Latest / Masters in Business / Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast)

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Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:07
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
0:11
Speaker 1: You might know him by the name of one Bite
0:14
Speaker 1: with Davy page Views. Perhaps you know him by the
0:18
Speaker 1: nickname Davy Day Trader Global. His name is Dave Portnoy,
0:22
Speaker 1: and he is the founder of Barstool Sports. And he
0:26
Speaker 1: has created a fascinating um franchise on the Internet, on
0:33
Speaker 1: social media and videos that began essentially as a fanzine
0:39
Speaker 1: covering sports in Boston and helping people with their bedding lines,
0:44
Speaker 1: and he has blown up into a full pop cultural phenomena.
0:48
Speaker 1: What's really intriguing to me is what he has built
0:53
Speaker 1: As an entrepreneur. He recognized the power of original content.
0:59
Speaker 1: He ended up a acting a dynamic cast of people
1:02
Speaker 1: who were similarly enthusiastic about creating um fresh, funny, in
1:10
Speaker 1: many ways um edgy content. And he's just blown up
1:16
Speaker 1: into a full phenomenal. Bar Stool Sports is now part
1:19
Speaker 1: of a publicly traded company, pen National Gaming. And if
1:23
Speaker 1: you are in the content business, if you are at
1:25
Speaker 1: all interested in sports or trading, or a whole a
1:29
Speaker 1: lot of other stuff, including pizza, I think you're gonna
1:32
Speaker 1: find this to be an absolutely fascinating interview. So, with
1:36
Speaker 1: no further ado, my conversation with Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy.
1:43
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
1:48
Speaker 1: This week, I have an extra special guest. His name
1:51
Speaker 1: is David Portnoy, and he is the founder of the
1:54
Speaker 1: sports and pop culture blog barstool Sports that has expanded
1:59
Speaker 1: into so many areas. I've really been looking forward to
2:02
Speaker 1: this conversation. David Portnoy, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks for having me.
2:07
Speaker 1: So let's go back in time a little bit. You
2:10
Speaker 1: started Barstool Sports seventeen years ago. At the time, did
2:16
Speaker 1: you have any idea what you were creating? What what
2:19
Speaker 1: did you expect this to be? No, I had absolutely
2:22
Speaker 1: no idea what what's gonna happen, the journey that's going
2:26
Speaker 1: to go on. And really it didn't look any well,
2:29
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it didn't look anything like it
2:31
Speaker 1: did now. But it did start as a gambling fantasy newspaper,
2:36
Speaker 1: you know, the four page black and white gambling rag
2:38
Speaker 1: that used to hand out around t stations and subway
2:41
Speaker 1: spots in Boston. We've come full circle since we're now,
2:44
Speaker 1: you know, have a gambling app and got purchased by
2:48
Speaker 1: Penn National, So it did come full circle. But no,
2:50
Speaker 1: I had no idea. The truth of the matter is
2:52
Speaker 1: I always wanted to try to start my own business,
2:54
Speaker 1: with the goal being I would rather work for myself
2:58
Speaker 1: than somebody else. I'd rather work, you know, a billion
3:01
Speaker 1: hours a week than the normal typical work day where
3:05
Speaker 1: it was a night to five. But I wasn't in
3:07
Speaker 1: control of my own destiny. But I had no idea
3:10
Speaker 1: what was about to come with parcel? No clue. And
3:15
Speaker 1: you mentioned you're handing out written copies for pages. I
3:21
Speaker 1: had heard way back when you were literally outside of
3:24
Speaker 1: the Boston Garden and outside of other Boston sports arenas
3:29
Speaker 1: handing this out to fans on the way into games.
3:32
Speaker 1: How much of that has urban legend? And how how
3:34
Speaker 1: true is that? Now? That's a true So the typical
3:38
Speaker 1: day or a week, however, you want to look at
3:40
Speaker 1: why I started it, It was myself. And you know,
3:43
Speaker 1: there'd be all these fake names in the newspaper because
3:46
Speaker 1: I didn't want people to know it was a one
3:47
Speaker 1: man job, you know, So I had just made up
3:49
Speaker 1: aliases for my sales guy in my marketing guy all
3:52
Speaker 1: this stuff. But I would generally wake up about four
3:55
Speaker 1: in the morning, go to a subway stop outside you know, Boston,
4:00
Speaker 1: in the Financial District or wherever it may be. I'd
4:02
Speaker 1: rotate and I would hand out the newspapers as they
4:05
Speaker 1: were people heading into work, and I'd be yelling at
4:08
Speaker 1: people like, we're at this newspaper, take the newspaper. And
4:11
Speaker 1: then after I did that, so I would go from
4:13
Speaker 1: wake up four, get the subway around five, five five
4:16
Speaker 1: or steen, hand out newspapers probably till the morning rush
4:20
Speaker 1: was done, I don't know, nine o'clock. Then I would
4:24
Speaker 1: go home and I would write, I would do or
4:28
Speaker 1: call for sales, ad to do everything else a day
4:30
Speaker 1: to day. Then around three thirty four I'd head back
4:33
Speaker 1: into the city and I would hand out newspapers again
4:36
Speaker 1: to catch people on the afternoon commute, on the people's
4:40
Speaker 1: way home from work. And then after that was done,
4:43
Speaker 1: I would go back home right some more and try
4:45
Speaker 1: to get asked to do everything else and the other
4:49
Speaker 1: huge part of what I did. The newspaper started off
4:52
Speaker 1: weekly in the beginning, but that was not the right
4:55
Speaker 1: way to do it. It turned to bi weekly quickly.
4:57
Speaker 1: And I was also the newspaper deliver boys. So I
5:01
Speaker 1: bought this astro van off Craiglist. About eight bucks is
5:05
Speaker 1: what I paid for it. And I would load up
5:08
Speaker 1: the newspapers all the way to the roof, and I
5:10
Speaker 1: would go on about paper route all around Boston, the suburbs,
5:16
Speaker 1: outside of Austin, every single subway station, loading up my
5:19
Speaker 1: news racks with the newspapers. So I come back looking,
5:23
Speaker 1: you know, disheveled to say the least. So that was
5:26
Speaker 1: that was my life. No vacation days, no nothing, but
5:29
Speaker 1: probably about a decade. It was. It was a grind.
5:32
Speaker 1: It was delivering newspaper, writing the newspaper, selling ads, pretty
5:37
Speaker 1: much a one man show. Really what what was the
5:39
Speaker 1: response to the actual printed product? How did how did
5:43
Speaker 1: Bostonians feel about barstool sports as a four page hands out?
5:49
Speaker 1: People loved it, you know, it's very different. And in
5:52
Speaker 1: the early newspapers, I said us looking for writers, and
5:55
Speaker 1: I got very lucky, and that we assembled a terrific
6:01
Speaker 1: group of writers who stuck with me and worked for free.
6:04
Speaker 1: So the early days, just because they want to write,
6:06
Speaker 1: they enjoyed it, and so the content was very different
6:09
Speaker 1: and always evolving. It was always humorous. It's a different
6:11
Speaker 1: taken and slowly more of a way from just strictly
6:14
Speaker 1: gambling and sports to more men's lifestyle. But it was
6:19
Speaker 1: always a good reception. And when I judge it was
6:23
Speaker 1: ten people took the paper and said they enjoyed it.
6:26
Speaker 1: You know, the first time I did it, the next
6:29
Speaker 1: issue would be twenty people, and the next issue be forty,
6:32
Speaker 1: and the next eighty. So it always was slowly growing,
6:36
Speaker 1: and there was something in my gut that's like I'm
6:38
Speaker 1: onto something here. I don't know what it is, but
6:42
Speaker 1: it felt like it was growing every single week, and
6:45
Speaker 1: it was it was hard to put it into words.
6:49
Speaker 1: And I've also said, this is the only business I've
6:51
Speaker 1: ever started in. Obviously the post businesses failed, especially in
6:56
Speaker 1: the print industry. So you know, I don't know if
6:59
Speaker 1: I about somewhat lucky on one for one and who knows,
7:03
Speaker 1: but I always had that stut feeling, hey, this is
7:06
Speaker 1: this is picking up. If I just stick with it,
7:09
Speaker 1: it's growing, it's growing, it's growing. So I always got
7:12
Speaker 1: a good reception. So at what point did that growth
7:16
Speaker 1: ramp up to where the business outgrew your ability to
7:20
Speaker 1: run it if you're a jack of old trades. At
7:23
Speaker 1: a certain point you can't do everything. When when did
7:27
Speaker 1: it cross that line where hey, I need some help
7:29
Speaker 1: to manage this. Yeah, probably so start around two thousand four.
