Penn Q2: Revenue up 6.1% to $1.77bn, interactive segment slowly improving

Key points:

– Retail revenue saw 1% growth, interactive revenue jumped by 35.9%

– Snowden claims company performance improved across all rated age and worth segments

– Interactive is still making an adjusted EBITDA loss

Penn Entertainment has released its financial results for the period ending 30 June 2025.

Revenue grew 6.1% year-on-year to $1.77bn, which was bolstered by $1.4bn in revenue from its land-based operations.

Penn currently operates 42 retail properties and 32 retail sportsbooks across 19 US states, with this vertical collectively seeing 1% in revenue growth.

Jay Snowden, Penn CEO and President, explained this: “Customer demand in our core business was stable as properties not impacted by new supply grew revenue by nearly 4% year-over-year.

“Property-level performance was highlighted by theoretical revenue growth across all rated age and worth segments, as well as positive trends in unrated play, visitation, and spend per visit.

“Omnichannel engagement continues to benefit our results, with online-to-retail player count and theoretical revenue growing year-over-year by 8% and 28%, respectively.”Net loss improved 32.5% to $18.3m, compared to $27.1m last year, while adjusted EBITDA grew 11.3% to $236.1m.

The interactive segment

The vertical that everybody has been waiting for: Penn’s interactive segment.

Penn has drawn a lot of attention to itself regarding its interactive segments in the past few years, which covers all iGaming, social gaming, media and sports betting operations.

It is this segment that drew the most ire from HG Vora during the multiple press releases published by the two companies this year, so many have been eagerly anticipating these results.

Interactive revenue grew by 35.9% to $316.1m, which came back down to $178m after tax gross-ups.

Adjusted EBITDA was still in the red, with a loss of $62m, but this was an improvement of 39.7% compared to last year’s figures.

Monthly Average Users (MAUs) were down 13% compared to last quarter, but up 4.7% year-on-year.

The MAU figures did initially dip hard after ESPN Bet launched in Q4 2023, but grew again over this winter – only to fall again by the summer months. It will be interesting to continue watching this rollercoaster trend to see whether it levels out around the 500,000 average mark, or whether it will in fact grow as Penn hopes.

Good to know: The iCasino segment saw a 49% growth in MAUs with record cross-sell efforts from its online sports betting business – although the MAU figures for sports betting products were not explicitly published

Snowden said: “Record gaming revenues and operational discipline contributed to another quarter of strong year-over-year flow-through.

“These results include approximately $2.9m in severance costs, incurred as part of strategic workforce adjustments that drive efficiencies while supporting a modern, scalable technology infrastructure.

“Our standalone Hollywood iCasino app is continuing to expand its reach with over 70% of its gaming revenue life-to-date (through June 30) generated by users that are newly acquired, retail native, or reactivated.”

The recent redundancies saw over 75 employees from theScore lost their jobs, predominantly from the editorial teams, as Penn looks to take the business digital.

This follows an ongoing trend at Penn, considering the operator also laid off many more employees from ESPN Bet in several waves this past year.

It hasn’t been all reduncies though, as Penn did recently appoint Ronnie Jones to its Compliance Committee as an independent, non-director member.

On the topic of ESPN Bet, he said: “We also recently enhanced our ESPN Bet offering by introducing engaging features such as Player Insights which allow customers to evaluate player statistics in relation to player prop bets.

“And this football season marks the exciting launch of FanCenter, which leverages our connectivity with the ESPN ecosystem to enable players to bet on their favorite teams, players, and fantasy lineups through ESPN Bet.”

As for what to expect from Penn in the coming months, Hollywood Casino Joliet is opening its doors following its riverboat to land-based relocation on August 11, 2025.

This property will feature approximately 1,000 slots and 43 live table games, a baccarat room and an ESPN Bet retail sportsbook.

Apparently other developments, including M Resort Hotel Tower, Hollywood Columbus Hotel Tower, Hollywood Aurora Relocation and Hollywood Council Bluffs Relocation are all still on schedule and on budget.