Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of the Strictly Business podcast, where
Speaker 1: we talked with some of the brightest minds working in
Speaker 1: the media today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety. Well, the
Speaker 1: struggles of companies like Vice and BuzzFeed seem to be
Speaker 1: well documented these days, not everyone in the digital content
Speaker 1: publishing world is suffering. Bar Stool Sports, for one, is
Speaker 1: attracting a growing audience at some controversy with a business
Speaker 1: that spans everything from podcast to get this pink lemonade vodka.
Speaker 1: Here to discuss all things bar Stool is. It's CEO
Speaker 1: Eric and Ardini. Erica, thanks for coming in, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm hoping you're going to tell me the
Speaker 1: secret formula. It's not. It's a little more complicated. Lemonade
Speaker 1: and is slightly more complicated, and it's the rest of
Speaker 1: your business is very complicated as well. Well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the beverages in time. But what I want to
Speaker 1: do first is, I know there aren't many audiences for
Speaker 1: media brands out there that are devoted as the so
Speaker 1: called stew Leys as they're known, But I want to
Speaker 1: explain Barstool first to the uninitiated. I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of brands out in the sports world, from ESPN
Speaker 1: to bleacher Report. So how would you say bar stools
Speaker 1: voice differentiates from those typical players in the space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Barstool Sports is infinitely an Internet company. We
Speaker 1: were born of the Internet. Dave Portnoy founded Barstool in
Speaker 1: two thousand four. He developed a very distinct point of
Speaker 1: view and voice which really resonated with what he would
Speaker 1: have called at the time the common man. So what
Speaker 1: really sets barstool apart tonally is that we are on
Speaker 1: the same level as our fans. Were not purporting to
Speaker 1: be journalists, were not purporting to be authorities. What we
Speaker 1: really want to do is to make people laugh. It's
Speaker 1: a company that does not have an agenda be on that.
Speaker 1: We do satire, we have humor, We cover entertainment, we
Speaker 1: certainly cover sports. But what makes Barstool very different is
Speaker 1: really the Internet of it all. That we are focused
Speaker 1: and born out of the Internet. There are plenty of
Speaker 1: digital native content companies that are suffering right now and
Speaker 1: being digital native didn't really help them. Yeah, what what
Speaker 1: did you guys figure out that others didn't? I think
Speaker 1: the what the challenge with Internet brands right now is
Speaker 1: that they forgot about the consumer. There they point of
Speaker 1: view and voice became commoditized. And when you have a
Speaker 1: commoditized point of view or the content is on original
Speaker 1: and you don't have a deep relationship with your audience,
Speaker 1: and those two things go together, it is hard to
Speaker 1: create a brand that can break through and resonate. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen it. I worked and I've worked
Speaker 1: in the internet for twenty years. So if you look
Speaker 1: at you know, why does someone go to Yahoo versus
Speaker 1: they go to a O Well versus you go to
Speaker 1: Huffington Post, versus go to Vox. When you're publishing, you know,
Speaker 1: a slightly different version of the same news story, you
Speaker 1: become completely undifferentiated. It's commoditized, right, So I think there
Speaker 1: were two. There are two main challenges in the media business,
Speaker 1: whether it's an Internet business or traditional business. One is
Speaker 1: the attrition in the digital space of advertising. Right the
Speaker 1: advent of the social platforms, they sucked a lot of
Speaker 1: the air out of the room in terms of traffic
Speaker 1: and engagement and time spent. They took a lot of
Speaker 1: the value. You know, if you were to ask someone
Speaker 1: at a major magazine publisher, you know, things that used
Speaker 1: to be valued at for a dollar are now valued
Speaker 1: at since and then the third piece of it is
Speaker 1: that their businesses didn't diversify because the brands didn't grow.
Speaker 1: If you can't find someone who wants to wear your
Speaker 1: T shirt, your brand is going to struggle to have
Speaker 1: a different business model than an ad driven business model.