7:34
Speaker 1: Probably around two thousand and ten we're more hiring other writers.
7:39
Speaker 1: But I really did a bunch of it people. The
7:42
Speaker 1: model I went with and the first employee ever had
7:45
Speaker 1: is still with me. Who I call sales guy. You know,
7:49
Speaker 1: the model was prove yourself and won't pay you. You
7:53
Speaker 1: want to work for me, if you can sell ads,
7:54
Speaker 1: I'll give you a huge commission, thirty percent commission, fifty
7:57
Speaker 1: percent commission. There's no risk on my end. If willing
8:00
Speaker 1: to do it, you can do it. So we had
8:02
Speaker 1: a very you know, prove it. Like if somebody said
8:06
Speaker 1: they wanted to work for us or to do something.
8:08
Speaker 1: It really was, will give you the opportunity, but you're
8:11
Speaker 1: not going to get like you're gonna have to earn
8:13
Speaker 1: everything you get. Once you earn it, then you got
8:15
Speaker 1: a spot at the table, so to speak. But it was,
8:18
Speaker 1: you know, we really did it bootstrap and watch costs
8:23
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Once we switched, so basically I
8:27
Speaker 1: did everything again. We were able to get some advertisers,
8:31
Speaker 1: and once we switched the website, you know rendant advertising
8:34
Speaker 1: and banner advertising, you didn't need a huge staff or
8:38
Speaker 1: force to really run the thing. You needed more people
8:40
Speaker 1: to try to grow it more than anything. And that
8:43
Speaker 1: was something I did consistently throughout Barstool's career. Is I
8:47
Speaker 1: didn't really take any profit or money off the table,
8:49
Speaker 1: even when money start coming in, I just kept reinvesting it,
8:52
Speaker 1: reinvesting it, hiring more people, trying new events, trying new
8:56
Speaker 1: things to try to grow the brand. Let's talk a
8:59
Speaker 1: little bit out the team you mentioned earlier, because it's
9:03
Speaker 1: not just Dave Portnoy. You've gotten, pardon my take, KFC
9:07
Speaker 1: radio chicks in the office caller Daddy. Are you guys
9:10
Speaker 1: like the Avengers? Do you assemble the whole team and
9:13
Speaker 1: and go out? How does that mass come together? Yeah? So,
9:18
Speaker 1: you know, I a lot of times I say we
9:21
Speaker 1: are one of the oldest digital media companies on the planet.
9:26
Speaker 1: So when I started Barstool, it was a newspaper, as
9:29
Speaker 1: we discussed, and then it morphed to a blog. And
9:32
Speaker 1: when we started blogging, if you told somebody what a
9:35
Speaker 1: blog was, they would have been like what is that.
9:37
Speaker 1: We're very early to the game. And I also say
9:41
Speaker 1: the Barstool Sports was born from the Internet. So all
9:45
Speaker 1: of the talent, all the people we have, the only
9:48
Speaker 1: way people know who they are is because they were
9:51
Speaker 1: able to essentially stand out by working harder, smarter, being funny.
9:55
Speaker 1: It's not because they put on ESPN or something like that.
9:59
Speaker 1: So we were born from a different generation and we
10:02
Speaker 1: had a good eye for talent and podcasting. We were
10:05
Speaker 1: very early too, and we let our talent basically do
10:09
Speaker 1: whatever they want as long as we think you're funny,
10:12
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, this person may have something, We'll
10:16
Speaker 1: let you run wild, so you know, call her Daddy.
10:18
Speaker 1: Is an example that is probably a pretty good one
10:22
Speaker 1: and not everyone's cup of tea, but the largest female
10:26
Speaker 1: probably podcast in the world. I mean, it's gigantic and
10:30
Speaker 1: it's a girl, Alex Cooper, who we saw a very
10:34
Speaker 1: rough sketch of a podcast she did. It's like, oh,
10:37
Speaker 1: this is interesting, this is something we haven't seen before,
10:40
Speaker 1: and and there was a promo video with it that
10:43
Speaker 1: was very slick. It looked like it was professionally done.
10:47
Speaker 1: So we reached out to her and had a meeting
10:49
Speaker 1: with her and I sat down and she's a beautiful
10:52
Speaker 1: blonde girl, and I was like, who made this? Who
10:55
Speaker 1: made this video? This this promo video? And she's like,
10:58
Speaker 1: I did, I edited it, I got it, I did everything.
11:01
Speaker 1: I learned how to do it all myself. And that
11:04
Speaker 1: was when it's like, Okay, we're gonna We're gonna give
11:06
Speaker 1: her a chance because that's the type of like basically
11:09
Speaker 1: motivation desire that we look for. Somebody has something unique
11:13
Speaker 1: and also the basically the energy and the motivation to
11:19
Speaker 1: do something like that. And they've exploded almost instantly. But
11:23
Speaker 1: and I barely listened to any of the episodes, but
11:26
Speaker 1: it was clearly something different. She was clearly a talent.
11:30
Speaker 1: We put the Barstool marketing engine behind it, and with
11:34
Speaker 1: podcasting right now, I think we have the number one
11:36
Speaker 1: hockey podcast, the number one football podcast, number one female podcast.
11:40
Speaker 1: What our audience is very good at. Don't give you
11:43
Speaker 1: a chance, and if you have something unique and good,
11:45
Speaker 1: you'll have a huge hit right off the bat. And
11:50
Speaker 1: iron well, not ironically, but one of the things I
11:53
Speaker 1: always said about Barstool or my goals once we started
11:56
Speaker 1: actually making progress and when I sold the Turning Group,
11:59
Speaker 1: the time, I wanted Barstool to be the place that
12:03
Speaker 1: a young college graduate who is in comedy, the first
12:07
Speaker 1: place they applied to work is Barstool. They used to
12:10
Speaker 1: maybe be Saturday Night Live or or you know, I
12:13
Speaker 1: don't know, some other comedy brand. I wanted it to
12:16
Speaker 1: be us, and we're sort of there. So we have
12:18
Speaker 1: our pick of the crop of all these talented people.
12:21
Speaker 1: The hardest thing is actually going through the applications to
12:24
Speaker 1: find talent. It's a huge advantage. Speaking of talent, you
12:28
Speaker 1: just signed a deal with Dion Sanders. How on earth
12:32
Speaker 1: did that come to fruition? That's a giant name. Yeah,
12:37
Speaker 1: so we have another podcast that we uh signed million
12:41
Speaker 1: dollars worth. The game based out of Philadelphia. Again, something
12:44
Speaker 1: I had never I've never heard of either the guy's
12:46
Speaker 1: Wallow and Gilly their Philly legend um, you know, very
12:50
Speaker 1: well known actually that like Gilly was the ghostwriter for
12:53
Speaker 1: Little Wayne. So we listened to their podcast in right
12:57
Speaker 1: away we thought, oh, this is a hit, this is
13:00
Speaker 1: we need this, and so we signed those guys. They
13:03
Speaker 1: were friends with Dion Sanders, who was looking for maybe
13:06
Speaker 1: new opportunities, opportunities to be himself. Basically because when you're
13:10
Speaker 1: on a network, he's on NFL network, you have to
13:12
Speaker 1: watch what you say, you have to be guarded, and
13:14
Speaker 1: right now, people want unfiltered, they want authenticity. So he
13:18
Speaker 1: was looking for a place where he could be himself.
13:20
Speaker 1: It was one of those marriages. The second we met
13:23
Speaker 1: with him, we kind of knew that we were the
13:25
Speaker 1: right partner for each other. And to be honest, he
13:27
Speaker 1: has been and it's it's early, but he has fit
13:30
Speaker 1: into the barcel culture as well as anybody possibly could.
13:34
Speaker 1: People would be stunned the general public on how many
13:39
Speaker 1: people have the talent at other established networks who want
13:43
Speaker 1: to all come work for us because we're competitive pay
13:46
Speaker 1: wise with all of them may be better, and there's
13:48
Speaker 1: no there's no you know, Restrectes. You can be yourself.
