October 25, 2021 • 32 mins
Season 2 of Big Money Energy is finally here and it features one of the most prominent names in media today, Founder of Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy. They discuss the origins of Barstool, the surreal moments that lead Dave to believe he was a success (spoiler, one involves Jimmy Buffett) and how to stick to your guns on your opinions when the internet draws a target on your back.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's up, everybody. Welcome to season two of the Big
Money Energy Podcast on my Heart Radio. We have a huge,
huge season coming up. Some of my favorite people ever
for some reason actually agreed to be here and do
this with me. And our first guest today needs no introduction,
but obviously I'm going to introduce him to you anyway.
We talk about a lot of different things, but it's
(00:22):
Dave Portnoy bar Stool Sports. You all know him, stool
president day. You might be a stool, might be a
fan yourself, but his story is so interesting and we
talk a lot about the building of bar stools, which
is what I was the most interested in, the building
of personal wealth, which you didn't do with the money,
with the money means to you and the freedom that
then comes with one having influence, to having power, and
(00:45):
three having the wherewithal to do whatever you want. And
we talk about how he built the number one digital
media company in the world by using fans, by using culture,
and by using opinions, especially those of a guy like
him personally, because he's the base of Barstool Sports. So
thank you so much for being here. This is the
(01:05):
premier episode season two. Let's go. Thanks for being here
man um, so weant to talk to you about the
most right is is not so much like public persona,
(01:27):
although that's super interesting, especially in the last eighteen months.
But it's like the business of Barstool, right and kind
of the creation of the brand and creation of kind
of the I guess, like the movement that you started
and you found it in Boston, did you always know
that you were going to be an entrepreneur and start
your own company. Yeah, I always wanted to do that.
(01:48):
Did I know it would be Barstool or anything that
looks like it. No, But I knew I was gonna
do my own thing. Like I had a bunch of
different ideas before I start Barstool. I thought Barstool would
be the easiest to do without money, without funding. It
didn't look anything like this. It was basically a newspaper.
It started as like an offshore gambling things. But you
had them around Boston, you correct, Yeah, you still like
the news racks. You still see them in every city.
(02:10):
You know, you open it, you take it for newspaper.
So I like gambling. I basically called I want to
do something I liked, enjoyed, and called all these offshore
gambling companies and basically asked them what they would advertise
in whether it advertised online anywhere. They actually at the
time want to get off the Internet because, um so,
this is why around two thousand three, two thousand four,
(02:30):
if you went on a site gambling site, there's like fireworks, bombs,
it just looks like you're getting a credit card stolen. Really,
um so, they want to get off the Internet and
onto a physical newspaper. So I sold a bunch of
ads before it launched. Um but it was really four
page black and white, hardcore like sports fantasy sports gambling.
That's where it launched from. But it was always a
business side, Like I had other ideas. This is the
(02:52):
one I landed on because I thought I could do
it the easiest. Probably idiotic to like launch that thinking
that would be the easiest, but for whatever reason, I
thought it was the most realistic use furniture company. So
this was again it's kind of like internet one point.
Oh when I was doing this, but you know how
like college kids graduate and they just throw their furniture
(03:13):
on the side of the street. I was like, well,
what if we just have a huge couple of trucks
pick it all up for free, warehouse it and then
sell it online and it's you know, for cheap, but
we're getting it for free. So that was one of them, um,
and I actually think there's some companies that do that now.
And then the other those kind of like with like
office furniture. Yeah right, so and then the other one.
(03:34):
So I was like decent at sports, but like not
D one but like D three good. And the thought
was to connect And again you gotta remember the time
it was with the internet to connect coaches like D
three coaches with like D three athletes. So high school
kids we're going to college who still want to play sports,
and most of the schools don't have recruiting budgets and
things like that, but the coaches still want good players.
(03:57):
So it was a way to connect those people. It's
pretty elaborate, Like I spent two grand at the time,
a ton of money for me, like developing the software.
Uh so it was called next step scouting. Um, but
those are the two, those are the three I decided
between barstool next Step scouting in the furniture company. And
how many people started with you when you started barstool
(04:17):
me just me, but then you started to bring in
some friends. Yeah, not even friends really, Like I talked
with my friends about starting it, and everyone was gung ho,
gung ho. But when the rubber met the road, there
are nowhere to be found, and I was just like funking,
I'm gonna do it. Um, So I started it. And
then we put ads in the original newspapers like we're
looking for writers, we're looking people to help, and we
(04:38):
got like an original four people. But I didn't know
them prior to the newspaper and they never got paid,
like we weren't making money. They work for free because
they enjoyed writing. Um, it's bad timing for them because
we don't want to say floundered, but we didn't have
money for a long time, so there's nothing around and
they all at some point got adult lives, Like I moved.
(04:59):
This is not worth it. And the timing kind of
like when they stopped as sort of when we started
our ascent to them being able to maybe to make money.
We go on the internet at the time too, or
then you made that switch. No, So it was in
newspaper for I don't know two thousand four to two
thousand seven, two eight, and I used to wake up
and hand the newspaper out like outside subway stations, and
(05:21):
a guy who took it like routinely was moving from
Boston to New York and basically he's like, I loved
the newspaper. If I build you a website, will you
put it on the web. I was like, yeah, if
you want to do that for free, knock yourself out,
and the original ones. I just take the PDF and
uploaded the guy uh Ian White ended up being like
(05:41):
the CTO for Business Insider. So I got very lucky,
Like sharp guy built me a very easy to use,
rudimentary another guy who worked for free for quite a while.
If I'm like, hey, can you change this or do that,
he'd do it just to be nice. But that was
the birth of the website. Yeah, not playing. Yeah, I
mean when I started, if you told somebody I had
(06:03):
a blog, they'd be what is that? It wasn't a
term yet. When did you first start noticing that you
had traction? Because you said you weren't making money for
a little while. And I feel like every business kind
of has that moment where it's not working yet, you're
not making money yet, but you know there's like that
that little bit of traction that like, I'm gonna keep
doing this and not go do my furniture idea. Yeah,
so I always thought it was on the ascent. But
(06:26):
I've heard a lot of people say that in most businesses,
I know fail. I also don't know if as a
rational it turned out I was right. But I've only
done one business and it worked, so, you know, I
always thought it was kind of going up. UM, and
I delivered the papers myself. I go around Boston. Every
time I went in bars every week, it was like, um,
you know, more and more people will be like hey,
(06:48):
waiting for it. So it's just I had that gut
feeling like hey, this is more and more people are
picking up on it. But it was probably when I
really was like, oh we got something here. We did
a music tour in two thousand and and called Stula Palooza. UM.
We had never been outside of metro Boston, and the
thought was, let's go see what the world is like
outside of Boston. So he picks six colleges. You Mass Quinnipiac,
(07:12):
you are like local schools, UM, and we hired this kid,
Sam Adams, who actually went on to a pretty decent
career at the time, nobody knew who he was, and
it was music based because we wanted to get liquor sponsors,
and it's like we had to figure out how to
do that. I remember, We're going to bars. That was
the plan. I go to little bars, do little events.