Speaker 1: And that's really been very key to our success, which
Speaker 1: is we have a very diverse business because we have
Speaker 1: brands that people want to identify with, that they do
Speaker 1: identify with what they want to badge themselves with, and
Speaker 1: are relatable and ongoing and differentiated and not commoditized. But
Speaker 1: for all that relatability, as I was saying earlier, you
Speaker 1: guys have had some controversy. There's been a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism about everything from uh, sexism or harassment that has
Speaker 1: either been part of the content or the conduct of
Speaker 1: those following along on on social media. You know, is
Speaker 1: this a problem for your company or is it really
Speaker 1: actually just kind of part of the DNA of the
Speaker 1: brand at this point. Yeah, it's a it's a good
Speaker 1: question of whether it's a feature or above each right, um,
Speaker 1: controversy isn't the intention of barstool sports. I think when
Speaker 1: you think about the controversy or people look to examples
Speaker 1: of the controversy, those are mostly things that have happened
Speaker 1: in the past and are said by people who aren't
Speaker 1: active listeners or participants or readers or viewers of Barstool Sports. Um,
Speaker 1: so I would say the perception of controversy can be
Speaker 1: grossly exaggerated. That said, I don't think it hurts The
Speaker 1: controversy doesn't hurt us because it helps identify our base
Speaker 1: and it also, you know, there's often a lot of
Speaker 1: hypocrisy in that controversy and in the criticism of Barstool,
Speaker 1: So that a great example. We are a sexist, misogynistic company.
Speaker 1: We're the only company in media with nearly an entire
Speaker 1: female c suite, So there's one. Two. We have more
Speaker 1: women on the radio, more women starring in content than
Speaker 1: you would find any sports media company proportionately to our size.
Speaker 1: So it's things like that where actually this is a
Speaker 1: very fascinating company. We are unafraid, we are unfiltered, which
Speaker 1: often puts us in the headlines for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: But it's that level of authenticity again, you know, to
Speaker 1: use that word that that makes us breakthrough and res Nate,
Speaker 1: We're not playing it's safe. We're not covering hockey or football,
Speaker 1: or entertainment or relationships or the headlines coming out of
Speaker 1: the Internet the way everybody else is, and we don't
Speaker 1: want to. But isn't that a double edged sword? Because
Speaker 1: on the one hand, frankly, controversy has earned media. You
Speaker 1: get publicity from that, and I think it also plays
Speaker 1: well with your brand. On the other hand, are you
Speaker 1: guys a controversy or two away from an advertiser backlash?
Speaker 1: That's always been the issue with all sorts of media
Speaker 1: operations I think of like from Perez Hilton to w
Speaker 1: w E. The bad boy image works to an extent
Speaker 1: and then it doesn't. Yeah, I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: working like we're not. We're not a controversy away from
Speaker 1: an advertiser backlash. Our brand. Advertiser business has grown, I
Speaker 1: think in the last two years, so the world is changing.
Speaker 1: How people perceive what what people perceive as valuable, what
Speaker 1: they perceive as real, what they perceive as resonating has
Speaker 1: changed dramatically. We live in a world where attention is
Speaker 1: the most scarce and finite research resource, or or it's
Speaker 1: just it's precious and your and our ability to capture
Speaker 1: headlines and interest and to maintain engagement from our audience
Speaker 1: is what ultimately is going to make us an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful vehicle for brands and an incredibly powerful vehicle for ourselves.
Speaker 1: And the brands are there, there's no question. And podcast
Speaker 1: seem to be a big part of that right now,
Speaker 1: several dozen podcasts in play that are giving you about
Speaker 1: a third of the company's revenue. That's right. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we love podcasting in a barstol Sports started as a newspaper, uh.