13:51
Speaker 1: We want you to be yourself. We're never gonna say, hey,
13:54
Speaker 1: you can't say that, you can't say this. Everybody can
13:56
Speaker 1: be exactly who they are, and we find that that
14:00
Speaker 1: amula works for us and a lot of people want
14:01
Speaker 1: to be a part of it. So we've seen some
14:04
Speaker 1: upstart digital brands that started on the Internet like Vice
14:08
Speaker 1: and a CEOs explode into the video space. Either with
14:13
Speaker 1: HBO or some other broadcasting UM channel. What are you
14:18
Speaker 1: guys thinking about in terms of bar stool sports? So
14:21
Speaker 1: we're gonna ever see that on a mainstream cable channel,
14:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. We had a brief dance with ESPN.
14:31
Speaker 1: Uh for part of my take, they they greenlit TV
14:36
Speaker 1: show UM and then they canceled it because there were
14:39
Speaker 1: there were people at ESPN who don't like us, and
14:41
Speaker 1: we have our detractors uh in ESPN. That that left
14:46
Speaker 1: a bad taste in my mouth. Uh. I was hesitants
14:50
Speaker 1: of that deal to begin with. The thing that we
14:53
Speaker 1: need UM to do a deal like that is to
14:55
Speaker 1: find a partner who knows exactly who we are, who
15:00
Speaker 1: did their research, who can stand by us in the
15:03
Speaker 1: first time you know, the wind blows maybe the wrong way,
15:07
Speaker 1: they don't run for the hills. I thought ESPN was
15:10
Speaker 1: wildly coward was cowardly and how they dealt with us,
15:14
Speaker 1: UM and you know, my instinct sensed it. So it
15:18
Speaker 1: would have to be the exact right, perfect guilty because honest,
15:23
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of digital media comes to this, we
15:26
Speaker 1: can bring people to network, which is TV and an
15:30
Speaker 1: older demo like no other brand. We bring a lot
15:33
Speaker 1: more than I think they bring to us, So it
15:35
Speaker 1: really have to be the absolutely perfect deal for us
15:38
Speaker 1: to do that. Again, I think it would be more
15:40
Speaker 1: likely we buy a network, to be honest, and just
15:43
Speaker 1: run our own channel. So it sounds like you spend
15:47
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about business strategy and your
15:50
Speaker 1: overall media approach. How do you spend your day, How
15:54
Speaker 1: much of it is on creating content and how much
15:57
Speaker 1: of it is on these bigger picture Hey, we want
16:00
Speaker 1: to hook up with this company? Do we want to
16:02
Speaker 1: create something new with that company? That's one of the
16:06
Speaker 1: toughest challenges I have. Um, I think my role me personally,
16:12
Speaker 1: and I'm sure maybe there's others like it, but I
16:15
Speaker 1: can't really think of anybody who is as involved in
16:19
Speaker 1: the content in a company as well as the big picture. Obviously,
16:24
Speaker 1: we have a CEO who's unbelievable, Eric and Ardini, best
16:27
Speaker 1: higher we've ever made. But you know I we work
16:31
Speaker 1: closely on almost everything, so it is a mix. Um,
16:35
Speaker 1: it varies, like the day trading stuff I'm still doing.
16:40
Speaker 1: We had a big deal that a lot of people
16:42
Speaker 1: know about what Penn National and we just launched our
16:45
Speaker 1: Barstool sports book in Pennsylvania. Um, so I'm pushing that
16:49
Speaker 1: now and doing content with that, but there's much larger
16:53
Speaker 1: discussions on the way to you know, roll that out
16:56
Speaker 1: nationally and acquisitions and things we want to do. So
17:00
Speaker 1: it really varies day to day, but I'd almost say
17:02
Speaker 1: it's sixty forty business verse content at this point. But
17:08
Speaker 1: quite interesting you mentioned Eric Nardini, she's your CEO. How
17:12
Speaker 1: did you find her and what does she do for
17:14
Speaker 1: barstool so Erica. So so, basically I sold half of
17:21
Speaker 1: Barstool Sports to the Turning Group. Uh and I believe
17:25
Speaker 1: it was two thousand sixteen ish two thousand sixteen, and
17:30
Speaker 1: Barstool was about ten to fifteen people at that time,
17:33
Speaker 1: and we were we were just didn't have time to
17:36
Speaker 1: do anything on the business side. It was all making
17:39
Speaker 1: content and making content and making content. And part of
17:42
Speaker 1: the thing I said when that was Turning, we gotta
17:44
Speaker 1: hire CEO to basically run the business side. I always
17:47
Speaker 1: felt we had this huge audience, but we weren't overly organized.
17:52
Speaker 1: On the business side. We did a lot of we
17:54
Speaker 1: just didn't do things that a lot of other similar
17:56
Speaker 1: companies were doing. And if we could, you know, get
17:59
Speaker 1: the business in order we'd be putting gas on a fire.
18:02
Speaker 1: So they agreed, and right away. One of the first
18:05
Speaker 1: things we did after the acquisition was set out to
18:07
Speaker 1: find a CEO. They hired a recruiting firm, high powered
18:11
Speaker 1: recruiting firm. They had seventy I think interviews are so
18:15
Speaker 1: all men. None of them made it to the second round.
18:18
Speaker 1: I just none of them clicked. Uh. It was always
18:20
Speaker 1: they were telling us what we should do, and you
18:23
Speaker 1: should do this, you should do that. I think you
18:25
Speaker 1: should change this. I think you should change that, and
18:28
Speaker 1: it just didn't click. We had a woman by the
18:32
Speaker 1: name of Betsy Morgan who used to be the CEO
18:34
Speaker 1: of the Huffington Post. I'm a Nantucket guy. She she
18:38
Speaker 1: spent time in Nantucket and I was introduced to her
18:41
Speaker 1: and she became I think our only like advisor. She
18:44
Speaker 1: was basically an advisor to Barstool. We hit it off
18:47
Speaker 1: and one day she was in my neck of the
18:49
Speaker 1: woods in New York. She's like, you want to meet
18:51
Speaker 1: for a coffee? Was like, sure, So I walked over.
18:54
Speaker 1: In with her was Erica Nardini, who was friends. So
18:58
Speaker 1: Erica just happened to be there for the for the
19:01
Speaker 1: coffee and Erica and I started talking and she was
19:04
Speaker 1: a fan of bar School and everything. She said that
19:07
Speaker 1: she liked about barstool in the Business Model. I was like, Yep,
19:10
Speaker 1: that's what I think. That's what I think. So after
19:14
Speaker 1: Eric and I met, I called the Turn of Guys
19:16
Speaker 1: and I was like, have you ever heard of Erica
19:18
Speaker 1: and Nardini? They had She was a former CMO of
19:21
Speaker 1: a O L and like, I just met with her
19:23
Speaker 1: and I love her, Like, I think she's the perfect
19:26
Speaker 1: fit if she's willing to do it. So they reached
19:28
Speaker 1: out to Erica to gauge interest. She had just started
19:32
Speaker 1: her own company, so she was like, let me think
19:34
Speaker 1: about this for a day or two, and she came
19:37
Speaker 1: back to said, yes, this is too good of an
19:38
Speaker 1: opportunity to pass. Let me meet with the guys um
19:42
Speaker 1: and she did and that started the process. So it
19:45
Speaker 1: was unintentional. A lot of people, one of my pet peas,
19:48
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people say we hired Erica because
19:50
Speaker 1: she's a female. It was all male company, and it
19:52
Speaker 1: just couldn't be further further from the truth. It's insulting
19:55
Speaker 1: to me, it's felt like to her, but she has
19:58
Speaker 1: been the absolute perfect higher and the most important higher
20:03
Speaker 1: that we've had. Let's talk about something that is really serious.
20:08
Speaker 1: You're part of pen Gaming. How did that come about?
20:11
Speaker 1: And what's it like being part of this giant company.
20:16
Speaker 1: Y As we mentioned in the early part of the interview,
20:19
Speaker 1: Parcels sports actually started back in the newspaper days as
20:22
Speaker 1: a gambling and fantasy rag as a newspaper I handed
20:25
Speaker 1: out about a year and a half ago. I don't
20:28
Speaker 1: know the exact date, but the legislation on sports gambling
20:32
Speaker 1: was overturned in the United States. So always it had
20:35
Speaker 1: been illegal, and now it was going to be legal,
20:38
Speaker 1: and on a state by state basis, states could decide
20:41
Speaker 1: whether they want to allow it once that law was changed.