And the Mullin Center is the arena arena you mass
(07:36):
And I think maybe a day after we put tickets
on sale for this little bar, the arena called and
they're like, hey, we're getting all these calls for this
concert Stulla Palouza, Like what is it? And it's like,
it's just a little thing. We're doing at like a bar,
like a hundred people like would you ever try to
do it at the Mullin Center? And I was like, well,
we can't afford that. I don't thinking like I don't
(07:57):
know how many tickets, Like we're just getting a lot
of people asked me about it, so we think we
could do. They cut me a pretty good deal um,
and we sold. It was just the floor, so it
was three thousand people and sold out like five minutes,
and and you thought you were gonna yeah, and it
happened everywhere at all six and we showed up and
we've been through a lot now, But it was like
(08:18):
the Beatles were there, like the signs were in every
dorm had like vehetle of stool, like we get out
of the bus, people like grab it. It was insane,
it really was. And that was that was probably the
moment when I was like, Okay, we have a very big,
much bigger base than I ever realized at the time.
So that was probably the first real eye opening, like
I'm not gonna have to stop this. When did bar
(08:47):
still start making money? That tour was the first time
we made I would say real money, like I I
paid Sam Adams twenty grands for the six shows, and
we probably made a couple of hundred grands. Uh, and
that because he sold way more tickets than in Yeah,
and then we we moved. We continued with it and
(09:08):
started doing something called the Blackout Tour. We did a
couple of different concert things. Actually one was an abject failure.
We did something called so I saw that I saw
that first tour. It's like holy cow, Like we did
three thousand tickets with no talent. Imagine if I bring
talent in and rent these arenas for Walham, we can
make a tont Do you remember how much you're charging
(09:29):
for tickets about fifty bucks. So like we did this,
uh a concert tour called back to Stool does Mike Posner,
which was like cooler than me, was big uh wallet
Mac Miller on it for bucks. Uh. So it was
like a pretty loaded lineup sold the same exact amount
(09:51):
of tickets, Like we didn't go up one ticket. It
was the same, and and we were tied in with
these like I changed it. I was so confident. I
rented these huge arenas and I thought we were going
to business because I owed them so much the ticket sales,
we we canceled tour and I could basically like loss,
So we're fine. I could handle that. But what I
(10:14):
learned from that was people did not care about our talent.
They were coming for Barstool, they were not coming for
who we put on it. So we came back with
a DJ tour called the Blackout Tour UM and that
was just a DJ I'm still friends with played other
people's music, and we were charging fifty dollars to come
to that, and it exploded that that's so crazy. We
(10:37):
went through a period whereas we do three or four
shows a night, and I was clearing like net maybe
like a quarter of a million a night. It was wild,
like you couldn't get the tickets. It was all just
in metro Boston. No, We're everywhere throughout the country and
throughout that entire time you owned bar stool until Yes,
(10:59):
So twenty fifteen sixteen area a guy Mike Karns, who
ran Yahoo's sports switched went to churning. Um. And at
this point we're more successful I think than probably most
people give us credit for with the merch business and
sales and like I was making, you know, well into
seven figures. So I wasn't like, oh, I'm looking for investment.
(11:21):
I was happy. Um. And you weren't publicizing the success
at that time or no, right, no, because in a
weird way, there's always that dynamic of like we's just
this gritty like blue collar company of band made. I
was a little bit. I got an int a Tucket
House that people are very well aware of, and I've
been honest with like where I'm at in like life
financially or success wise. When we had nothing, I told you,
(11:44):
and now we started having it. Um. When you buy
the Nantucket House, is that their team? Yeah? It was
pre churning, like that was to be honest, that's my
favorite place in the world. And if I ever was
able or fortunate enough to get enough to like buy
that house, I mean like I made it. So I
was very happy. Mike Karns reached out to me. That's
the Churning He worked for Churning UM through a friend
(12:06):
who actually passed away the old quarterback for the Giants
in Kentucky, the hefty lefty Jared Lorenzen, who we had
done some stuff with UM and was friends with. So
he hit me up. He's like, do you mind if
I passed uh your name and number along with this
guy He's he's a friend of a friend of an
agent or something like yeah. Sure. So he reached out,
was like, I just want to talk to you, like,
(12:27):
would you guys ever take investment? Like you know? Maybe
He's like, well, can I come talk to you? Was
in San Francisco and he was in Boston the next day,
So right off the bat, that's like a pretty serious
sign of somebody's like okay, I'll be there and they're there.
I'd had a lot of other people reach out. Something's
always off. It's like they want paid to go see
them or what all right, how serious are you? And
(12:48):
I wasn't looking for anything because you guys are making money, right,
I wasn't actively trying. I I never thought we would.
What was your like gross revenue around that time? It
was probably like fifteen million, and like we're probably netting
like four or five off of that something like that
now because he didn't need the investment. Yeah right, And
(13:09):
I'm running the business myself. So it's like I was
happy he comes in. He's basically was very open ended.
He's like, if we gave you money, what would you
do with it? Um? And what do you think your
strengths and weaknesses are? Uh? And I basically said I
would create what I considered the first reality seven like blog,
which is get we're all in different cities, do you
(13:29):
everyone in New York in the one roof? Put the
cameras on, just go at it? And that was kind
of the idea basic um. And I'm like, we don't
do the business side. Now. I think I could. I
just didn't really have time. It's like, we have the content,
that's all we did. But we didn't try to say,
I like to spend money with us, you had to
like know somebody who knew something to like get in
(13:51):
my year because we didn't call back like leads. We
just like whatever, you can do whatever you want. We
weren't looking to do that. So it's like we're smart though,
I mean now, but as as they're trying to do
that to copy what you did, almost right, it's like
it was hard to do it. Like I remember the
company that is now DraftKings like he they had to
call in like a favor basically to get me to
(14:13):
take their call and spend money with us, Like all right,
I'll let you do it, but I really don't want to. Um. Again,
I was doing well and I didn't want advertisers like
calling me up my ass and like I just didn't
work because whatever, then don't do it. I don't care
um so he he. And then the other thing I
said with Currents is we gotta build out the business side,
like we don't do anything with that. Our technology sucks.
(14:35):
I mean, we had such a loyal fan base, like
if our website broke, we just like you'll be back
when we check it, um, and they would um. So
we had no technology, no sales, no nothing, and it's
like we gotta hire CEO and we gotta just build
out the business side. And they like that. I think
they liked that I acknowledged that was an issue. UM.
And it was pretty quick from there, like a series
(14:57):
of conversations. Valuation, which they the cleaners on for sure. Uh.
And what was that first valuation? The first offer was
seven million and then they valued it at I believe
like twelve and a half, some of it going to
the company, some of it going to me, like I
think five million. That's the first time I had real
money went to me. Three millions of the business they
(15:18):
owned fifty of it. I think that was a structure
of the deal. UM. And you negotiated that by yourself,
by myself, bringing like your parents or attorneys or UM.
I told my dad, my dad doesn't know nothing about
this ship. I mean he's a smart guy, but not
miss but no, no attorneys, nothing. I mean, we obviously
had an Interney look at it if it was done, UM,
and we set up the guidelines where like we want
(15:39):
to be here at a certain amount of year. This
that UM. But Karns was right. He was a Barcelol
fan forever and he knew, which I believed, if we
had some structure in business we we would put gasoline
basically on like a fire. And that's kind of exactly
what happened. Like we got in office in New York,
we thought would be there five years or there for ten.
(16:00):
That's um, everything just exploded. So why did you take
the money? He didn't need it. Why did you take
the investment? I mean that's you just started this thing.
It was your baby. You had of it. You could
do it on your concerts and website and everything forever. Yeah,
so I didn't. I believe heavily and our content, our
(16:20):
fan base, and I also thought a lot of people
didn't know who we were. So it's like do you
want to be a big fish in a small pond
or like you know, go for try to hit a
home run. Um. I was also at the point when
Turnon came where it's like, okay, what's my next move?