Speaker 1: It then evolved into a blog. From the blog, we
Speaker 1: moved into podcasting and really live video. And when you
Speaker 1: think about podcasts, right, podcasting is really a natural extension
Speaker 1: of blogging. It's one person or a few people's point
Speaker 1: of you. It's a conversation. It's first person thought. It's
Speaker 1: on it's not linear. It can be long, it can
Speaker 1: be sure, it can look and sound like anything. We
Speaker 1: like that as a medium. I get how having the
Speaker 1: kind of voices you have works well for podcasting. I'm
Speaker 1: curious about how you approach it as a business. You
Speaker 1: on Twitter recently went on a large rant, interesting rant
Speaker 1: where you kind of acknowledged the growth opportunity that podcasts
Speaker 1: represent right now, but also sort of the perils of
Speaker 1: over programmatic. Yeah, I look like I've been in the
Speaker 1: Internet since you were at a O L that I
Speaker 1: was at it. I started my career fidelity investments, buying
Speaker 1: the Internet advertising, and then you know, I went to Microsoft,
Speaker 1: I worked at Yahoo, I worked at A well as
Speaker 1: part of the demand media I p O like I
Speaker 1: have seen. I've seen the big people, big players in
Speaker 1: the business overlap twenty years, and we screwed up a
Speaker 1: lot of things about digital media. It was a medium
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you remember, but where
Speaker 1: there was whizz bang pop ups, you know, unreadable content right,
Speaker 1: unreadable content. You felt like you were going to get
Speaker 1: a virus from going to a website. So you know,
Speaker 1: we over monetized, right, We over monetized. We became too
Speaker 1: smart and cute with programmatic and with s c O
Speaker 1: and s c M. And the glory of podcasting is
Speaker 1: that it's actually a very intimate medium. There is a
Speaker 1: there is a true you're in somebody's ears, and there
Speaker 1: is a very intimate relationship. And you know this from
Speaker 1: having a podcast between what you have to say the
Speaker 1: people you interview, the conversations you're having and your audience.
Speaker 1: When you put an AD that's prerecorded, it's dynamically inserted,
Speaker 1: it's targeted to me as a consumer. When you slap
Speaker 1: that in the middle of it zero context, the probability
Speaker 1: that that ad is going to get skipped is extremely high.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happened with banner ads, right they
Speaker 1: became wallpaper. Who looks at a banner ad anymore? Um So,
Speaker 1: how do we, at this stage of the game prevent
Speaker 1: podcast from falling down? That? I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we've made a statement we are
Speaker 1: sticking to host read, so we are going to integrate
Speaker 1: brands into our content and into our conversations. Right, you
Speaker 1: started this conversation by mentioning Pink Whitneys, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: our flavored vodka that we have with New Amsterdam Vodka
Speaker 1: that came out of an ad read. And it came
Speaker 1: out of an ad read because it was a story
Speaker 1: by one of our hosts about how he drinks his vodka.
Speaker 1: And when you make an ad part of a content
Speaker 1: experience and a brand part of a content experience, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's almost evolving the very definition of advertising
Speaker 1: to make it content that's what will perform. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the risk of podcasting is a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One is from a content creator perspective
Speaker 1: and a content create a content perspective. You're going to
Speaker 1: see publishers treat this like video, whereby people will say, hey,
Speaker 1: we have a slate of new, built of sold podcasts
Speaker 1: that are about to launch. It's not going to work
Speaker 1: because podcasting is really still at this stage of performance medium.
Speaker 1: So anyone can have a brilliant idea for a podcast.
Speaker 1: There's seven thousand podcasts right now in the world, so
Speaker 1: there's a huge long tail. There's a huge glut of
Speaker 1: content in podcasting. No one really cares if you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of built of sold concepts, and there's no
Speaker 1: assurance that it's going to work for an advertiser. So
Speaker 1: so I see that as something that is going to
Speaker 1: fail and not work in podcasting. The second piece is
Speaker 1: that in order to harness a long tail, just like
Speaker 1: the Internet, the ad tech folks and the kind of
Speaker 1: performance driven scale marketing people of the Internet will try
Speaker 1: to create uniformity and they'll try to insert you know,
Speaker 1: pre produced highly scaled, scalable, dynamic ads that don't require humans.