20:46
Speaker 1: I basically knew this is a huge opportunity for Barceol
20:50
Speaker 1: because our core DNA was sports gambling, so and I
20:54
Speaker 1: knew there was gonna be basically a gold rush of
20:57
Speaker 1: all these companies trying to get in this industry. So
21:00
Speaker 1: we had meetings with everybody under the Son Vandal, Draftking, MGM,
21:05
Speaker 1: Stars Group, you name it. We met with them, and
21:08
Speaker 1: you know, none of them actually yielded solid offer, which
21:12
Speaker 1: stunned me. Which absolutely stunned me because I thought it
21:15
Speaker 1: was a no brainer fit that one of these companies
21:17
Speaker 1: should acquire Bars to give them a gigantic competitive advantage
21:21
Speaker 1: because how good we are at acquiring clients. And then
21:24
Speaker 1: we met penn National Gaming and Jasonde in the CEO,
21:28
Speaker 1: and almost instantly we clicked with them. I had actually
21:32
Speaker 1: never heard of them, and primarily because they're a huge
21:36
Speaker 1: regional casino operator and all the casinos are operating or
21:41
Speaker 1: most of them under unique names, so you know they're
21:43
Speaker 1: all different. You made like I had been in their casinos,
21:46
Speaker 1: but I didn't know that I had been in their casinos,
21:48
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. So we met with them
21:51
Speaker 1: and it was a perfect marriage because they had this
21:55
Speaker 1: huge casino brand which grants them access and licenses into
22:00
Speaker 1: so many different states, but they didn't have a well
22:04
Speaker 1: known brand. We have a well known brand, but no access.
22:08
Speaker 1: Though the deal was struck basically that Penn National would
22:14
Speaker 1: they bought a like I think it's thirty six, with
22:16
Speaker 1: the option to buy more in three years and get
22:18
Speaker 1: the whole company, and they would lead their sports gambling
22:22
Speaker 1: efforts with our brand. So the Barstool sports book, which
22:25
Speaker 1: just launched on Friday in Pennsylvania and we'll be rolling
22:29
Speaker 1: out across the country in states we have access. So
22:32
Speaker 1: it's the perfect kind of mix of Pen having all
22:35
Speaker 1: these physical properties and the licenses in Barstool having the
22:39
Speaker 1: online presence in digital marketing, combining forces to hopefully become
22:43
Speaker 1: one of the premier gambling companies in the United States.
22:47
Speaker 1: So you have some pretty big competitors in that space.
22:51
Speaker 1: You have DraftKings, Fan Duel, there's lots of other smaller entities.
22:56
Speaker 1: How does barstool compete with the big guy is and
23:00
Speaker 1: what is your specific advantage that nobody else seems to
23:05
Speaker 1: be able to match. So yeah, and they are big,
23:09
Speaker 1: they're big competitors, and and I know them intimately because
23:12
Speaker 1: we've been working with those guys for a decade. Like
23:15
Speaker 1: at one point for Raftkings, I was offered equity and
23:18
Speaker 1: just so they could lock us up exclusively for advertising.
23:22
Speaker 1: This is a long time ago. So we know those
23:24
Speaker 1: guys well, and they're not going anywhere. They They've done
23:27
Speaker 1: very well with what they've done, and they have a
23:29
Speaker 1: huge database. What we're good at is and what why
23:34
Speaker 1: Pen invested because we can reach our crowd, our audience
23:38
Speaker 1: who was wildly loyal and wildly engaged and get them
23:42
Speaker 1: to download the bar Flo sports book app play place
23:46
Speaker 1: bets through us without spending really any money on marketing.
23:50
Speaker 1: So right now what you have is a marketing war.
23:54
Speaker 1: If you watch a football game, you'll probably see thirty
23:57
Speaker 1: seven different ads from you know, pen different companies, all
24:01
Speaker 1: basically saying the same thing. Combat with us, you get
24:04
Speaker 1: ten dollars here a hundred dollars day are pre five
24:06
Speaker 1: hundred dollar bet. It's all whitewashed. There's so much of
24:10
Speaker 1: it in a weird way. It's like our race to
24:13
Speaker 1: the bottom. There's only going to be so many of
24:15
Speaker 1: these companies that can survive. We will compete and compete
24:19
Speaker 1: effectively while most likely being profitable, which will be probably
24:24
Speaker 1: the only company that can say that. Because we're not
24:26
Speaker 1: gonna have the marketing costs that these other companies have.
24:30
Speaker 1: They have to spend, spend, spend to get any share,
24:34
Speaker 1: or else they won't get it. Because no one really
24:37
Speaker 1: cares about DraftKings versus Fandel versus MGM versus points bet.
24:43
Speaker 1: They don't with us. They're playing with us because of
24:46
Speaker 1: our logo, because it's a seventeen year story, because they
24:49
Speaker 1: root for us. That's why I think if you look
24:52
Speaker 1: before we did the deal with pen there's like a
24:55
Speaker 1: handful of robin Hood traders who owned it. Now it's
24:58
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand robin traders. That's a marketing army.
25:01
Speaker 1: People wear the merch, they root for us like or
25:03
Speaker 1: a sports team. So it's all that is what the
25:07
Speaker 1: competitive advantages? Huh? Really interesting? So so, given how much
25:12
Speaker 1: of what you've been doing for the previous seventeen years
25:16
Speaker 1: has been driven by sports and bedding, what went through
25:21
Speaker 1: your mind when suddenly in March the NBA cancels the
25:25
Speaker 1: season and soon after almost all other sports grind to
25:28
Speaker 1: a halt. You you had to stop and say, well,
25:31
Speaker 1: I guess we're on vacation for six months, or do
25:34
Speaker 1: I need to come up with something new? Yeah, well
25:37
Speaker 1: that's the great thing about I guess the way barstool
25:40
Speaker 1: has been trained, like I said, born from the Internet,
25:42
Speaker 1: vacation certainly didn't cross my mind. It's okay, we got
25:45
Speaker 1: to reinvent ourselves or do something different. So I was
25:49
Speaker 1: never worried that once sports went away for a little
25:53
Speaker 1: bit somehow our content would suffer. You know, the day
25:56
Speaker 1: trading thing which I started doing when sports went away
25:59
Speaker 1: because like I got past the time somehow the stock
26:01
Speaker 1: markets open and I started dabbling with that. I never
26:04
Speaker 1: imagined it would become what it had become. But at
26:07
Speaker 1: the same time, and I've said this to Eric, our CEO,
26:11
Speaker 1: when when she came in, We've been around for seventeen years.
26:15
Speaker 1: We've stayed relevant for seventeen years. I'd say we've stayed
26:18
Speaker 1: edgy for seventeen years. We stayed cool for seventeen years.
26:22
Speaker 1: That is almost the biggest accomplishment. So many brands like
26:26
Speaker 1: ours or in this space, they come and they go.
26:29
Speaker 1: I've seen them a million times. It's not an accident
26:32
Speaker 1: that we've stayed relevant. We've always reinvented ourselves. We've always
26:36
Speaker 1: had something new, so you know, it's just the latest generation.
26:40
Speaker 1: And I'd argue that outside the obvious negative impact of
26:46
Speaker 1: quarantine and the pandemic for our stool and eyeballs and
26:50
Speaker 1: growth and present, it's been a very beneficial time. Like
26:55
Speaker 1: we grew in pays, views, we grew, and how how
26:58
Speaker 1: many people knew us, our footprint, our impact has never
27:02
Speaker 1: been stronger because people have not nothing to do, nothing
27:05
Speaker 1: to consume, and we were consistently on the cutting edge
27:09
Speaker 1: of putting out content, not just myself, but like Dan
27:12
Speaker 1: big Cat, you know he has he never twitched as
27:15
Speaker 1: one of our bigger stars, he had never been on Twitch.
27:17
Speaker 1: He went on Twitch and played an old college football
27:19
Speaker 1: game and create a fictional college football coach. He became
27:23
Speaker 1: the number one twitch stream on Twitch within like three weeks,
27:26
Speaker 1: which is wild to think about. So we've always been
27:31
Speaker 1: very good at being creative, reinventing, and that's because, not
27:35
Speaker 1: to say it again, but we're born from the Internet.
27:37
Speaker 1: If you're not creative, if you can't create ways, if
27:40
Speaker 1: you can't get people that pay attention to what you're doing,
27:43
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't have found you in the first place.
