Past, Present, Future: How Barstool Sports Is Swinging For The

Fences In Digital Media

Barstool Sports is a digital media company that was founded in 2003 in Boston as a free

black and white sports newspaper. The company directly competes with ESPN’s online business,

as well as other sports related websites. Furthermore, it also competes with other non-sports

related digital media companies that fight for views on pop-culture related topics, TMZ for

example. Today, Barstool’s website received over 6 million users monthly and has a social

media following that “on par with New England Patriots, the Chicago Bulls, and AC Milan,”

with 2.2 million Instagram followers.

From 2003 until today Barstool has gained popularity primarily among males with ages

between teenagers to forty years old. To rise to the following it has today its founder, Dave

Portnoy, focused on providing content that was humorous, covered sports, and also could be

offensive to some as Barstool’s competitive strategy to challenge the larger corporate owned

market leaders. Barstool, led by Portnoy, used customer segmentation to clearly identify their

target customers and uses their content as a means to fend off competition from larger media

giants to maintain their very active following. Barstool tends to push the boundaries of what is

considered acceptable while at the same time providing quality coverage and opinion of sports

and pop-culture news, amongst other topics such as a daily NYC pizza review, positioning

themselves as hybrid of an ESPN/TMZ style media company optimized for the digital age.

Barstool’s success led to it being acquired in 2016 by the Cherin Group. Portnoy gave up

his majority ownership stake while maintaining complete editorial oversight. The Cherin Group

appointed Erika Nardini as CEO, and she immediately took aim at creating other sources of

revenue other than purely relying upon advertising. In Nardini’s first year she managed to

execute a strategy that blends content and a commerce business to sell merchandise, which has
led to a 400% increase in merchandise sales in her first year at the company. This branding

strategy is fundamental in maintaining their customer base as it creates what could be considered

a fan club of the company that brandish jackets, t-shirts, hats, and other merchandise with

slogans, and logos made popular by Barstool and its online personalities.

Aside from merchandise Nardini also implemented a premium website subscription for

“Stoolies” seeking exclusive content. More recently, they implemented a policy that only allows

for “Stoolies” to comment on their website articles. Barstool even offered a pay-per-view boxing

tournament for $5.00 and received 12,500 buys. Although not a huge number, it did serve to get

a gauge as to whether that type of strategy could gain favor from their followers in the future.

Barstool’s viewership and subscriber network has allowed it to gain big name

sponsorship such as Drafkings, Frank’s Red Hot, Seat Geek, Ab InBev, and DirectTv, which

many spectators may think would want to steer clear from the company due to their outrageous

antics, content, and commentary. However, these are the exact qualities that have allowed

Barstool to thrive and gain the devout subscribers and followers it has today. This week Portnoy

was kicked out of the NFL media day at the Super Bowl after being banned by the NFL

previously for Barstool’s unfiltered criticism of Roger Goodell. It is these kinds of actions that

could be devastating for the likes of ESPN or Fox Sports, however are strategic marketing for

Barstool, giving their fans exactly what they come to their site for.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjburns/2017/07/11/past-present-future-how-barstool-

sports-is-swinging-for-the-fences-in-digital-media/#1449c15f4edb