Speaker 1: And I understand that I've been in those businesses. I've
Speaker 1: helped build those businesses. I think that's counter to the
Speaker 1: type of medium that podcasting is right now. But isn't
Speaker 1: it possible though, that if you don't play that game,
Speaker 1: you're not able to scale your business because you're doing
Speaker 1: all this customized stuff. No, because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: actually that custom and you'll maintain premium. See what will
Speaker 1: happen is as the ad performance decreases, as the ad
Speaker 1: skip rate increases, it's going to actually put price pressure downward,
Speaker 1: price pressure pressure on the advertising, not upward price pressure.
Speaker 1: Right when you look, if you asked anyone in the
Speaker 1: music industry, or really any performance advertiser what the single
Speaker 1: most important thing is, they'll tell you it's radio play
Speaker 1: because the host listener relationship is so important. And when
Speaker 1: you have a compelling host endorse a compelling product, the
Speaker 1: r O I on that will beat any Internet product
Speaker 1: and the time, and I think the same is true
Speaker 1: in podcasting. So I get why you're bullish there. Here's
Speaker 1: what I don't get. Um we go back a few years,
Speaker 1: you guys had sort of a notorious flirtation with ESPN. Yes,
Speaker 1: we had a one night stand. One night stand literally
Speaker 1: in terms of a one episode show. Um, but why
Speaker 1: aren't okay? That was two years ago. If your brand
Speaker 1: is as hot as it is now, where's the big
Speaker 1: video play? Where is the the O T T brand?
Speaker 1: Where is producing for other brands that don't necessarily give
Speaker 1: you a show, but hey, you create a documentary from them?
Speaker 1: What's the story there? We have our own O T
Speaker 1: platforms and that is so Apple TV, Roku, Amazon YouTube.
Speaker 1: We are on Snapchat. We have two of the top
Speaker 1: five shows on Snapchat, where the number one streaming channel
Speaker 1: on Serious x M. We are the fastest growing sports
Speaker 1: brand on TikTok. So we are building our our own
Speaker 1: real estate on all different types of platforms audio platforms,
Speaker 1: social platforms, video platforms. What I believe is it's that
Speaker 1: organic real estate that we can build ourselves, which is
Speaker 1: the best place for our content. We have done an
Speaker 1: incredible documentary on the history of Barstool Sports, really centered
Speaker 1: around tap Portnoy, the founder. We put that into our
Speaker 1: subscription product called Gold. So you know what I learned
Speaker 1: from the ESPN experience and really linear television experiences. You know, one,
Speaker 1: it's very appealing to get the validation to be on
Speaker 1: someone else's network. That was exhilarating for us when we
Speaker 1: did the rundown on Comedy Central, which was in at
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl in that was an incredible experience. We
Speaker 1: had trucks and big production and it was with bright lights,
Speaker 1: and we learned the television format. But what you saw
Speaker 1: was that an entire company dedicated all of its time
Speaker 1: to one twenty eight minute production versus spending all of
Speaker 1: its time building a hundred productions and running those productions
Speaker 1: on its own channels. And so, you know, we will
Speaker 1: do documentaries. We have a documentary, we have O T
Speaker 1: T platforms. We are very deeply invested in video. That's
Speaker 1: been our single biggest pivot, i would say, in the
Speaker 1: last twenty four months. But you're not going to see
Speaker 1: us give those to other people to build audiences on
Speaker 1: their network. You're going to see them where you're going
Speaker 1: to see us put it on our own platforms, build audiences,
Speaker 1: monetize those directly, which is kind of a departure from
Speaker 1: what a lot of companies are doing at their work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like everybody becomes when you can't bring people to
Speaker 1: your own network and you need a more lucrative way
Speaker 1: to make content, you sell content to someone else. Right,
Speaker 1: So look at you know, Go ninety, you know, remember
Speaker 1: the Go ninety deals or GO ninety doled out you know,
Speaker 1: very very very lucrative checks to publishers, and then those
Speaker 1: publishers spent all of their time making content for Go
Speaker 1: nine d that, as it turns out, nobody saw. And
Speaker 1: the question is doesn't really matter. Did the check from
Speaker 1: Go ninety is that more important to the business or
Speaker 1: is it the eyeballs on the content that was created?
