasy functions like league chat and waiver wire management. This button dynamically creates personalized parlay options based on users’ rosters and starters.
“This is literally the easiest, most frictionless way for you to bet your fantasy team that could exist, and it just happens for you automatically every week,” LaBerge said.
Targeting engaged audience
Chris Jason, executive director of project management for ESPN, emphasized that the integration serves fantasy players as much as sports bettors. The betting options appear on the roster screen, which Jason calls “the most used screen in fantasy.”
“Our research says fantasy players are three times more likely to place a bet,” Jason noted. “We believe this is something that they want. This is stuff that people have been doing for many years, but they have to go to different apps.”
The timing couldn’t be better for ESPN’s fantasy platform, which is celebrating the 30th anniversary of ESPN fantasy football this year. LaBerge noted his personal connection to the platform’s history, having worked on the original team that built ESPN’s fantasy game and currently running “the very first league ever created on ESPN Fantasy League ID1.”
Market differentiation
For ESPN Bet, FanCenter represents a significant competitive advantage in the crowded sports betting market. LaBerge acknowledged that while competitors like DraftKings and FanDuel are “monsters in the industry,” they lack ESPN’s fantasy platform partnership.
“No one else has this ability because no one else has partnered with the largest fantasy games platform in the U.S.,” he said. “We think this can be a real differentiator for those that have their preference of sports betting apps.”
FanCenter launches initially for fantasy football, but the infrastructure is designed to expand to other fantasy sports as the partnership evolves. For the millions of fantasy players who’ve been managing their obsessions across multiple apps, the wait for a unified experience is almost over.
