If you were to chart an end to a story like Barstool’s, you couldn’t do much better than the axing of Barstool Van Talk in 2017. The fratty disruptors go to Bristol with an idea and a late-night slot, only to be canceled when the cultural winds blow against them. Chasing and then being rejected by the mainstream would usually be an arrow to the heart of anti-establishment jokers.
Barstool proved an unkillable beast. The world saw the brand for what it was, with ESPN’s Sam Ponder simply the most high-profile example of collateral damage whom Barstool talent was willing to take down in order to win an audience and set a tone. Barstool recoiled and regrouped, and in the near-decade since, it has risen again. Van Talk was not a funeral but a sharp turn that sent the brand on the path that made it bigger and more relevant than ever.
A lot has changed in the years since that would be easy to attribute to Barstool’s newfound prominence. America’s national mood is closer to what you might see on a Barstool set, crass and red-blooded. The fan perspective that Barstool took to its logical conclusion is now the dominant point of view in sports media. Social media algorithms were rewritten to embrace fighting and mess. The brand also solved the equation that still stymies most of American corporate media: how to reach the guys. These, though, are waves that Barstool rode. They don’t explain its resurrection.
Betting on Barstool
The first and easiest way to see how Barstool went big started in the legal system. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Murphy v. NCAA and effectively undid any state laws prohibiting sports gambling. Since then, 38 states have passed bills to allow sports betting, sparking a vast new industry that has infiltrated every aspect of sports fandom.
For Barstool, there couldn’t have been a better break.
From the early days when Barstool Sports was a printed paper and founder Dave Portnoy was a newsie handing it out across Boston, the company has run on gambling. Online poker and horse track ads dotted the publication and funded Barstool’s growth. An early pitch by Portnoy for what Barstool talent would be was “average Joes, who like most guys love sports, gambling, golfing, and chasing short skirts.” Unlike Al Michaels dancing around betting lines on Monday Night Football, hosts at Barstool never worried about outing themselves as degenerates or associating with vices.
Within a couple of years of the SCOTUS decision on sports betting, Barstool was sold to Penn Entertainment at a valuation of more than half a billion dollars. Barstool Sportsbooks popped up around the country, allowing its fans to tail its hosts and bringing to life Portnoy’s original conception of the company.
The partnership ultimately failed for Penn, but within six months of reacquiring the company, Portnoy struck an exclusive deal with DraftKings. The operator must achieve as much return on investment as any other sponsorship has. Gambling is imbued in every piece of Barstool content. I count three separate active Barstool betting podcasts plus constant gambling chatter on its numerous NFL and college football shows.
Barstool made sports gambling a core part of what it was from the beginning. That may have held it back in the mainstream until, suddenly, it did not, and its competitors hitched a ride on the bandwagon Barstool was driving.
The ‘Pardon My Take’ Effect
Coming off the demise of Van Talk, Barstool’s most popular show was at a crossroads. The Pardon My Take hosts doubled down on the podcast and made it into a giant. Somewhere along the way, they began to attract huge guests. As a more traditional sports talk show where vulgar jokes and edgy pranks merely served as side dishes, PMT was a more digestible meal for the average sports fan. PMT developed long-running relationships with star talent, newsmakers, and industry leaders who seemingly came to enjoy the more casual format and tone.
The martyr of Barstool’s original death blow became its public face and most well-liked intermediary to the rest of the media.
Around this same time, Barstool quietly struck deals with an unlikely assemblage of personalities. Alex Rodriguez and Deion Sanders were hosts on Barstool. Active athletes like Pat McAfee, Willie Colon, and Terry Rozier joined the team, many having grown up consuming Barstool content before entering the sports world themselves. Barstool expanded beyond the dudes on its namesake seats in dives and frat houses, with real, respected talent giving it legitimacy.
Growing the Talent Pool
It was no accident that Barstool attracted talent. The draw was bigger than the ability to make crude jokes or wear a t-shirt on-air. Portnoy, to his credit, created a sandbox at Barstool that proved immensely desirable to overlooked creatives. Despite his abrasive public persona, Portnoy is known for his sharp eye and hands-off approach with top talent. By providing people with the infrastructure to create and letting them run with their ideas, Portnoy has helped develop a slew of breakout stars.