Speaker 1: And at Barstool Sports, it's the eyes on the content
Speaker 1: that was created, not the check. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: building a business that's very diverse from a monetization perspective
Speaker 1: and not does not have dependency on a single form
Speaker 1: of revenue, so that I can keep our eyes on
Speaker 1: what's most important, which is our content and our fans.
Speaker 1: And of course, as you mentioned, you are active across
Speaker 1: a lot of different platforms. But when I was interested
Speaker 1: to read recently was one of these platforms, and now
Speaker 1: is Telegram, which to my you know, a little background,
Speaker 1: And if I'm getting this wrong, explain it differently. But
Speaker 1: the content issues you were running into on platforms like Instagram,
Speaker 1: or perhaps there was some sort of violence in particular footage. Um,
Speaker 1: now if you're able to go on Telegram where there's
Speaker 1: no kind of regulation of the content, But is there monetization?
Speaker 1: They're like, what is? What is? Yeah? I believe that
Speaker 1: we want to be in every place where our audiences
Speaker 1: and if you look at the broadest sense, we have
Speaker 1: people from twelve years of age who are following us
Speaker 1: on Instagram, They're watching our pizza reviews religiously. They follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter or on TikTok up to you know,
Speaker 1: sixty year old guys reading the blog who are from
Speaker 1: Boston and lived you know, lived in Boston when Da've
Speaker 1: created the paper. We're really platform agnostic. We ultimately want
Speaker 1: to connect with our fans in a medium that lets
Speaker 1: us express ourselves in a way that we can be
Speaker 1: as funny as possible, or we can bring our satire
Speaker 1: to life and our humor and our point of view
Speaker 1: to bear. But can you monetize there? But I'm not
Speaker 1: worried about the monetization. So I'll give you an example
Speaker 1: on Instagram, since you brings that up. Instagram and Facebook
Speaker 1: are continually defining and tweaking their quote unquote community guidelines,
Speaker 1: which is their prerogative, and I have total and utmost
Speaker 1: respect for that. It's been long said that it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to understand what those guidelines are, how and when
Speaker 1: they change, because they change often, and to mitigate and
Speaker 1: manage that as a publisher. So what what's Facebook prioritizing
Speaker 1: in its feed? That's been a topic for ten years, right,
Speaker 1: what's Instagram value in its feed? What's happening is Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram or are becoming closer together. Two is that
Speaker 1: they are also continually evolving and I think tightening those
Speaker 1: community guidelines. We had a video of a girl riding
Speaker 1: a bike and the bike hit a stairs and the
Speaker 1: girl tumbled off the bike, and Instagram ultimately didn't like
Speaker 1: that video because the girl could have gotten hurt. She
Speaker 1: didn't get hurt, she was fine, she lived, she wasn't
Speaker 1: substantially harm, but they don't like that there's a risk
Speaker 1: that she could have gotten hurt. A video like that
Speaker 1: will get millions and millions and millions of views because
Speaker 1: that video is you know, it's like America's home videos, right,
Speaker 1: it's the allure of God. What happened in this video
Speaker 1: is what makes it ultimately compelling. We want to respect
Speaker 1: what's happening on Instagram, so we won't put that video
Speaker 1: on Instagram. But ultimately, if you look at our eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty four year old audience, they love videos like that.
Speaker 1: So those are the type of videos that we will
Speaker 1: put on Telegram because our audience is there. They're looking
Speaker 1: for content that's entertaining, and we want to deliver that
Speaker 1: to them. Got it um. What was also interesting is
Speaker 1: you guys have been experimenting recently with NASCAR, a presence
Speaker 1: there that perhaps you weren't covering racing all. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about racing, right, and now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, let's be clear, it's a sponsored deal. They're
Speaker 1: pain No, well they are and they aren't. So we
Speaker 1: what started as a sponsorship from NASCAR and Dave Portnoy,
Speaker 1: the founder of Barstool Sports. Dave Portnoy went down to Daytona,
Speaker 1: had never been to a NASCAR race, didn't follow NASCAR race,
Speaker 1: didn't follow NASCAR, probably had some of the misperceptions of
Speaker 1: NASCAR fans that are very common for people who don't
Speaker 1: watch NASCAR. We had I think ten personalities down there.