Like I I can pretty much put this thing on
autopilot and be happy, but I really believe there was
(16:43):
a much bigger goal out there. Also, it was a
cash out moment, not cash out, but it was for
the guys who worked for me for a long time.
Like I was doing great, they were doing decent, but
they weren't like life changing money. They now have life
changing money. Um, so it was a way for everybody
to get to the next step, re engender, reinvigorate everybody.
(17:05):
But it really like I'm in a much different place
if I I don't, I couldn't have gotten here without investment.
I don't think so. And they were the right guys,
like I Bus turned his balls a lot, but um
they really let us do their thing. And through the
years there's been a lot of times where probably other
investors or whatever maybe would have gone cold feet with us,
(17:25):
and they didn't. They've they've been pretty true to their word.
Do you think your ability to stick to having an
opinion no matter what the funk anybody else thinks has
been one of your secret sauces. Yeah, because people are
attracted to the authenticity. Yes, that's and that's not like
a plant. This is me, Like I'm a like cantankerous
type type guy. That's maybe like a Boston the East
(17:47):
Coast edge thing. But it's been like nothing has changed
in that regard from day one. Obviously we're more careful
not to put like balls on te s and let
people just you know, have their way on things. We
know will create controversy because it DAWs ripple. We still
even though I said we're not dependent on advertisers, you
just don't want to piss them away for no reason. Um,
and we know we have a target our back. Like
(18:09):
I don't know how necessarily that has happened, probably some
of the decisions I've made. But I am somebody who
has a target, like for people who probably if they
sat down and like talk to me, would be like
he's actually I like him, Like he's not, he's not.
But you know you read some of the ship out
there and like I sound like Hitler, Um, like it's crazy. So, uh,
(18:30):
we gotta be a little more careful. But yeah, overall,
if I believe in something, I'll stand by it. I don't,
I don't care. And it's it's worked, it's it's created.
It strengthens our fan base, uh, motivates them to support us.
But then it also like the people don't only like you.
There's nothing they hate more than being told like, well,
I don't care what you think. It's just like ramps
(18:52):
them up to completely insane. Yeah right, it's like what
are we gonna do? How do we get this guy?
At that time? Then the business was you had the
the webs right, the website, you're doing the social so
you're building out all the content, the people, you're doing
the merch, you're still doing events. Right when did everything
else start? Like the podcast and the podcast, Yeah, there
(19:13):
was a guy's barstool kind of then just almost kind
of took over, almost to the point like I almost
felt let down, you know, in the early two thousands
by what College Humor could have been. Yeah. Right, And
you've been very good. I think maybe the nicest thing
that someone can say about us, and I've said about us,
So I don't know if it counsel if you said
about yourself. But we've managed to remain cool and ergy
(19:36):
for like almost two decades. We were quick to shift.
We've been on social media, TikTok, you name it, where
we see something like we gotta be there, um, and
we span a bunch of different hourors. Hard to do that,
whether you say college humor, um. There's a lot of examples.
There's so many companies like the Chive or they don't.
They may still be around. I don't see, because everybody
else seems like they have like they have the one
(19:57):
thing they figured it out and they never pivot and
they never go anywhere else because they just think it's
a fat And we touch people in a lot of
ways that they don't even know we're touching them. It's like,
I always there's a guy told me a funny story.
He's like, my girlfriend hates barstool, hates it, like every
stereotype that people have negatively about it, Like she believes,
(20:18):
but she loves the pizza reviews. And I don't have
the heart to tell her it's the same person, Like,
we gotta do some amount of that. But uh, yeah,
the podcasting, we had a guy who did it back
when we're still Milton. I didn't know what it was,
and I told me it was an idiot. It was like,
do it if you want to do like your little
podcast bit, do its. What is that gonna do? Is
before is being monetized. Um. But what we do is
(20:41):
we don't tell people what to do. So if we
hire you, it's because I think you're funny, creative on
the talent side, and then do whatever you want, like
just do if it works, great, if it doesn't, great,
we'll support it and see how kind of the public
reaction to it is. So when we got the investment,
we're able to hire people more freely to do all
this work. Yeah. Yeah. So we have you know, a
(21:04):
podcast like Part of My Take, which is the number
one basically sports podcast in the probably world but definitely country.
Um and were we had a guy, Big Cat who's
been with us forever. He wants to hire a guy
Pro Football Comments Air p f T. He wasn't getting
paid that I think Bleacher Report. We're like, we'll pay you.
They came in instant magic. Um. You know, the call
her Daddy is a story a lot of people know
(21:26):
about where Alex just started this. We just saw like
the reel of it and it's like, oh, this is weird. Um.
And we had Alex come in and I asked him, like,
who who made that sizzle? Really for you? Because it
was slick. I mean it looked slick, and she's like,
I did. I taught myself how to do it. And
once you said that, it's like, all right, we want
to hire you because clearly you're taking it serious. So,
(21:47):
you know, we've had a bunch of that haven't worked.
But we just bring people in and let them do
whatever they want. Like we have this. We have a
golf podcast for Play and they run like tournaments throughout
the country. They sell out very quickly. And you know
this is a Harvard kid Riggs with weird bad eyes.
But I remember he's like, my dream is to work
for you. It's like, all right, whatever, And he came,
(22:09):
drove to New York, sat down. He's like, I don't
want anything. He's like, I don't want money. I just
like enough for me to get by and I'll prove
what I'm doing. Um and he has and we just
let people do whatever they want and we have the advantage.
It's catching up. But I often say we're kind of
like the first digital media company, and where that's advantage.
(22:33):
The people who work for us, like are born from
the Internet, so they they have gotten our attention by
being funny or more interesting than other people, like the
beauty Internet. Now, I always help people you don't need us,
like for like, you can create your resume online, we
can look at it. You can create your whatever TikTok podcast.
Whereas a lot of older media people they expect to
(22:56):
be told what to do, what to say, and they
don't have that kind of mentality that you need on
the Internet. So it's just given us an advantage. We
just move way faster. I think that gap is shrinking now,
but that was a huge advantage early. What if he
tried doing that definitely hasn't worked. I don't know, Um,
(23:22):
I mean we did that music tour that did not work,
the one that failed. Uh, trying to think, you know,
we moved so quick out of things. There's definitely podcast
there's been people that have gone, come or gone, but
that that the music tours the big one. I don't know.
We weren't good at early contracts. Like again, we touched
(23:42):
people so many different ways. But like, have you ever
heard the name Jenna Marble's so like I hired her,
like she really yeah, Like she worked in a tanning
salon in Boston, we and I hired her. She ran
a female site called Stool a La, so we had
Barstool Sports Stolo La. She floated all her early videos
and we didn't know how to monetize it. So it's
(24:03):
like she got offered to move to l A show
me the contract, like yeah, go do it, um, and
then we got kind of a falling out the day
she not kind of we got a falling out the
day she left because she basically I thought kind of
wrote something but long story short, like that situation we
didn't handle well. But like there's so many you know,
a lot of people point to Pat McAfee, which maybe
(24:24):
we didn't know how to manage talent totally properly out
of that. But the web of barstool was thinking like
as I was walking over, is a lot greater, like
whether it be Jenna Um. I mean, I think we've
launched the two biggest female social media stars of the
last twenty years with Alex and Um Jenna, and yet
people will be like their sexist, Like the results say
(24:46):
something like totally different. We have a female CEO and
those two examples. You know, biz uh Biz was on
TANTS like hockey launched, they're back on the NHLs, back
on TNT and like he's saying next to Wayne Gretzky
on the main booth, like that's spin and Chicklets, like
our podcast, Um Pink Whitney the Drink. It's just where
(25:07):
just touched people in a lot of different ways that
they're not totally aware. Some I'll walk down the street,
people like that's the pizza man. That's all they know,
Like we just launched the one Bite frozen pizza and Walmart.
