For 52 years, Penn National Gaming focused almost exclusively on horse racing and casinos, but since 2020, it has made a hard push into sports betting.

On Thursday, the company announced that it is acquiring Score Media and Gaming, operator of theScore, for approximately $2 billion.

The move gives Penn an established sports betting and media presence in Canada, where single-event sports betting is expected to become legal by the end of the year.

Penn purchased a 36% stake in Barstool Sports in January 2020 at a $450 million valuation. The company will increase its stake in Barstool to 50% in 2023, when it will also have the option to purchase the rest of the sports media and betting enterprise.

• theScore’s sportsbook launched in 2019 and is available in Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, and New Jersey. Its score tracking and sports news app has over 4 million monthly users.
• Analysts predict theScore’s yearly revenue will reach $85 million in 2022. 

theScore’s intellectual property is an equally valuable component in the transaction.

“Importantly, the transaction provides us with a path to full control of our own tech stack,” said Penn CEO Jay Snowden. “theScore has developed a state-of-the-art player account management system and is finalizing the development of an in-house managed risk and trading service platform.”

Score Media and Gaming’s stock was up over 76% following the announcement. Penn’s stock climbed 6%.

Adidas released second-quarter earnings Thursday, and sales are strong everywhere except China.

Quarterly revenue was up 51% year-over-year to $6 billion. Net income hit $470 million, a sharp pivot from the net loss of $349 million during the same quarter last year. 

• The company’s full-year outlook has been raised.
• It expects sales to increase by up to 20% and net income to reach as much as $1.77 billion in fiscal 2021.
• Operating overhead expenses were flat at $1.76 billion. That figure includes a $71 million cost that adidas temporarily incurred in its planned divestiture of Reebok.

However, online sales were down 14% year-over-year. 

Adidas released its Q4 2020 earnings alongside a five-year plan focused on doubling e-commerce revenue and growing sales in Latin America, the Asia-Pacific, and China.

Greater China’s more than 16% drop in second-quarter sales comes amid an ongoing boycott of brands that publicly expressed concern about reports of forced labor on the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

E-commerce sales were likely impacted because of consumers’ ability to visit brick-and-mortar stores after most lockdowns ended. The decline in online revenue also reflects the “exceptionally high growth” in 2020, when digital sales almost doubled at the height of the pandemic.

Nintendo’s pandemic hot streak may finally be over.

The video game developer reported its first-quarter results Thursday, recording a 17.3% decrease in operating profit to $1.09 billion, and a 9.9% decrease in revenue to $2.94 billion.

Sales of the Switch console declined 22% year-over-year, which Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa attributes to the global microchip shortage.

• The flagship Switch — retailing at $299 — saw an 8% increase in sales.
• But sales of the Switch Lite — retailing at $199 — “more than halved.”
• Nintendo sold a total 4.45 million Switch consoles during the quarter.

Overall, Nintendo has sold 89 million Switches since the console was released five years ago.

With the exclusion of “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” — which accounted for 40% of Nintendo’s first-party game sales last year — software sales exceeded last year’s fiscal Q1. “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe” sales hit 37 million.

Nintendo plans to spend around $910 million buy back up to 1.51% of its shares. Last month, the company announced that a new OLED Switch will be released in October for $349.