Speaker 1: We did a live show, We set up in the
Speaker 1: fan zone and had an awesome experience. The NASCAR people
Speaker 1: could not have been more open, more welcoming. We got
Speaker 1: so much access and we're able to, you know, not
Speaker 1: only engage with the drivers, but the racing teams and
Speaker 1: the track and the you know, the pace car and everything. Uh.
Speaker 1: We had an incredible experience. We carried that through several races,
Speaker 1: and the last two races, which were Talladega and Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: we sponsored a driver. So not out of our sponsorship
Speaker 1: with NASCAR, but from bar Stool Sports, we decided that
Speaker 1: we wanted to sponsor a racer, Matt Di benedetto car
Speaker 1: number five. We branded one is Barstool Sports with all
Speaker 1: of our podcasts, and then that was in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and then in Talladega we created a car around one
Speaker 1: Byte pizza we sold merch. Was a very deep, integrated
Speaker 1: partnership with the driving team. NASCAR loves it. The Talladega
Speaker 1: race was the single largest streamed race in history, mostly
Speaker 1: because we streamed it live on nearly We talked about
Speaker 1: watched it streaming live and talked about it on every
Speaker 1: single channel that we have. So it's a good example
Speaker 1: of sports that are looking to bring new audience and
Speaker 1: new eyeballs to that sport are coming to Barstool Sports
Speaker 1: to help them do that because we have such a
Speaker 1: plug into young audiences and our engagement with those audiences
Speaker 1: is off the charts. The second thing you're seeing happening
Speaker 1: with Barstool, which is different than you would find with
Speaker 1: a Turner or Fox or an ESPN, is that we
Speaker 1: are a young, nimble company. So when we get behind
Speaker 1: something we didn't have on a strategy deck that we
Speaker 1: were going to sponsor a race, team literally came up,
Speaker 1: you know, came up. We decided in a week. In
Speaker 1: two weeks, we have the car wrapped, in two and
Speaker 1: a half weeks, we had the merch designed, and three
Speaker 1: weeks later we were on the track. So we tend
Speaker 1: to get behind the things that we find passion around,
Speaker 1: whether it's football, whether it's hockey, whether it's golf, whether
Speaker 1: it's entertainment, or whether it's Nascar, uh and we get
Speaker 1: behind those things in a big way in a way
Speaker 1: that's creative and ultimately in a way that's a creative
Speaker 1: to the experience we're trying to create for our fans.
Speaker 1: So in this case, being able to see you know,
Speaker 1: a bar stool car on Fox Racing in a NASCAR
Speaker 1: racer on NBC in the case of Talladega was incredible.
Speaker 1: So we're very three sixty to use a marketing word
Speaker 1: around that, But ultimately it's just very organic whereby when
Speaker 1: we get behind things and find them interesting and compelling,
Speaker 1: our fans tend to follow and we tend to go
Speaker 1: all in. Is that a sign of things to come
Speaker 1: in terms of your relationships with various leagues that you definitely, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: maybe look at we have an incredible partnership with the
Speaker 1: U s g A. So we've done You've had a
Speaker 1: similar experience in golf around US Open. Uh We two
Speaker 1: years ago Um Dave and a host our our golf
Speaker 1: podcast which is called four Play. They went and they
Speaker 1: had a Mulligan challenge, which was Dave's hypothesis was that
Speaker 1: he could win the win the US Open if he
Speaker 1: had unlimited Mulligan's. It was very funny. We captured a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of content. It sucked all the air out
Speaker 1: of Media Day because what everyone was watching was barstool Sports,
Speaker 1: and if we could be the you know, the Mulligan
Speaker 1: challenge would work or not so? Um, the us G
Speaker 1: has been incredibly open to us same spirit of partnership.