It's like, I think we sold two thousand of them
in like a week. It's like the number one frozen things.
So we just we have a ravenous audience and it's
all real and offense and the pizza reviews that you've
always done. Do you remember when you did the first one? Yeah,
(25:29):
it was a debate Dan Big Cat and I got in,
which is, if you could eat one food the rest
of your life, what would it be? I said pizza?
He said burritos. He was going with, like you can
do like breakfast burrito basically. UM. And we did it
for a month straight. So that's all I ate. That's
all he ate. And I was just doing. People be like,
well is it any good? I like, I'll give you
one bite. Here's a review, like quick. And that's how
(25:50):
it started, the same thing. It's like people are inch
like something happened with it. We're just a little spark. Yeah,
it's like why do people care so much about this? Um?
And then when we moved to New York, I was
just like, I'll try them all now would I definitely
if it wasn't working, But I could tell you just
tell when things are going it's like, okay, this pizzas resonating.
It also is weirdly like a window into I think
(26:13):
New York life, like because I would walk out and
do it and all these weirdos would just jump into
the review. Um and that kind of just took on
a life of its own. But a lot of people
now the pizza, like I said, they have no idea
necessarily about barstool, like none. They'll just be like, that's
the guy who eats pizza. Yeah. I don't know if
that's insulting or compliment people just pizza, man, though, Like
just well it at me as I'm walking by. So
(26:35):
it's particulous. What's the best advice that you give out? Now?
When people ask you, I just always say, like, don't
talk about it, just do it. Like there's so many
people just talk ideas and do And even in my
own kid, it's like, hey, we want to do this,
that's all right, do it, like you don't need me
to do it. So I always tell people at it's
like it's very easy to talk about something, Um, it's
a lot harder. Just do it. But that's that's what
(26:57):
I generally tell people, and I mean, I don't know. Well,
I always say we were in I think a lot
of companies are probably this way. We're the right time,
right place, and the right people like you kind of
need all those things probably together, you know. And it's
the one business that you've ever started. It's grown into
hundreds of other businesses. So what's next now? Right? You
(27:19):
said you're super rich, you got all these houses everywhere. Yeah,
I'm not that young. Um, gambling is a huge focus
and I've never really been in something like this where it's, uh,
it's like a gut or war. Like I've never had
as direct like peer to peer competition as we do now.
Like it's very all I can name them. It's like,
all right, we're competing versus DraftKings, Vanduel Caesar's MGM, big
(27:43):
boys spending literally like billions of dollars on marketing. We
don't spend any We just go with the like it's
barstool versus them. Like you won't see our ads in
the NFL. You won't see any of that. So it's
scrappy underdog. But it's different, and that is like the
focus for the next you know, least kind of three years.
(28:05):
Your story is super inspiring and it's very very cool
because you've built something that never existed before. Yeah, like
you've invented something with your eyeballs and then you just
created it and just kept writing it, which I you know,
I think obviously everyone in this room, everyone in this company,
everyone out on the street, is now very very clearly
aware of But it's just been super awesome to watch,
and I just want to say congrats. I appreciate the Forbes.
(28:28):
I saw they had a line they called me and
I forget it was one of the dawns of digital media.
I was gonna print it out and just wear it.
It's like a T shirt. I really like that. That
was that's ever been said about one the dawns of
digital media. Maybe what's been one of the coolest moments
You've had? Two craft going the box. Because I'm a
dire Patriot and uh, like I'm a Jimmy Buffett guy,
(28:50):
Like I'm talking high school. Put the shark fin on
the super go to the Tweeter Center, watch it, and
he invite me over his house for lunch. So that
was pretty surreal. Um, it takes a lot and actually
I don't know why, but I like I always I
always watched the Real estate shows. What's the other guy, Frederick?
(29:12):
I saw him walking. I saw him walking. This is
just funny. It's not one of the surreal but I
saw him walking, and I don't want you not tell me.
This is one of the greatest moments. It was one
of the most surreal, though. I'm like, hey, can I
get a picture because I watched the show. He's the
only man. He won't stop. He's like, yeah, but you
gonna keep walking. He definitely had no idea who I was.
When was this is probably like a year and a half,
(29:33):
two years ago. It's the old office, and he like
made me go back take it. I told everybody's like,
I just saw this guy Frederick. He big time the
funk on. It's like walking. But yeah, no, it's it's
the it's just jiggered that it was. Um it's it's
the Jimmy Buffett or the Craft. I mean, there's always
those surreal moments that have happened, but weirdly like we
(29:55):
I went to um uh Kenny Chesney concert serious one
the other day, and who is I'm sure you know
the name? Oh I got confused, but they they're like, hey,
Randy Garber wants to come up and say hello to
like I didn't named in Jugara, So I was like, okay, yeah,
sure whatever brought up in Cindy Crawford was with them
almost faithed, like just that's like an I because so
(30:16):
weird moments like that where it's like what happened to
my life? Where like they're coming up to say hello
to me? Uh, I still appreciate that those are pretty
pretty surreal. Yea nuts. Do you think you'll ever turn
what you're doing now maybe into you know, into your
own venture, like investing in other companies, other digital media companies,
other entrepreneurs, because you seem like I have a really
(30:37):
really great knack for talent and now that bar stools
with pen and I like when I look at you,
I also see somebody that like what I just said,
like you you know what's gonna work, and you just
have that intuition and ways that other people don't. Yeah,
So this is something that a lot of people have
said I'm full of ship on, but I have said
(30:58):
once I'm done, which I think will be at the
end of this pen deal, like I'll make sure like
I still don't leave Penheim and dry and I'll be
connected with it. But I could just pooh vanish and
not work like everyone's like, no, you have that. No
I think I could, So I don't have. I've made
more than I ever dreamed. I I started Barcetool not
to be wealthy, to do something I enjoyed doing. If
(31:20):
that meant sixties seventy grand a year working for myself happy,
I honestly would have been happy. Um so I could
sit on a couch, watch horse racing, bet on sports,
golf a little bit and be very very happy. So
that's what I say. Now Everyone's like, no chance, like
you'll see, like you'll get the bug, But I honestly
don't think I would. So I just want to kind
of be done and go enjoy life. Yeah yeah, I
(31:43):
mean I haven't travel. I haven't done. It's like I've
been busy almost NonStop since I started it. Have you
traveled the world a lot? Like if Canada is like
exotic for me? I haven't. I haven't traveled much. Pizza
and like wants. I went to Italy once, yeah, for
but the way I did it was not relaxing. It
was like, uh, you know, pack your bags landing a
(32:05):
place sleep that night, drive two more out. It was
like packing much of it. Yeah, so it wasn't relaxing
at all. Um, but no, I really haven't traveled, got it?
So you could do that. Yeah, there's a lot I
could do. There's a lot I could do. Again, people
say it's Bullshit's like you won't be able to do it.
I think I will be able to do it. I've
always said I was just a cloud of smoke and
(32:26):
see that. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhant.
