In 2012, John Levy did something that looked, from the outside, like giving up. The sports television channel he had built over almost two decades, The Score, was being sold to Rogers. What he kept was the part many investors regarded as an afterthought: a website and a handful of mobile apps.
Levy had founded the business in 1994 as Sportscope Television Network, with Clairvest Group as the majority shareholder. In 1997 its channel launched as Headline Sports, later renamed The Score, a scrappy Canadian rival to the established sports networks. Alliance Atlantis took a stake of nearly 48% in 1999, and the company went public through a reverse takeover in 2000 as Headline Media Group. Even then its name changed more often than its fortunes.
Penn's chief executive called them pioneers of sports media and gaming.
The television business was never the sole point. By 2012 Levy and his son Benjie, the company's president and chief operating officer, had seen where audiences were going. Fans checked scores on their phones. They did not wait for a broadcaster's ticker. So when Rogers agreed to buy the channel, the company spun out its digital assets as theScore Inc., and existing shareholders received one share of the new company for each share of the old.
The bet needed years to pay off. The app grew its audience, and by 2019 Penn National Gaming had signed a twenty-year market-access agreement covering 11 states, and theScore Bet launched with a New Jersey sportsbook partner. Penn took a 4.7% stake. In 2020 the company moved to the Toronto Stock Exchange, and in 2022 theScore Bet launched in Ontario.
The pivotal moment arrived in October 2021, when Penn agreed to buy the whole company for about US$2 billion, paying US$17 in cash plus 0.2398 Penn shares per theScore share, which Penn valued at US$34 in total. Shares jumped sharply on the announcement.
The ending was less triumphant. Within months of the deal Penn shut down theScore Bet in the United States, in June 2022, keeping the Ontario operation. John Levy left in February 2024, describing his time at Penn as tumultuous, and Benjie Levy stepped down in April alongside two other members of the family. Penn's chief executive called them pioneers of sports media and gaming. Later, in 2025, Penn's ESPN Bet customers moved over to theScore Bet, and by then it operated in 21 US states.
The story is hard to reduce to one lesson, but a founder can take this one: the asset the market undervalues is sometimes the one that matters. Levy let go of the business with the brand recognition and kept the one that fit where his audience was heading.