Speaker 1: Right want young audiences, want new audiences. They want to
Speaker 1: quote unquote grow the game. Anyone looking to grow the
Speaker 1: game tends to be open to Barstool Sports to help
Speaker 1: them do that. If there's a recurrent theme though in
Speaker 1: this Converse station, it is that Dave Portnoy is quite
Speaker 1: a character. Maybe that's an understatement, and I'm just curious
Speaker 1: you're managing this incredible business. Is it also your job
Speaker 1: though to manage him? Does he? Is he someone who
Speaker 1: needs to be like reined in? Watching and I have
Speaker 1: an awesome partnership. So we've met in We hit it
Speaker 1: off immediately. Single best partner I've ever had professionally. I
Speaker 1: think he's brilliant. I think his understanding of content and
Speaker 1: chemistry is just electric. Um. But he does he know
Speaker 1: where the line is? The line? No, I'm not the line.
Speaker 1: He understands the line. And we're very fortunate we've grown
Speaker 1: from twelve people to now people. We had maybe ten
Speaker 1: personalities when I started. We now have almost seventy and
Speaker 1: we have a great system for them knowing the line.
Speaker 1: So we want to find people who you know, have
Speaker 1: a point of view, are fine, me, are captivating, are
Speaker 1: hard working, who understand the Internet. And we have a
Speaker 1: very strong creative culture whereby almost through osmosis, the way
Speaker 1: that Dave and Dan Katz and Kevin Clancy and Keith Markovic,
Speaker 1: like the early Barstool guys, are now replicating how they
Speaker 1: thought about content, what their work ethic was around creating content,
Speaker 1: and also where the line is around around that content.
Speaker 1: Those are all things that we manage within. You know,
Speaker 1: in a normal company you called a writer's room. In Barstool,
Speaker 1: we just call it barstool. Okay, Well, here's the two
Speaker 1: part questions about the future of the brand. Number one,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, you know again, I was talking earlier about
Speaker 1: W W E and Perez Hilton. It seems for some
Speaker 1: brands there's like the bad boy period and then eventually
Speaker 1: they clean up their act because that's what it takes
Speaker 1: the scale to the next level. Is that what you
Speaker 1: guys were about. And part two of this is it's
Speaker 1: called Barstool Sports. But you're right, you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about pizza and about everything but sports. Yeah, is there
Speaker 1: a future where sports actually isn't so central to what
Speaker 1: bar Stool is. So I'll answer the second part first,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, Dave couldn't get the U
Speaker 1: r L barstool dot Com and called it Barstool Sports.
Speaker 1: And I think we're so much bigger than sports. We
Speaker 1: certainly are sports, and we have guys and girls who
Speaker 1: love sports. We also have people who know nothing about
Speaker 1: sports and care about you know, entertainment, military news, you
Speaker 1: name it, lifestyle, food. Um, so I would say we're
Speaker 1: far bigger. You know, a lot of people dropped the
Speaker 1: sports in our name, But I think really what the
Speaker 1: most important thing is when you see or touch any
Speaker 1: of our brands, which gets to the first part of
Speaker 1: your question. You know it when you feel it feels
Speaker 1: like Barstool, feels uniquely Barstool. The second piece of what
Speaker 1: makes us very different from a pre as Hilton or
Speaker 1: WW or The Ringer or any other you know, any
Speaker 1: of these brands, is that we have worked incredibly hard
Speaker 1: over the last three years to grow almost sixty brands
Speaker 1: in our portfolio. So when you say Barstool Sports, Barstool
Speaker 1: Sports is a brand in and of itself. It's also
Speaker 1: Viacom right, we're sitting over a port. It's Disney right.
Speaker 1: We're an i P company, whereby we are building hockey brands,
Speaker 1: golf brands, lifestyle brands, entertainment brands, vodka brands, merch brands.
Speaker 1: We have a tremendous amount of i P in this company.
Speaker 1: We grow each of those pieces of i P. We
Speaker 1: do it on different platforms, we do it in different mediums,
Speaker 1: we do it in different ways with different personalities. There's
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount of crossover in the network, in the network, um,
Speaker 1: but Barstool is bigger than just one monolithic thing. We
Speaker 1: have the Barstool brand, we have every brand that we've
Speaker 1: created in the last three years. And then we have
Speaker 1: incredible personalities who are in and of themselves celebrities and brands.