It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loreesca, an executive
produced by Lindsay Hawkman. Find more podcasts like Big Money
Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you
get your podcasts.
What's up, everybody. Welcome to season two of the Big
Money Energy Podcast on my Heart Radio. We have a huge,
huge season coming up. Some of my favorite people ever
for some reason actually agreed to be here and do
this with me. And our first guest today needs no introduction,
but obviously I'm going to introduce him to you anyway.
We talk about a lot of different things, but it's
(00:22):
Dave Portnoy bar Stool Sports. You all know him, stool
president day. You might be a stool, might be a
fan yourself, but his story is so interesting and we
talk a lot about the building of bar stools, which
is what I was the most interested in, the building
of personal wealth, which you didn't do with the money,
with the money means to you and the freedom that
then comes with one having influence, to having power, and
(00:45):
three having the wherewithal to do whatever you want. And
we talk about how he built the number one digital
media company in the world by using fans, by using culture,
and by using opinions, especially those of a guy like
him personally, because he's the base of Barstool Sports. So
thank you so much for being here. This is the
(01:05):
premier episode season two. Let's go. Thanks for being here
man um, so weant to talk to you about the
most right is is not so much like public persona,
(01:27):
although that's super interesting, especially in the last eighteen months.
But it's like the business of Barstool, right and kind
of the creation of the brand and creation of kind
of the I guess, like the movement that you started
and you found it in Boston, did you always know
that you were going to be an entrepreneur and start
your own company. Yeah, I always wanted to do that.
(01:48):
Did I know it would be Barstool or anything that
looks like it. No, But I knew I was gonna
do my own thing. Like I had a bunch of
different ideas before I start Barstool. I thought Barstool would
be the easiest to do without money, without funding. It
didn't look anything like this. It was basically a newspaper.
It started as like an offshore gambling things. But you
had them around Boston, you correct, Yeah, you still like
the news racks. You still see them in every city.
(02:10):
You know, you open it, you take it for newspaper.
So I like gambling. I basically called I want to
do something I liked, enjoyed, and called all these offshore
gambling companies and basically asked them what they would advertise
in whether it advertised online anywhere. They actually at the
time want to get off the Internet because, um so,
this is why around two thousand three, two thousand four,
(02:30):
if you went on a site gambling site, there's like fireworks, bombs,
it just looks like you're getting a credit card stolen. Really,
um so, they want to get off the Internet and
onto a physical newspaper. So I sold a bunch of
ads before it launched. Um but it was really four
page black and white, hardcore like sports fantasy sports gambling.
That's where it launched from. But it was always a
business side, Like I had other ideas. This is the
(02:52):
one I landed on because I thought I could do
it the easiest. Probably idiotic to like launch that thinking
that would be the easiest, but for whatever reason, I
thought it was the most realistic use furniture company. So
this was again it's kind of like internet one point.
Oh when I was doing this, but you know how
like college kids graduate and they just throw their furniture
(03:13):
on the side of the street. I was like, well,
what if we just have a huge couple of trucks
pick it all up for free, warehouse it and then
sell it online and it's you know, for cheap, but
we're getting it for free. So that was one of them, um,
and I actually think there's some companies that do that now.
And then the other those kind of like with like
office furniture. Yeah right, so and then the other one.
(03:34):
So I was like decent at sports, but like not
D one but like D three good. And the thought
was to connect And again you gotta remember the time
it was with the internet to connect coaches like D
three coaches with like D three athletes. So high school
kids we're going to college who still want to play sports,
and most of the schools don't have recruiting budgets and
things like that, but the coaches still want good players.
(03:57):
So it was a way to connect those people. It's
pretty elaborate, Like I spent two grand at the time,
a ton of money for me, like developing the software.
Uh so it was called next step scouting. Um, but
those are the two, those are the three I decided
between barstool next Step scouting in the furniture company. And
how many people started with you when you started barstool
(04:17):
me just me, but then you started to bring in
some friends. Yeah, not even friends really, Like I talked
with my friends about starting it, and everyone was gung ho,
gung ho. But when the rubber met the road, there
are nowhere to be found, and I was just like funking,
I'm gonna do it. Um, So I started it. And
then we put ads in the original newspapers like we're
looking for writers, we're looking people to help, and we
(04:38):
got like an original four people. But I didn't know
them prior to the newspaper and they never got paid,
like we weren't making money. They work for free because
they enjoyed writing. Um, it's bad timing for them because
we don't want to say floundered, but we didn't have
money for a long time, so there's nothing around and
they all at some point got adult lives, Like I moved.
(04:59):
This is not worth it. And the timing kind of
like when they stopped as sort of when we started
our ascent to them being able to maybe to make money.
We go on the internet at the time too, or
then you made that switch. No, So it was in
newspaper for I don't know two thousand four to two
thousand seven, two eight, and I used to wake up
and hand the newspaper out like outside subway stations, and
(05:21):
a guy who took it like routinely was moving from
Boston to New York and basically he's like, I loved
the newspaper. If I build you a website, will you
put it on the web. I was like, yeah, if
you want to do that for free, knock yourself out,
and the original ones. I just take the PDF and
uploaded the guy uh Ian White ended up being like
(05:41):
the CTO for Business Insider. So I got very lucky,
Like sharp guy built me a very easy to use,
rudimentary another guy who worked for free for quite a while.
If I'm like, hey, can you change this or do that,
he'd do it just to be nice. But that was
the birth of the website. Yeah, not playing. Yeah, I
mean when I started, if you told somebody I had
(06:03):
a blog, they'd be what is that? It wasn't a
term yet. When did you first start noticing that you
had traction? Because you said you weren't making money for
a little while. And I feel like every business kind
of has that moment where it's not working yet, you're
not making money yet, but you know there's like that
that little bit of traction that like, I'm gonna keep
doing this and not go do my furniture idea. Yeah,
so I always thought it was on the ascent. But
(06:26):
I've heard a lot of people say that in most businesses,
I know fail. I also don't know if as a
rational it turned out I was right. But I've only
done one business and it worked, so, you know, I
always thought it was kind of going up. UM, and
I delivered the papers myself. I go around Boston. Every
time I went in bars every week, it was like, um,
you know, more and more people will be like hey,
(06:48):
waiting for it. So it's just I had that gut
feeling like hey, this is more and more people are
picking up on it. But it was probably when I
really was like, oh we got something here. We did
a music tour in two thousand and and called Stula Palooza. UM.
We had never been outside of metro Boston, and the
thought was, let's go see what the world is like
outside of Boston. So he picks six colleges. You Mass Quinnipiac,
(07:12):
you are like local schools, UM, and we hired this kid,
Sam Adams, who actually went on to a pretty decent
career at the time, nobody knew who he was, and
it was music based because we wanted to get liquor sponsors,
and it's like we had to figure out how to
do that. I remember, We're going to bars. That was
the plan. I go to little bars, do little events.
And the Mullin Center is the arena arena you mass
(07:36):
And I think maybe a day after we put tickets
on sale for this little bar, the arena called and
they're like, hey, we're getting all these calls for this
concert Stulla Palouza, Like what is it? And it's like,
it's just a little thing. We're doing at like a bar,
like a hundred people like would you ever try to
do it at the Mullin Center? And I was like, well,
we can't afford that. I don't thinking like I don't
(07:57):
know how many tickets, Like we're just getting a lot
of people asked me about it, so we think we
could do. They cut me a pretty good deal um,
and we sold. It was just the floor, so it
was three thousand people and sold out like five minutes,
and and you thought you were gonna yeah, and it
happened everywhere at all six and we showed up and
we've been through a lot now, But it was like
(08:18):
the Beatles were there, like the signs were in every
dorm had like vehetle of stool, like we get out
of the bus, people like grab it. It was insane,
it really was. And that was that was probably the
moment when I was like, Okay, we have a very big,
much bigger base than I ever realized at the time.
