When Penn National Gaming purchased a 36 percent stake in Barstool Sports in 2020, it immediately signaled a potential shift for the controversial media brand.
After taking years to grow into what their target audience was looking for, did partnering with Penn make things easier?
Former CEO Erika Ayers Badan was on The Colin Cowherd Podcast recently and discussed her time with Barstool. She noted that the best years with the company actually came before the merger with Penn.
“The best years at Barstool, I think, were probably the earliest years, and then they were the beginning of my years because it was such a grind,” Ayers Badan said, via Barrett Sports Media. “We didn’t know if we would make it; we still had so much road to climb. The best years were not after the Penn acquisition. I think getting the bag also comes with responsibilities and changes things, and that’s hard for a mission-driven, passion-driven brand.”
Ayers Badan also noted how some of the site’s many controversies helped make her a better and more versatile leader.
“What was brilliant about Barstool was that it was always trying to understand the line, and that’s what made it so interesting and so alive and so captivating to fans, but also so difficult on the business where I always had to have multiple lines of revenue because I didn’t know,” she said. “Tuesday afternoon, we could be offending an advertiser; we could have said something that’s flaring up in the New York Post. I never knew what was going to happen. So safety and calm could come from having multiple levers to keep payroll going and the business happening.”
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