Speaker 1: And that's what makes this company so different is that
Speaker 1: it's incredibly layered, it's incredibly nuanced, and from a content
Speaker 1: and brand perspective, it's quite diverse. It's not one thing,
Speaker 1: it's not one personality, it's not one point of view.
Speaker 1: We have guys and women who disagree constantly. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got the Yankee fans versus the Red Sox fans.
Speaker 1: We've got one point of view versus another point of view.
Speaker 1: It's a reality show, you know. It's as though you
Speaker 1: had Disney or Marvel with a reality show built over
Speaker 1: it and built on the Internet. Well, when you make
Speaker 1: the Disney comparison the Viacom comparison, I wonder, are the
Speaker 1: ambitions to be that big? And is it possible that
Speaker 1: to get that big you need to be acquired by
Speaker 1: the Disney's or Viacoms of the world. Is that the endgame?
Speaker 1: I don't know what you know? Even I always laugh
Speaker 1: about this, which is people say, you know, what's your
Speaker 1: five year plan, what's the seven year plan? And we
Speaker 1: always say, we don't know. Um. And that's not to
Speaker 1: say we're not strategic, nor to say that we're not
Speaker 1: thoughtful about where we want to go or what we
Speaker 1: want to do. But what I think we are at
Speaker 1: our core is really passionate and opportunistic. So you know, yes,
Speaker 1: would we like guns money and steal from a big
Speaker 1: media company to be in and around our business. Definitely.
Speaker 1: The things we could do to drive linear the things
Speaker 1: we can do to grow personality, the things we can
Speaker 1: do to create brands. I think is unparalleled. Um. That said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're profitable company now, we're growing incredibly quickly.
Speaker 1: We are at the top of our game in the
Speaker 1: fields that we are in. I also see a path
Speaker 1: where we grow independently pretty successfully. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's a long way of saying we don't know
Speaker 1: what the future holds. We're incredibly open to what that future.
Speaker 1: It's like, Well, that's the last question. Where else are
Speaker 1: you guys going to go that we need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to going into you need to pay attention to
Speaker 1: sports betting. So I think that we will be a
Speaker 1: force in sports betting, in the type of content we create,
Speaker 1: in the way we create it, in the level of
Speaker 1: passion and originality, and in what we do. So sports
Speaker 1: betting is a place you should definitely look out for
Speaker 1: us too. I think you'll see us in more consumer
Speaker 1: products in the same way. We partnered with New Amsterdam
Speaker 1: Vodka to launch Pink Whitneys, which is you know now
Speaker 1: the third biggest flavored vodka in the world, and under
Speaker 1: two months, you'll see us do more of that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I think you'll see us do more in podcasting,
Speaker 1: and there's more to do. There's more to do? Yes,
Speaker 1: more to do? I mean, you know, isn't there though
Speaker 1: a saturation point with the podcast? There's a saturation point
Speaker 1: if your podcasters and your podcasts all appeal to the
Speaker 1: same audience. Right when you look at Barstool Sports, Caller Daddy,
Speaker 1: which is the number one mail podcast in the world,
Speaker 1: has a completely rabid, completely loyal, massive fan base. The
Speaker 1: women and men who listen to call her Daddy probably
Speaker 1: aren't listening to zero Blog thirty, which is our military podcast.
Speaker 1: They may or may not be listening to Pardon My
Speaker 1: Take or Spitting Chicklets or KFC Radio. So as we
Speaker 1: grow new brands. Were very mindful to growing brands that
Speaker 1: can bring new audience and can extend into new spaces
Speaker 1: and who we feel that we can you know, pour
Speaker 1: gasoline on to make bigger. Got it? Well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like you've got a big agenda. We'll be watching and
Speaker 1: seeing how it all plank. You. Thanks for the time.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. This has been another episode of Strictly Business.
Speaker 1: Tune in next week for another helping a scintillating conversation
Speaker 1: with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you
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