So that was probably the first real eye opening, like
I'm not gonna have to stop this. When did bar
(08:47):
still start making money? That tour was the first time
we made I would say real money, like I I
paid Sam Adams twenty grands for the six shows, and
we probably made a couple of hundred grands. Uh, and
that because he sold way more tickets than in Yeah,
and then we we moved. We continued with it and
(09:08):
started doing something called the Blackout Tour. We did a
couple of different concert things. Actually one was an abject failure.
We did something called so I saw that I saw
that first tour. It's like holy cow, Like we did
three thousand tickets with no talent. Imagine if I bring
talent in and rent these arenas for Walham, we can
make a tont Do you remember how much you're charging
(09:29):
for tickets about fifty bucks. So like we did this,
uh a concert tour called back to Stool does Mike Posner,
which was like cooler than me, was big uh wallet
Mac Miller on it for bucks. Uh. So it was
like a pretty loaded lineup sold the same exact amount
(09:51):
of tickets, Like we didn't go up one ticket. It
was the same, and and we were tied in with
these like I changed it. I was so confident. I
rented these huge arenas and I thought we were going
to business because I owed them so much the ticket sales,
we we canceled tour and I could basically like loss,
So we're fine. I could handle that. But what I
(10:14):
learned from that was people did not care about our talent.
They were coming for Barstool, they were not coming for
who we put on it. So we came back with
a DJ tour called the Blackout Tour UM and that
was just a DJ I'm still friends with played other
people's music, and we were charging fifty dollars to come
to that, and it exploded that that's so crazy. We
(10:37):
went through a period whereas we do three or four
shows a night, and I was clearing like net maybe
like a quarter of a million a night. It was wild,
like you couldn't get the tickets. It was all just
in metro Boston. No, We're everywhere throughout the country and
throughout that entire time you owned bar stool until Yes,
(10:59):
So twenty fifteen sixteen area a guy Mike Karns, who
ran Yahoo's sports switched went to churning. Um. And at
this point we're more successful I think than probably most
people give us credit for with the merch business and
sales and like I was making, you know, well into
seven figures. So I wasn't like, oh, I'm looking for investment.
(11:21):
I was happy. Um. And you weren't publicizing the success
at that time or no, right, no, because in a
weird way, there's always that dynamic of like we's just
this gritty like blue collar company of band made. I
was a little bit. I got an int a Tucket
House that people are very well aware of, and I've
been honest with like where I'm at in like life
financially or success wise. When we had nothing, I told you,
(11:44):
and now we started having it. Um. When you buy
the Nantucket House, is that their team? Yeah? It was
pre churning, like that was to be honest, that's my
favorite place in the world. And if I ever was
able or fortunate enough to get enough to like buy
that house, I mean like I made it. So I
was very happy. Mike Karns reached out to me. That's
the Churning He worked for Churning UM through a friend
(12:06):
who actually passed away the old quarterback for the Giants
in Kentucky, the hefty lefty Jared Lorenzen, who we had
done some stuff with UM and was friends with. So
he hit me up. He's like, do you mind if
I passed uh your name and number along with this
guy He's he's a friend of a friend of an
agent or something like yeah. Sure. So he reached out,
was like, I just want to talk to you, like,
(12:27):
would you guys ever take investment? Like you know? Maybe
He's like, well, can I come talk to you? Was
in San Francisco and he was in Boston the next day,
So right off the bat, that's like a pretty serious
sign of somebody's like okay, I'll be there and they're there.
I'd had a lot of other people reach out. Something's
always off. It's like they want paid to go see
them or what all right, how serious are you? And
(12:48):
I wasn't looking for anything because you guys are making money, right,
I wasn't actively trying. I I never thought we would.
What was your like gross revenue around that time? It
was probably like fifteen million, and like we're probably netting
like four or five off of that something like that
now because he didn't need the investment. Yeah right, And
(13:09):
I'm running the business myself. So it's like I was
happy he comes in. He's basically was very open ended.
He's like, if we gave you money, what would you
do with it? Um? And what do you think your
strengths and weaknesses are? Uh? And I basically said I
would create what I considered the first reality seven like blog,
which is get we're all in different cities, do you
(13:29):
everyone in New York in the one roof? Put the
cameras on, just go at it? And that was kind
of the idea basic um. And I'm like, we don't
do the business side. Now. I think I could. I
just didn't really have time. It's like, we have the content,
that's all we did. But we didn't try to say,
I like to spend money with us, you had to
like know somebody who knew something to like get in
(13:51):
my year because we didn't call back like leads. We
just like whatever, you can do whatever you want. We
weren't looking to do that. So it's like we're smart though,
I mean now, but as as they're trying to do
that to copy what you did, almost right, it's like
it was hard to do it. Like I remember the
company that is now DraftKings like he they had to
call in like a favor basically to get me to
(14:13):
take their call and spend money with us, Like all right,
I'll let you do it, but I really don't want to. Um. Again,
I was doing well and I didn't want advertisers like
calling me up my ass and like I just didn't
work because whatever, then don't do it. I don't care
um so he he. And then the other thing I
said with Currents is we gotta build out the business side,
like we don't do anything with that. Our technology sucks.
(14:35):
I mean, we had such a loyal fan base, like
if our website broke, we just like you'll be back
when we check it, um, and they would um. So
we had no technology, no sales, no nothing, and it's
like we gotta hire CEO and we gotta just build
out the business side. And they like that. I think
they liked that I acknowledged that was an issue. UM.
And it was pretty quick from there, like a series
(14:57):
of conversations. Valuation, which they the cleaners on for sure. Uh.
And what was that first valuation? The first offer was
seven million and then they valued it at I believe
like twelve and a half, some of it going to
the company, some of it going to me, like I
think five million. That's the first time I had real
money went to me. Three millions of the business they
(15:18):
owned fifty of it. I think that was a structure
of the deal. UM. And you negotiated that by yourself,
by myself, bringing like your parents or attorneys or UM.
I told my dad, my dad doesn't know nothing about
this ship. I mean he's a smart guy, but not
miss but no, no attorneys, nothing. I mean, we obviously
had an Interney look at it if it was done, UM,
and we set up the guidelines where like we want
(15:39):
to be here at a certain amount of year. This
that UM. But Karns was right. He was a Barcelol
fan forever and he knew, which I believed, if we
had some structure in business we we would put gasoline
basically on like a fire. And that's kind of exactly
what happened. Like we got in office in New York,
we thought would be there five years or there for ten.
(16:00):
That's um, everything just exploded. So why did you take
the money? He didn't need it. Why did you take
the investment? I mean that's you just started this thing.
It was your baby. You had of it. You could
do it on your concerts and website and everything forever. Yeah,
so I didn't. I believe heavily and our content, our
(16:20):
fan base, and I also thought a lot of people
didn't know who we were. So it's like do you
want to be a big fish in a small pond
or like you know, go for try to hit a
home run. Um. I was also at the point when
Turnon came where it's like, okay, what's my next move?
