ESPN is set to debut a full-time in-game betting analyst for its UFL coverage, which begins Sunday, Front Office Sports has learned.
With the spring football league kicking off its new season despite threats of player strikes this weekend, ESPN is giving sports betting analyst Erin Dolan a new role. Dolan will appear on-air for pre-game, in-game, and half-time betting analysis on ESPN and ABC UFL broadcasts. She’ll give picks, report on betting tickets and handle, popular props like touchdowns and quarterback props, and give live updates during major betting moments like the over hitting, even in blowouts.
Dolan regularly appears on the ESPN BET Live studio show and gives betting analysis during Sunday NFL Countdown, but the in-game nature of her UFL role is a new experiment for the network. ESPN’s Stormy Buonantony has previously provided similar commentary as an on-field reporter for the XFL and UFL but on a much smaller scale.
Think of Dolan, who will work from Bristol on game days, like a rules analyst that most football broadcasts have, only for betting.
“Because this hasn’t really been done before throughout an entire broadcast, there’s probably going to be a little bit of growing pains the first couple of weeks, but then we’ll get it down,” Dolan told FOS. “It’s going to be really exciting for an audience to be immersed in it, and maybe that also shows other leagues a really cool new aspect of things that could be integrated into a broadcast.”
Since Dolan will be talking betting on the main feed, and speaking to some viewers in states where sports wagering isn’t even legal, she knows she needs to be relatable.
“I think that you have to remember that you might be on an ABC broadcast, where maybe people aren’t as versed in betting or don’t know about it as much,” she said. “And sometimes, I think numbers aren’t very digestible when you just hear numbers being spewed at you. So, breaking it down more from a learning perspective would be more of the goal for me.”
Incorporating more betting discussions into UFL broadcasts is obviously an easy way to promote ESPN Bet, which has been struggling to gain significant market share in many states, as Penn Entertainment mulls a 2026 opt-out clause in its 10-year, $2 billion deal to operate the sportsbook app for Disney.
Still, the new opportunity and challenge of attracting new bettors is enticing for Dolan.
“I go back to my own family, who’s watched me on TV for how many years, and they still don’t understand it,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t understand how you watch an hour a night and don’t get it at this point.’ I’m so immersed in it that I am like, ‘What are we not getting?’ But I think I will try to make it as digestible as possible and also speak a lot more slowly than I would in an ‘ESPN Bet’ when I get amped up about a bet and start rambling.”
ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 are set to carry roughly half of the UFL’s 40-game regular-season schedule, which runs through June 1. Fox and FS1 have the other half.