Few other networks can boast a hockey show that sells a popular vodka, a women’s interest mega-hit, a viral Hot Ones knockoff, and a Black culture interview show. Barstool might be the last place you would expect to find all that.
Yet still, imitators have had a hard time catching up. Portnoy’s ability to locate potential sensations online and in unlikely spaces is Barstool’s secret weapon. Its ability to monetize and market its content is unmatched. Recently, Barstool has launched shows to such incredible heights that it has made more headlines for the shows it cannot afford to keep. These headlines are a flashing sign to smart creators: Come here and hit it big.
Outrunning the Allegations
Maybe Barstool and its talent would be even bigger or broken big even sooner if it did not have to cut through an image marred by ugly behavior and unchecked language. A company and a founder that during the come-up faced allegations of misogyny, sexual misconduct, racism, labor violations, and generally grotesque vibes offer no shortage of backlash or baggage. To this day, even as younger talent at the company actively tries to dispel the reputation they inherited, the company continually runs into trouble, particularly with how women are treated at the company and Portnoy’s proclivity to weigh in aggressively on hot-button issues.
This is the fabric of Barstool.
On its climb to a Fox deal and national prominence, Barstool skipped over atonement like the “Go To Jail” space on a Monopoly board. Certainly, faces of the company, such as Portnoy and Dan “Big Cat” Katz, are softer compared to what they did to garner attention in the early days. As more people spent more time online, the bar rose for what was acceptable to say, and Barstool kept up. Unlike others about whom we could say the same, like former Barstool host Jenna Marbles and other YouTubers or any number of comedians, Barstool managed to avoid the hard part of that journey. Call it cancellation or consequences. Either way, Barstool didn’t face much of it.
Faced with allegations of personal misconduct or mismanagement at Barstool, Portnoy almost always responds by returning fire, sometimes unleashing his Stoolies on his targets to quiet them down. With millions of followers and a massive megaphone, Portnoy casts doubt over any assertion he faces. No private conversation or piece of personal information is sacred in his quest to set the record straight. Nobody really knows what is real and not, only that Portnoy is the last one standing.
The company still embraces conflict. When Katz received a complaint this summer from a young female producer over sexual harassment by fellow staffers, he turned it into content on Barstool’s The Yak before ultimately apologizing. Portnoy has inserted himself into the middle of a pretty ugly, ongoing public spat between hosts Kirk Minihane and Brianna LaPaglia.
Right Place, Right Time
Perhaps the best you could say about Barstool and its owner in this regard is that they waited everyone out. To the average person who did not attend college on a campus where Barstool had infiltrated, or perhaps who doesn’t care about sports at all, there was for years a stench associated with the brand. Like how they now ask about “Listening To Joe Rogan” as a personality trait when surveying men and women about dating, the ownership of a “Saturdays Are For the Boys” flag once easily could have stood in.
Then, gradually, the spirit of Barstool ended up in the center of the same spectrum where it once gleefully set up shop at the fringe. Its opponents lost energy or put their efforts elsewhere. Either Barstool and its content truly slid into the Overton window, or everyone gave up trying to finish it off.
Long before its competitors, Barstool clocked the pulse of what sports wanted to see and how they wanted to watch it. Portnoy banked on sports gambling and licensed content early; now he laughs at ESPN for playing catch-up. The brand’s biggest failure turned PMT into the sympathetic centerpiece of Barstool’s salvation. Meanwhile, Portnoy realized that he could still essentially do and say whatever he wanted so long as he was ready to drown out the detractors.
This behavior will inevitably place Portnoy in a clique of anti-cancel culture warriors, individuals who fought hard to ensure they would not suffer consequences for actions they will never admit to. To the extent that this makes him or his company appear right-wing, Portnoy has not adopted this label. Barstool is not a political brand. Nor is its “Presidente” a practicing partisan, having made a sport out of punching right since last year’s election.
People did not tune into Barstool simply because Donald Trump was elected and created a new permission structure. That said, there is a not insignificant cluster of Americans who are on alert for smoke signals indicating the defeat of anyone trying to enforce right and wrong, what has been reduced to the meaningless term “woke.” They see allies in Chicago at Barstool HQ.
Barstool has ascended the sports media world by accurately targeting its audience and business. Its staying power will come from the total enforcement of its cult and culture by a leader with two decades of evidence that his brand can only be kept down for so long.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.