Like I I can pretty much put this thing on
autopilot and be happy, but I really believe there was
(16:43):
a much bigger goal out there. Also, it was a
cash out moment, not cash out, but it was for
the guys who worked for me for a long time.
Like I was doing great, they were doing decent, but
they weren't like life changing money. They now have life
changing money. Um, so it was a way for everybody
to get to the next step, re engender, reinvigorate everybody.
(17:05):
But it really like I'm in a much different place
if I I don't, I couldn't have gotten here without investment.
I don't think so. And they were the right guys,
like I Bus turned his balls a lot, but um
they really let us do their thing. And through the
years there's been a lot of times where probably other
investors or whatever maybe would have gone cold feet with us,
(17:25):
and they didn't. They've they've been pretty true to their word.
Do you think your ability to stick to having an
opinion no matter what the funk anybody else thinks has
been one of your secret sauces. Yeah, because people are
attracted to the authenticity. Yes, that's and that's not like
a plant. This is me, Like I'm a like cantankerous
type type guy. That's maybe like a Boston the East
(17:47):
Coast edge thing. But it's been like nothing has changed
in that regard from day one. Obviously we're more careful
not to put like balls on te s and let
people just you know, have their way on things. We
know will create controversy because it DAWs ripple. We still
even though I said we're not dependent on advertisers, you
just don't want to piss them away for no reason. Um,
and we know we have a target our back. Like
(18:09):
I don't know how necessarily that has happened, probably some
of the decisions I've made. But I am somebody who
has a target, like for people who probably if they
sat down and like talk to me, would be like
he's actually I like him, Like he's not, he's not.
But you know you read some of the ship out
there and like I sound like Hitler, Um, like it's crazy. So, uh,
(18:30):
we gotta be a little more careful. But yeah, overall,
if I believe in something, I'll stand by it. I don't,
I don't care. And it's it's worked, it's it's created.
It strengthens our fan base, uh, motivates them to support us.
But then it also like the people don't only like you.
There's nothing they hate more than being told like, well,
I don't care what you think. It's just like ramps
(18:52):
them up to completely insane. Yeah right, it's like what
are we gonna do? How do we get this guy?
At that time? Then the business was you had the
the webs right, the website, you're doing the social so
you're building out all the content, the people, you're doing
the merch, you're still doing events. Right when did everything
else start? Like the podcast and the podcast, Yeah, there
(19:13):
was a guy's barstool kind of then just almost kind
of took over, almost to the point like I almost
felt let down, you know, in the early two thousands
by what College Humor could have been. Yeah. Right, And
you've been very good. I think maybe the nicest thing
that someone can say about us, and I've said about us,
So I don't know if it counsel if you said
about yourself. But we've managed to remain cool and ergy
(19:36):
for like almost two decades. We were quick to shift.
We've been on social media, TikTok, you name it, where
we see something like we gotta be there, um, and
we span a bunch of different hourors. Hard to do that,
whether you say college humor, um. There's a lot of examples.
There's so many companies like the Chive or they don't.
They may still be around. I don't see, because everybody
else seems like they have like they have the one
(19:57):
thing they figured it out and they never pivot and
they never go anywhere else because they just think it's
a fat And we touch people in a lot of
ways that they don't even know we're touching them. It's like,
I always there's a guy told me a funny story.
He's like, my girlfriend hates barstool, hates it, like every
stereotype that people have negatively about it, Like she believes,
(20:18):
but she loves the pizza reviews. And I don't have
the heart to tell her it's the same person, Like,
we gotta do some amount of that. But uh, yeah,
the podcasting, we had a guy who did it back
when we're still Milton. I didn't know what it was,
and I told me it was an idiot. It was like,
do it if you want to do like your little
podcast bit, do its. What is that gonna do? Is
before is being monetized. Um. But what we do is
(20:41):
we don't tell people what to do. So if we
hire you, it's because I think you're funny, creative on
the talent side, and then do whatever you want, like
just do if it works, great, if it doesn't, great,
we'll support it and see how kind of the public
reaction to it is. So when we got the investment,
we're able to hire people more freely to do all
this work. Yeah. Yeah. So we have you know, a
(21:04):
podcast like Part of My Take, which is the number
one basically sports podcast in the probably world but definitely country.
Um and were we had a guy, Big Cat who's
been with us forever. He wants to hire a guy
Pro Football Comments Air p f T. He wasn't getting
paid that I think Bleacher Report. We're like, we'll pay you.
They came in instant magic. Um. You know, the call
her Daddy is a story a lot of people know
(21:26):
about where Alex just started this. We just saw like
the reel of it and it's like, oh, this is weird. Um.
And we had Alex come in and I asked him, like,
who who made that sizzle? Really for you? Because it
was slick. I mean it looked slick, and she's like,
I did. I taught myself how to do it. And
once you said that, it's like, all right, we want
to hire you because clearly you're taking it serious. So,
(21:47):
you know, we've had a bunch of that haven't worked.
But we just bring people in and let them do
whatever they want. Like we have this. We have a
golf podcast for Play and they run like tournaments throughout
the country. They sell out very quickly. And you know
this is a Harvard kid Riggs with weird bad eyes.
But I remember he's like, my dream is to work
for you. It's like, all right, whatever, And he came,
(22:09):
drove to New York, sat down. He's like, I don't
want anything. He's like, I don't want money. I just
like enough for me to get by and I'll prove
what I'm doing. Um and he has and we just
let people do whatever they want and we have the advantage.
It's catching up. But I often say we're kind of
like the first digital media company, and where that's advantage.
(22:33):
The people who work for us, like are born from
the Internet, so they they have gotten our attention by
being funny or more interesting than other people, like the
beauty Internet. Now, I always help people you don't need us,
like for like, you can create your resume online, we
can look at it. You can create your whatever TikTok podcast.
Whereas a lot of older media people they expect to
(22:56):
be told what to do, what to say, and they
don't have that kind of mentality that you need on
the Internet. So it's just given us an advantage. We
just move way faster. I think that gap is shrinking now,
but that was a huge advantage early. What if he
tried doing that definitely hasn't worked. I don't know, Um,
(23:22):
I mean we did that music tour that did not work,
the one that failed. Uh, trying to think, you know,
we moved so quick out of things. There's definitely podcast
there's been people that have gone, come or gone, but
that that the music tours the big one. I don't know.
We weren't good at early contracts. Like again, we touched
(23:42):
people so many different ways. But like, have you ever
heard the name Jenna Marble's so like I hired her,
like she really yeah, Like she worked in a tanning
salon in Boston, we and I hired her. She ran
a female site called Stool a La, so we had
Barstool Sports Stolo La. She floated all her early videos
and we didn't know how to monetize it. So it's
(24:03):
like she got offered to move to l A show
me the contract, like yeah, go do it, um, and
then we got kind of a falling out the day
she not kind of we got a falling out the
day she left because she basically I thought kind of
wrote something but long story short, like that situation we
didn't handle well. But like there's so many you know,
a lot of people point to Pat McAfee, which maybe
(24:24):
we didn't know how to manage talent totally properly out
of that. But the web of barstool was thinking like
as I was walking over, is a lot greater, like
whether it be Jenna Um. I mean, I think we've
launched the two biggest female social media stars of the
last twenty years with Alex and Um Jenna, and yet
people will be like their sexist, Like the results say
(24:46):
something like totally different. We have a female CEO and
those two examples. You know, biz uh Biz was on
TANTS like hockey launched, they're back on the NHLs, back
on TNT and like he's saying next to Wayne Gretzky
on the main booth, like that's spin and Chicklets, like
our podcast, Um Pink Whitney the Drink. It's just where
(25:07):
just touched people in a lot of different ways that
they're not totally aware. Some I'll walk down the street,
people like that's the pizza man. That's all they know,
Like we just launched the one Bite frozen pizza and Walmart.