27:46
Speaker 1: My special guest today is David Portnoy, better known as
27:51
Speaker 1: Davy day Trader. How on earth did the idea of
27:56
Speaker 1: videotaping yourself day trading? I'm about because when you think
28:01
Speaker 1: about it, it's not the sort of thing that lends
28:04
Speaker 1: itself to an obvious visual medium. We'll take us through
28:08
Speaker 1: the process as to how that got launched. So, uh,
28:14
Speaker 1: once quarantine hit, we needed something to do, something to
28:18
Speaker 1: pass the time, and we're searching for answers. So the
28:23
Speaker 1: stock market was still going in one day, I decide,
28:27
Speaker 1: almost as a mimick, you know what, I'm gonna throw
28:29
Speaker 1: in a full suit. I got a little I got
28:31
Speaker 1: a little bell, like I was ringing the stock exchange
28:34
Speaker 1: to start the day, and made a quick video and
28:37
Speaker 1: put it on and and you know it quick like
28:40
Speaker 1: people are interested, like, all right, this is interesting, and
28:45
Speaker 1: I never know what's gonna work or what people are
28:47
Speaker 1: gonna like. Is no different than my pizza reviews that
28:49
Speaker 1: I do. Yeah, I I didn't start that with some
28:51
Speaker 1: grand plan that's going to become the pre eminent pizza
28:54
Speaker 1: review guy in basically the world. But it was obvious
28:57
Speaker 1: when I did it people were paying attention. So I
29:00
Speaker 1: started with that one video in the suit, ringing the bell,
29:03
Speaker 1: and the next day I put a you know, a
29:06
Speaker 1: live stream on for a couple of minutes trading stocks
29:09
Speaker 1: and and people tuned and then we're fascinated. So the
29:13
Speaker 1: next day I did it again, more people paid attention,
29:16
Speaker 1: and it was just one of those organic things, and
29:20
Speaker 1: it was real, like everything we do. I was trading
29:22
Speaker 1: with real money, and I was gonna kill this. The beginning,
29:25
Speaker 1: which is always there's that you know it's a train wreck,
29:28
Speaker 1: but you can't look away vibe. So it was very
29:32
Speaker 1: clear right away that people were interested in watching it,
29:37
Speaker 1: and not like you said, I heard you, it's colorful,
29:39
Speaker 1: is different. I don't think anybody on Wall Street had
29:43
Speaker 1: ever seen somebody like myself basically doing what I was
29:47
Speaker 1: doing on Wall three with a large amounts of money
29:50
Speaker 1: and being very upfront about it. And you know, it
29:53
Speaker 1: was just very different. There isn't much out there like
29:56
Speaker 1: what the Davy Day Trader stick was so clicked. It
30:01
Speaker 1: certainly did click. I recall back in either March or
30:05
Speaker 1: April seeing an early video of yours. You're having a
30:09
Speaker 1: meltdown because you're losing a ton of money, and I
30:12
Speaker 1: remember saying to myself, either this guy is the greatest
30:15
Speaker 1: actor in the world or he is really getting buried
30:20
Speaker 1: in trades today. And it was you described it perfectly.
30:24
Speaker 1: It was a train wreck. You could not look away,
30:27
Speaker 1: right And although there was an early element to it,
30:31
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that's doing clearly. And I don't
30:33
Speaker 1: even mean with stock like I couldn't figure out the platforms.
30:37
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out necessarily how to trade things. I
30:39
Speaker 1: was making mistakes, So those melt onems were very real.
30:43
Speaker 1: Because it isn't the easiest thing to use right away.
30:47
Speaker 1: You gotta kind of get used to it. So that
30:49
Speaker 1: element of it certainly capture people's attention. And then obviously
30:54
Speaker 1: I have a very large fan base who know me
30:57
Speaker 1: and know my personality and they're interesting to see what's
31:00
Speaker 1: going on. So sports was canceled, but it was a
31:03
Speaker 1: sport in a different kind of way. Really, it's people
31:07
Speaker 1: are paying attention how I do daily. And then obviously
31:10
Speaker 1: it started getting picked up within this financial Twitter community.
31:14
Speaker 1: Then it started getting picked up by the networks, who
31:16
Speaker 1: in my mind, we're kind of making fun of me
31:19
Speaker 1: in the beginning, but I don't really care. It's like
31:21
Speaker 1: any time we can get publicity, that's good for overall
31:23
Speaker 1: of our stool. And then then I started winning, and
31:27
Speaker 1: then it kind of changed the tone of it, and
31:30
Speaker 1: it's been an interesting ride it it. I mean, I
31:32
Speaker 1: think I maybe for the last couple of months, I
31:36
Speaker 1: shouldn't say maybe I'm the most talked about person on
31:39
Speaker 1: Wall Street. If you told me that was gonna happen
31:42
Speaker 1: six months ago, I would have looked at you like
31:43
Speaker 1: you had ten heads, what are you talking about? Yeah,
31:47
Speaker 1: and you're now up to one. Point eight million Twitter followers.
31:50
Speaker 1: When you started live streaming your your day trading, you
31:55
Speaker 1: didn't quite have that same size following, did you. Uh,
32:00
Speaker 1: it was big. I don't know what it is. We
32:02
Speaker 1: definitely have far more people now. The live stream always is,
32:07
Speaker 1: you know, four to five thousand people concurrently on it
32:10
Speaker 1: at once. I don't know what I had. It's definitely
32:12
Speaker 1: picked up. It's a new demo, it's a new audience.
32:15
Speaker 1: But you know, Twitter actually is super hard to grow
32:19
Speaker 1: your your user base, so it hasn't grown dramatically. Huh.
32:23
Speaker 1: And how well thought out is your your training? Do
32:27
Speaker 1: you go in with a plan, do you have a
32:29
Speaker 1: strategy or do you just looking at whatever is moving
32:32
Speaker 1: and catches your eye. It's all over the map, it
32:35
Speaker 1: really is. There is strategy to it. I'm always looking
32:38
Speaker 1: at earnings and what I think I'm using, you know,
32:41
Speaker 1: my own logic in regards to what I think maybe
32:44
Speaker 1: a good COVID or not COVID stock is and then
32:47
Speaker 1: it could be for example, you know, I was on
32:51
Speaker 1: vacation for a week and uh, deer. I woke up
32:55
Speaker 1: there was a deer outside my window. Like it was
32:58
Speaker 1: very beautiful actually, but anyways, I saw the deer, and
33:00
Speaker 1: I thought that was a sign, so I bought John Deer.
33:03
Speaker 1: So it can really be anything that can be all
33:06
Speaker 1: over the minute. How did that trade work out? Very good?
33:11
Speaker 1: Their earnings were actually the same day. That's why I
33:13
Speaker 1: thought it was a no brainer. So they had great earnings.
33:17
Speaker 1: That's very funny. So the question that you kind of raises,
33:22
Speaker 1: so let me let me back up and ask this.
33:24
Speaker 1: So you've talked about losing six hundred thousand dollars in
33:28
Speaker 1: a day. I don't care. Markets are gonna go up eventually,
33:31
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make this back. How much does a half
33:35
Speaker 1: a million dollar swing affect your psyche or are you
33:38
Speaker 1: able to just put it behind you? It really varies.
33:42
Speaker 1: So when I started, I was down about two or
33:47
Speaker 1: three million instantly, almost shorting stocks, which I don't do
33:51
Speaker 1: anymore because I got killed and that's the main thing
33:54
Speaker 1: I've gotten killed on. And then I end up being
33:57
Speaker 1: up about four millions at my height, I am now
34:00
Speaker 1: up probably about one the last couple of weeks of
34:03
Speaker 1: knock three legs out. That doesn't bother me at all
34:06
Speaker 1: because I'm up. When you're down, it's a lot harder
34:09
Speaker 1: to go further down. But I do overall believe if
34:13
Speaker 1: you just hold, and you have the time to hold,
34:17
Speaker 1: stocks will always go up. Like so unlike sports gambling
34:21
Speaker 1: where the clock strikes zero and the game's over and
34:25
Speaker 1: you owe, the stock market really doesn't do that. It
34:27
Speaker 1: keeps going, so as long as you have time on
34:30
Speaker 1: your hands and patience, which I don't. But if you do,
34:35
Speaker 1: then you're always going to get it back. So you know,
34:37
Speaker 1: I lost a million dollars, I don't know, like last week,
34:40
Speaker 1: that didn't bother me at all. I didn't lose like
34:42
Speaker 1: an ounce of sleep. That's the game. That's just the game.
34:46
Speaker 1: So so let's stick with stocks only go up. That's
34:50
Speaker 1: true if you're brought buying broad indo indexes or buying
34:53
Speaker 1: broad asset classes. Hey, stocks as a hole always go up.
34:58
Speaker 1: But as we've learned over the years, individual stocks can
35:01
Speaker 1: go to zero. How do you balance that when you're
35:04
Speaker 1: trying to decide what to trade. Yeah, and that's a
35:08
Speaker 1: fair point. I think there's a misconception about the stocks
35:12
Speaker 1: I'm involved in, Like Shopify is not going to zero,
35:16
Speaker 1: Amazon's not going to zero. A lot of stocks I'm in,
35:19
Speaker 1: I'm not in panic stocks. And if I am a
35:22
Speaker 1: Panics are small stocks. If I'm in stocks like that,
35:26
Speaker 1: I'm not holding him very long. So those aren't going
35:30
Speaker 1: to zero. You could get killed quickly. But a lot
35:33
Speaker 1: of my stocks of brand names and I am buying
35:36
Speaker 1: and selling them, So those are what I'm referring. If
35:38
Speaker 1: you're going with a penny stock or something that's you know,
35:41
Speaker 1: under five bucks, clearly there's a risk involved and things
35:45
Speaker 1: happen like Nicola the other day. Obviously the guy got
35:48
Speaker 1: accused of fraud, the CEO and he steps down and
35:51
Speaker 1: that take the bath. So you take that risk. But
35:54
Speaker 1: by and large, as long as you're not you know,
35:58
Speaker 1: dealing in high volatility. If you buy what was, it
36:02
Speaker 1: hurts when they're bankrupt or Kodak and you think those
36:06
Speaker 1: those I'm not saying as who knows that those but
36:09
Speaker 1: those I'm in and out of the stock that I'm
36:11
Speaker 1: saying always go up. Our stocks that truly always go up.
36:17
Speaker 1: And you mentioned traditional Wall Street hasn't really been very welcoming.
36:22
Speaker 1: Who on the street has reached out to you? Who
36:24
Speaker 1: do you have a good relationship, who's got some longevity
36:28
Speaker 1: in finance and says, hey, here's a new guy. Journal
36:31
Speaker 1: lot of attention. Let's let's get in the hands. Yeah,
36:35
Speaker 1: and I should clarify, I think a lot of people
36:37
Speaker 1: in Wall Street actually love it. I get so many
36:40
Speaker 1: comments that people working on All Street yount refreshing at
36:42
Speaker 1: the breast, fresh air. Even though you're making fun of us,
36:45
Speaker 1: we find it funny. The clowns on Wall Street and
36:48
Speaker 1: Finch with the Fince with guys are really the ones
36:51
Speaker 1: that I would say haven't been welcoming because they're used
36:54
Speaker 1: car salesman. They're the ones trolling thin give up. They're
36:58
Speaker 1: trying to get They need money. They need to convince
37:01
Speaker 1: people that they're smarter than you, and you can't invest
37:05
Speaker 1: your own money. And the only way to be safe,
37:08
Speaker 1: you know, a roth Garber. You're gonna give roths Garber
37:10
Speaker 1: your money or else you're gonna lose it all. I mean,
37:12
Speaker 1: he's a clown. But the people who are doing this
37:17
Speaker 1: the right way, I feel like they've been pretty inviting.
37:19
Speaker 1: Jim Kramer has been super super friendly from the beginning
37:24
Speaker 1: and welcoming to me, and you know, most of the
37:26
Speaker 1: networks are. But the issue is the guys who have
37:30
Speaker 1: been saying the stock market is gonna crash for the
37:32
Speaker 1: last six months and it hasn't is gonna end in tears,
37:35
Speaker 1: and you better give them their money because you don't
37:38
Speaker 1: know how to spend your money. Those are the guys
37:40
Speaker 1: that don't like me. And I don't know why people
37:42
Speaker 1: do that, By the way, I don't know. That's one
37:44
Speaker 1: of the things that found interesting is there's a lot
37:47
Speaker 1: of these talking heads who are seemingly rooting for the
37:51
Speaker 1: stock market to crash, like they want people to lose money.
37:54
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. I feel like everyone should be
37:56
Speaker 1: on the same seat. The stock market goes up, everyone
37:59
Speaker 1: should be happy. If everyone's on the same team. Who's
38:03
Speaker 1: going to take the other side of your trades? Well,
38:06
Speaker 1: that's something that I'll have to let the scientists and
38:08
Speaker 1: the mathematicians find out, right. So so so it's fascinating.
38:14
Speaker 1: But by the way, I've been on the street long
38:16
Speaker 1: enough that I've seen this debate take place. I saw
38:19
Speaker 1: it in oh six oh seven, before the crash. There's
38:24
Speaker 1: always a contingency that missed the run up and they're
38:29
Speaker 1: waiting for the next big move down so they could
38:32
Speaker 1: make up what they lost. And then some people philosophically
38:36
Speaker 1: are more intrigued by the idea of a crash. It's
38:39
Speaker 1: just their personality. They think markets get she lacked, and
38:42
Speaker 1: you know that's when everything becomes more intriguing. I can't
38:46
Speaker 1: explain the psychology behind it, but I can tell you
38:49
Speaker 1: it's been there for as long as markets have been around.
38:53
Speaker 1: I believe it in the in the thing that I
38:55
Speaker 1: find well, it's just funny to me is for six
39:00
Speaker 1: months I've been told on it. It's gonna end in tears.
39:04
Speaker 1: People have been listening to me, are gonna I'm gonna
39:07
Speaker 1: ruin them. First of all, I'm only trading my own money,
39:10
Speaker 1: and I'm very clear to do what you want. But
39:11
Speaker 1: if you were listening to me, you'd be up in
39:14
Speaker 1: the second the stock work, it has one bad day
39:17
Speaker 1: or two bad days in a week. It's chirping me
39:20
Speaker 1: that from the cheap seats, being like, I told you,
39:22
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Still way up? I don't know.
39:25
Speaker 1: It went down for a couple of days. That happened,
39:27
Speaker 1: so but they go silent. Their crickets star just going up.
39:32
Speaker 1: It goes down for a second and they come out
39:35
Speaker 1: of the wood nuts and and let me let me
39:38
Speaker 1: put some numbers on on that. From the march lows,
39:41
Speaker 1: the Nasdaq one hundred is up seventy seven percent, and
39:44
Speaker 1: over the past couple of weeks it pulled back almost
39:47
Speaker 1: eleven percent. You're still way way ahead if you were
39:50
Speaker 1: bullish from the lows forward. There's a wheeze to go
39:54
Speaker 1: before the bears can declare victory. Correct. Correct. So I'm up.
40:00
Speaker 1: Were all over a million right now, and I was
40:04
Speaker 1: before I started my comeback, I was down three, So
40:07
Speaker 1: I went down big in the hole right away. How
40:10
Speaker 1: big the comeback was, that's how strong the talk market was.
40:16
Speaker 1: So so, you've interviewed or been interviewed by a number
40:19
Speaker 1: of interesting people. You mentioned Jim Kramer. How did the
40:23
Speaker 1: interview with President Trump come about? That's absolutely fascinating to me. Yeah,
40:29
Speaker 1: I don't have a good answer to that all I
40:31
Speaker 1: it was the same week I was on vacation, and
40:34
Speaker 1: I think I did the interview on a Thursday, if
40:37
Speaker 1: I recall, and one of my guys worked for me
40:41
Speaker 1: called me late Wednesday, like President Trump wants you to
40:45
Speaker 1: interview him in the Oval office and or in the
40:50
Speaker 1: Rose Garden, excuse me? And I was like, what that was?
40:54
Speaker 1: Basically my reaction. It wasn't like a previous conversation or anything,
40:59
Speaker 1: because okay, is that serious. I'm not an interviewer. I
41:03
Speaker 1: really have never conducted an interview, but it was the
41:06
Speaker 1: President of the United States, and to be honest, we
41:08
Speaker 1: had to give a thought because he starts a lightning rod.
41:10
Speaker 1: There's very few people were like, I'm neutral on him.