It's like, I think we sold two thousand of them
in like a week. It's like the number one frozen things.
So we just we have a ravenous audience and it's
all real and offense and the pizza reviews that you've
always done. Do you remember when you did the first one? Yeah,
(25:29):
it was a debate Dan Big Cat and I got in,
which is, if you could eat one food the rest
of your life, what would it be? I said pizza?
He said burritos. He was going with, like you can
do like breakfast burrito basically. UM. And we did it
for a month straight. So that's all I ate. That's
all he ate. And I was just doing. People be like,
well is it any good? I like, I'll give you
one bite. Here's a review, like quick. And that's how
(25:50):
it started, the same thing. It's like people are inch
like something happened with it. We're just a little spark. Yeah,
it's like why do people care so much about this? Um?
And then when we moved to New York, I was
just like, I'll try them all now would I definitely
if it wasn't working, But I could tell you just
tell when things are going it's like, okay, this pizzas resonating.
It also is weirdly like a window into I think
(26:13):
New York life, like because I would walk out and
do it and all these weirdos would just jump into
the review. Um and that kind of just took on
a life of its own. But a lot of people
now the pizza, like I said, they have no idea
necessarily about barstool, like none. They'll just be like, that's
the guy who eats pizza. Yeah. I don't know if
that's insulting or compliment people just pizza, man, though, Like
just well it at me as I'm walking by. So
(26:35):
it's particulous. What's the best advice that you give out? Now?
When people ask you, I just always say, like, don't
talk about it, just do it. Like there's so many
people just talk ideas and do And even in my
own kid, it's like, hey, we want to do this,
that's all right, do it, like you don't need me
to do it. So I always tell people at it's
like it's very easy to talk about something, Um, it's
a lot harder. Just do it. But that's that's what
(26:57):
I generally tell people, and I mean, I don't know. Well,
I always say we were in I think a lot
of companies are probably this way. We're the right time,
right place, and the right people like you kind of
need all those things probably together, you know. And it's
the one business that you've ever started. It's grown into
hundreds of other businesses. So what's next now? Right? You
(27:19):
said you're super rich, you got all these houses everywhere. Yeah,
I'm not that young. Um, gambling is a huge focus
and I've never really been in something like this where it's, uh,
it's like a gut or war. Like I've never had
as direct like peer to peer competition as we do now.
Like it's very all I can name them. It's like,
all right, we're competing versus DraftKings, Vanduel Caesar's MGM, big
(27:43):
boys spending literally like billions of dollars on marketing. We
don't spend any We just go with the like it's
barstool versus them. Like you won't see our ads in
the NFL. You won't see any of that. So it's
scrappy underdog. But it's different, and that is like the
focus for the next you know, least kind of three years.
(28:05):
Your story is super inspiring and it's very very cool
because you've built something that never existed before. Yeah, like
you've invented something with your eyeballs and then you just
created it and just kept writing it, which I you know,
I think obviously everyone in this room, everyone in this company,
everyone out on the street, is now very very clearly
aware of But it's just been super awesome to watch,
and I just want to say congrats. I appreciate the Forbes.
(28:28):
I saw they had a line they called me and
I forget it was one of the dawns of digital media.
I was gonna print it out and just wear it.
It's like a T shirt. I really like that. That
was that's ever been said about one the dawns of
digital media. Maybe what's been one of the coolest moments
You've had? Two craft going the box. Because I'm a
dire Patriot and uh, like I'm a Jimmy Buffett guy,
(28:50):
Like I'm talking high school. Put the shark fin on
the super go to the Tweeter Center, watch it, and
he invite me over his house for lunch. So that
was pretty surreal. Um, it takes a lot and actually
I don't know why, but I like I always I
always watched the Real estate shows. What's the other guy, Frederick?
(29:12):
I saw him walking. I saw him walking. This is
just funny. It's not one of the surreal but I
saw him walking, and I don't want you not tell me.
This is one of the greatest moments. It was one
of the most surreal, though. I'm like, hey, can I
get a picture because I watched the show. He's the
only man. He won't stop. He's like, yeah, but you
gonna keep walking. He definitely had no idea who I was.
When was this is probably like a year and a half,
(29:33):
two years ago. It's the old office, and he like
made me go back take it. I told everybody's like,
I just saw this guy Frederick. He big time the
funk on. It's like walking. But yeah, no, it's it's
the it's just jiggered that it was. Um it's it's
the Jimmy Buffett or the Craft. I mean, there's always
those surreal moments that have happened, but weirdly like we
(29:55):
I went to um uh Kenny Chesney concert serious one
the other day, and who is I'm sure you know
the name? Oh I got confused, but they they're like, hey,
Randy Garber wants to come up and say hello to
like I didn't named in Jugara, So I was like, okay, yeah,
sure whatever brought up in Cindy Crawford was with them
almost faithed, like just that's like an I because so
(30:16):
weird moments like that where it's like what happened to
my life? Where like they're coming up to say hello
to me? Uh, I still appreciate that those are pretty
pretty surreal. Yea nuts. Do you think you'll ever turn
what you're doing now maybe into you know, into your
own venture, like investing in other companies, other digital media companies,
other entrepreneurs, because you seem like I have a really
(30:37):
really great knack for talent and now that bar stools
with pen and I like when I look at you,
I also see somebody that like what I just said,
like you you know what's gonna work, and you just
have that intuition and ways that other people don't. Yeah,
So this is something that a lot of people have
said I'm full of ship on, but I have said
(30:58):
once I'm done, which I think will be at the
end of this pen deal, like I'll make sure like
I still don't leave Penheim and dry and I'll be
connected with it. But I could just pooh vanish and
not work like everyone's like, no, you have that. No
I think I could, So I don't have. I've made
more than I ever dreamed. I I started Barcetool not
to be wealthy, to do something I enjoyed doing. If
(31:20):
that meant sixties seventy grand a year working for myself happy,
I honestly would have been happy. Um so I could
sit on a couch, watch horse racing, bet on sports,
golf a little bit and be very very happy. So
that's what I say. Now Everyone's like, no chance, like
you'll see, like you'll get the bug, But I honestly
don't think I would. So I just want to kind
of be done and go enjoy life. Yeah yeah, I
(31:43):
mean I haven't travel. I haven't done. It's like I've
been busy almost NonStop since I started it. Have you
traveled the world a lot? Like if Canada is like
exotic for me? I haven't. I haven't traveled much. Pizza
and like wants. I went to Italy once, yeah, for
but the way I did it was not relaxing. It
was like, uh, you know, pack your bags landing a
(32:05):
place sleep that night, drive two more out. It was
like packing much of it. Yeah, so it wasn't relaxing
at all. Um, but no, I really haven't traveled, got it?
So you could do that. Yeah, there's a lot I
could do. There's a lot I could do. Again, people
say it's Bullshit's like you won't be able to do it.
I think I will be able to do it. I've
always said I was just a cloud of smoke and
(32:26):
see that. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhant.
It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loreesca, an executive
produced by Lindsay Hawkman. Find more podcasts like Big Money
Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you
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