41:13
Speaker 1: You know, you either despise them or you love them.
41:16
Speaker 1: Seems to be the case. And I've always said, almost
41:19
Speaker 1: like old Michael Jordan's you know, blue states and red
41:22
Speaker 1: states by T shirts, I want everyone to like us.
41:25
Speaker 1: So that was the only thing going in. It's like,
41:27
Speaker 1: this is half the people are gonna be great. Half
41:29
Speaker 1: kind of people. I'm gonna say I'm the devil just
41:31
Speaker 1: by associating with him, even though he's the president. Um.
41:34
Speaker 1: But it was a no brainers. It is a huge Yeah.
41:38
Speaker 1: What what was the experience like showing up at You
41:41
Speaker 1: show up at the White House, You get to the
41:42
Speaker 1: gate and you say, they asked for I D take
41:45
Speaker 1: us through the rest of the day. What what was
41:47
Speaker 1: the highlights of that? Well, the whole thing was the
41:50
Speaker 1: real So I've never been to the White House, um,
41:56
Speaker 1: and it's hard to put it into words. You're walking
41:58
Speaker 1: through the giving you the history lessons. They're telling you
42:00
Speaker 1: everything I felt like back in high school, getting the
42:03
Speaker 1: entire you know description, And then, to be honest, it
42:07
Speaker 1: was fairly intimating because and I don't get intimated easily.
42:11
Speaker 1: I've been in a lot of situations, but you know,
42:14
Speaker 1: they limit how many people can be there, Like Erica,
42:16
Speaker 1: our CEO wasn't allowed to be in the rum and
42:18
Speaker 1: it's all his people around you in a circle. And
42:22
Speaker 1: I hadn't met him before the interview started, and I
42:26
Speaker 1: wanted to conduct, you know, a good, interesting, fair interview,
42:29
Speaker 1: not overly political, because I'm not, but you know, a
42:33
Speaker 1: good interesting thing that people would be interested in. So
42:36
Speaker 1: it was a surreal, surreal experience and one that I'll
42:39
Speaker 1: really never forget. But yeah, it's hard to believe that
42:44
Speaker 1: had happened, to be totally honest, I think a lot
42:47
Speaker 1: of a lot of people share that sentiment, and I
42:50
Speaker 1: found it to be absolutely fascinating. So I have to
42:54
Speaker 1: talk about I'm gonna pivot now from the White House
42:59
Speaker 1: to something that everybody uniformly loves, and that's pizza. How
43:04
Speaker 1: on earth did one bite with Davy page views come about? What?
43:09
Speaker 1: What was the thinking I want to I want to
43:12
Speaker 1: review every pizza place in Manhattan. Yeah, so this this
43:16
Speaker 1: would probably be if someone wants to describe how barstool
43:20
Speaker 1: stumbles upon upon ideas. This the pizza thing, maybe the
43:24
Speaker 1: most afropo example. Essentially five years ago, myself and another
43:29
Speaker 1: employee got in a debate. If you can only eat
43:32
Speaker 1: one food the rest of your life, what would you eat?
43:34
Speaker 1: I said pizza? He said burritos, And you had the
43:38
Speaker 1: right answer, by the way, I agree, and so we
43:41
Speaker 1: actually like, okay, we're gonna do it. So for about
43:43
Speaker 1: a month, that's all we ate morning, breakfast, lunch, dinner.
43:47
Speaker 1: I just ate pizza, and I'm doing it, and I'm like, well,
43:50
Speaker 1: I'm eating so much pizza, I might as well start
43:52
Speaker 1: ranking these things. So I tell you, I just say,
43:55
Speaker 1: here's my knee jerk, I'll take one bite, here's the store,
43:58
Speaker 1: and you know it start catch and on. People were there,
44:01
Speaker 1: they were they liked watching these things that we were
44:03
Speaker 1: in Boston at the time. And then we're moving to
44:06
Speaker 1: New York, like, all right, New York's known for what pizza.
44:10
Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna try every every place. When I
44:12
Speaker 1: went there, it was kind of an off handed comment.
44:14
Speaker 1: But when we arrived. I did a couple and the
44:19
Speaker 1: response is overwhelming. Everybody loves pizza. Everybody like debating about pizza.
44:23
Speaker 1: It also the fact that I just happened to walk
44:26
Speaker 1: out in the street and do it. There you start
44:28
Speaker 1: running into all these characters from New York and it
44:31
Speaker 1: became almost more than the pizza. Became a lifestyle thing
44:34
Speaker 1: because you got to see the citizens of New York
44:39
Speaker 1: and and it just exploded. It is by far the
44:42
Speaker 1: most popular thing we do. It's what I am best
44:45
Speaker 1: known for. And it spans every age, every demographic, and
44:51
Speaker 1: I always see different stats on it. People like it
44:53
Speaker 1: got two hundred thousand views on YouTube. Very rarely are
44:57
Speaker 1: people adding up. It's on every social media. It's it's
45:01
Speaker 1: probably about three million unique views across all the platforms
45:07
Speaker 1: every single day. It's insane that that is insane. Not
45:11
Speaker 1: some of them that stood out to me. Well, one,
45:14
Speaker 1: you have the cast of Tag, including John Hamm and
45:17
Speaker 1: Ed Helms, and a girl recognizes you, she doesn't recognize
45:22
Speaker 1: anybody else walking down the street, a young woman and
45:25
Speaker 1: she starts talking to you. Then she recognizes John Hamm
45:28
Speaker 1: and you you bring her into the review and say, okay,
45:31
Speaker 1: take a byte. You know the rules, one bite? What's
45:33
Speaker 1: the score? Don't forget the decimal point? And then bang,
45:38
Speaker 1: suddenly she sees elm ed Helms behind her and has
45:41
Speaker 1: a meltdown. What how surreal is this when people New
45:45
Speaker 1: York has just come up to you on the street
45:47
Speaker 1: while you're doing a pizza. Yeah, I mean, well that
45:51
Speaker 1: was an ego boost obviously, the one you just said
45:53
Speaker 1: when you're standing with you know, five a lists bars,
45:56
Speaker 1: than the girl recognizes you amongst the hall. I'm you it.
46:00
Speaker 1: I've always said that this, but it's not just pizza
46:03
Speaker 1: to our sales people and when we're selling ad if
46:06
Speaker 1: you actually want to see the power of bar Stool Sports,
46:09
Speaker 1: just come walk around the streets with me, Like, come
46:11
Speaker 1: walk with me, Come walk with a couple of our guys.
46:14
Speaker 1: We've become very well known, approachable people, and you know,
46:18
Speaker 1: it's always astounding to people don't really get the power
46:22
Speaker 1: of our stool when they see us out and about
46:25
Speaker 1: just how many people love the brand, come up to it.
46:28
Speaker 1: I don't leave my apartment anymore at all. I I
46:32
Speaker 1: know the people I just walking in the street are
46:36
Speaker 1: gonna come up and say hello. That's just it's been
46:39
Speaker 1: a wild ride from working in my parents basement and
46:42
Speaker 1: being embarrassed or not embarrassed. But when someone asked me
46:45
Speaker 1: what I do know that to have to explain, well,
46:47
Speaker 1: it's a little newspaper I hand out, and I know
46:49
Speaker 1: you're not gonna know what it is too almost recognition
46:53
Speaker 1: now wherever we go. It has truly been an insane
46:58
Speaker 1: ride to this point, to say the very least. Have
47:02
Speaker 1: have you crossed a thousand pizza reviews? Yet? What number
47:06
Speaker 1: are you up to? I think we're probably like seven
47:08
Speaker 1: or eight hundred we have, which is, by the way,
47:11
Speaker 1: the best way for anybody who wants to find good
47:14
Speaker 1: pizza to go to the app for one Bite dot app.
47:17
Speaker 1: People can upload their own videos, their own scores. It's
47:20
Speaker 1: I use it myself. It is the best way to
47:23
Speaker 1: find good pizza near you. So so let's talk about
47:27
Speaker 1: not just good pizza, but best pizza. What's your best
47:32
Speaker 1: favorite slice in New York? And then I'm gonna ask
47:34
Speaker 1: you a twist on that and see if I can
47:37
Speaker 1: throw you. So, what's your favorite slice in New York?
47:40
Speaker 1: I know the answer, It's one of mine. Say it
47:42
Speaker 1: out loud, John's a bleaker that that is such a
47:47
Speaker 1: safe bet. It's such fantastic pizza, you simply cannot go
47:51
Speaker 1: wrong with that. Tell Us here's the twist question. Tell
47:56
Speaker 1: us a slice that you really enjoyed, that was a
48:00
Speaker 1: giant surprise that you weren't expecting it to be that good,
48:03
Speaker 1: or a very less known pizza place. M you know,
48:10
Speaker 1: there's a bunch in Pennsylvania they have like these tomatoes.
48:15
Speaker 1: I'm trying tomato pie pizza knocked. Just so many ONNA
48:18
Speaker 1: draw a blanket what they are. I know, I love those.
48:21
Speaker 1: There's was one of Minnesota. There's so many. I this this.
48:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna draw a blank on the best slice that
48:29
Speaker 1: is surprised by. Yeah, I don't know. I that my brain,
48:34
Speaker 1: I think is slowly dying. I've done so many the
48:37
Speaker 1: I can't think of that. I can't think of the
48:39
Speaker 1: surprising one. You know why because most of the time
48:42
Speaker 1: I can't be surprised with pizza. The audience and it
48:46
Speaker 1: is always correct. So if a lot of people say, hey,
48:49
Speaker 1: go to this place, go to this place, go to
48:51
Speaker 1: this place, it's gonna be great. It generally is great.
48:55
Speaker 1: There is one that I thought was a little now
48:58
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking about the drow of like, oh, Little
49:02
Speaker 1: Vincent's is an overrated one. I don't meet the crust,
49:04
Speaker 1: crush them with the you know, cold cold cheese on it.
49:08
Speaker 1: And Huntington's that was one that tongues of people. I know.
49:11
Speaker 1: There's one in I want to say, Park Slope that
49:14
Speaker 1: I didn't give a great review too, and the people
49:17
Speaker 1: are still passionately said they killed me if I've ever
49:19
Speaker 1: went back there. Kind of joking, kind of not l
49:22
Speaker 1: B LMB. In Brooklyn, I thought it was a little
49:25
Speaker 1: bit overrated. I guess my brain is starting to go here.
49:27
Speaker 1: I don't like to throw out the overrated ones, but
49:30
Speaker 1: I guess I just did. So you'll travel, You'll go
49:33
Speaker 1: to the outer Borrows, You'll go to Brooklyn, Queens elsewhere.
49:37
Speaker 1: And you did a great I don't want to obsess
49:40
Speaker 1: on pizza, but you did a great. Um a review
49:44
Speaker 1: with somebody I've had as a guest on the show,
49:47
Speaker 1: John Taffer, It's the first time I've seen you genuinely
49:52
Speaker 1: surprised by one of your reviewers ability to really explain
49:58
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on in a ice of a
50:01
Speaker 1: slice of pizza. Yeah. Well, I love John. I mean,
50:05
Speaker 1: when we've had a long relationship with him. Uh, years
50:10
Speaker 1: and years and years ago, we did like a mock
50:12
Speaker 1: bar rescue where he was saving barstool sports. We went in,
50:16
Speaker 1: he was screaming at us. It was the first time
50:18
Speaker 1: we met him in The relationship is really blossom. He's
50:22
Speaker 1: the only guy who has done to review. That's how
50:26
Speaker 1: That's how much I actually love him. I've been on
50:29
Speaker 1: bar rescue before, so he's he's the best. John Taffer
50:33
Speaker 1: is the best. Yeah, he's he's terrific. I know we
50:37
Speaker 1: only have you for a limited amount of time, so
50:40
Speaker 1: let me jump to our speed round. These are the
50:42
Speaker 1: five questions we ask all of our guests, so we
50:46
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a baseline to compare everything.
50:48
Speaker 1: To tell us what you're streaming these days. Give us
50:52
Speaker 1: your favorite Netflix shows, Amazon Prime or whatever podcasts uh
50:56
Speaker 1: you're listening to. I was catching up on Schnith Creek
51:01
Speaker 1: who won all those awards actually the other night. But
51:04
Speaker 1: I don't watch much TV. I watched sports and my
51:07
Speaker 1: favorite show which is not on TV right now. I
51:09
Speaker 1: love successions. Interesting. Tell us about some of your mentors
51:16
Speaker 1: who helped shape your career, whether it's in publishing or
51:21
Speaker 1: trading or anything. Nobody I would say, I haven't really
51:26
Speaker 1: worked for anybody that my I will say. When I
51:30
Speaker 1: did my first deal with Turning Group, they asked who
51:33
Speaker 1: were the business inspirations or who did I want to model?
51:36
Speaker 1: So I guess this would answer it, and it was
51:38
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett and Rob Geared, two widely different people, but
51:43
Speaker 1: two guys who basically took a small thing that they
51:47
Speaker 1: did and turned it into a lifestyle brand. So Jimmy Buffett,
51:50
Speaker 1: you know things about beaches and bars, and turned it
51:53
Speaker 1: into yeah, exactly, So taking something one concept, Rob Gardick
51:59
Speaker 1: was eight boarding and really making an entire lifestyle brand
52:04
Speaker 1: that you can sell across every channel. So those that
52:08
Speaker 1: those are my two inspirations, I guess or models. Interesting?
52:13
Speaker 1: Have you been doing much reading under lockdown? Tell us
52:16
Speaker 1: tell us some books or other things you're reading that
52:19
Speaker 1: that you can enjoy you now, reading is for suckers.
52:22
Speaker 1: I'm one of those guys that believe, you know, TVs
52:26
Speaker 1: were invented before books. Books wouldn't exist, So I don't know.
52:29
Speaker 1: It's like if you drive around on on square wheels,
52:33
Speaker 1: like why why would you do that? That? The circle wheels?
52:39
Speaker 1: That's very funny. What sort of advice would you give
52:42
Speaker 1: to a recent college grad who was interested in becoming
52:46
Speaker 1: an online entrepreneur. I always say, just do it. I've
52:52
Speaker 1: met so many people. Uh, and even when I started,
52:55
Speaker 1: all my friends like, hey, we're gonna do this idea
52:57
Speaker 1: with you and everyone Hendon Hall and had a uses
53:00
Speaker 1: in this and that there's nothing like doing it. There's
53:03
Speaker 1: nothing better than just getting up and doing. Don't talk
53:07
Speaker 1: about it, don't make excuses if you fail. You fail.
53:10
Speaker 1: There's a million different reasons why something can't be done.
53:13
Speaker 1: But in today's age, especially with the Internet, there there's
53:18
Speaker 1: no reason for you not to be doing it. Like
53:21
Speaker 1: prove it. Do it. Don't do it for money, do
53:23
Speaker 1: it because you just need to do it. That is
53:26
Speaker 1: my best advice. Just get out and start. You don't
53:29
Speaker 1: know where it will take you. Like I didn't know
53:31
Speaker 1: Barcelo would end up being this. You just got to
53:33
Speaker 1: get your oars in the water. I like that expression.
53:37
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
53:40
Speaker 1: world of investing stocks and trading today? You wish you
53:45
Speaker 1: knew back when you were first getting started, not the
53:49
Speaker 1: short stocks and stocks always go up. I'd be probably
53:53
Speaker 1: three million dollars richer. Thanks Dave for being so generous
53:56
Speaker 1: with your time. We have been speaking with Dave porton Ay.
54:00
Speaker 1: He is the founder and l president A of Barstool Sports.
54:04
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this interview, we'll be sure and check
54:07
Speaker 1: out any of our prior three hundred such conversations. You
54:11
Speaker 1: can find that at iTunes, Spotify, overcast that you're a
54:15
Speaker 1: cast wherever final podcasts are found. We love your comments,
54:19
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at M I B
54:24
Speaker 1: podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and give us
54:27
Speaker 1: a review at Apple iTunes. Check out my weekly column
54:31
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. You can sign up
54:34
Speaker 1: for our daily reads at Ridholts dot com or follow
54:37
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Rid Halts. I would be remiss
54:40
Speaker 1: if I did not thank the crack staff that helps
54:43
Speaker 1: us put these conversations together each week. My recording engineer
54:47
Speaker 1: is Charlie Vollmer, My producer is Michael Boyle. Atica val
54:51
Speaker 1: Bron is our project manager. Our research director is Michael
54:55
Speaker 1: bat Nick. I'm Barry Ridhults. You've been listening to Masters
54:59
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio.