YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Portnoy

lines on the record: 61
first: 2020-10-02
most recent: 2020-10-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I always say just do it. I've met so many people. And even when I started, all my friends like, hey, we're going to do this. I deal with you and everyone hemmed in hard and had excuses and this and that. There's nothing like doing it. There's nothing better than just getting up and doing it. Don't talk about it. Don't make excuses. If you fail, you fail. There's a million different reasons why something can't be done. But in today's age, especially with the internet, there's no reason for you not to be doing it. Like, prove it, do it. Don't do it for money. Do it because you just need to do it. That is my best advice. Just get out and start. You don't know where it'll take you. I didn't know Barcelona would end up being this. You just got to get your ores in the water.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been enjoying, yeah, no, reading is for suckers. I'm one of those guys that believe, you know, if TVs were invented before books, books wouldn't exist. So I don't know. If you drive around on square wheels, like why would you do that, the circle wheels?”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody, I would say. I haven't really worked for anybody. I will say when I did my first deal with Turning Group, they asked who were the business inspirations or who did I want to model. So I guess this would answer it. And it was Jimmy Buffett and Rob Geardick, two wildly different people. But two guys who basically took a small thing that they did and turned it into a lifestyle brand. So Jimmy Buffett sings about beaches and bars and turned it into bars and books. Yeah, exactly. So taking something, one concept Rob Dierdick was skateboarding and really making an entire lifestyle brand that you can sell across every channel. Those are my two inspirations, I guess, or models, I should say.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was catching up on Schnitz Creek, who won all those awards actually the other night, but I don't watch much TV. I watch sports, and my favorite show, which is Not on TV right now. I love succession.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I love John. I mean, we've had a long relationship with him years and years and years ago, we did like a mock bar rescue where he was saving Barcel sports. We went in, he was screaming at us. It was the first time we met him in the relationship Israeli blossom. He is the only guy who has done two reviews. That's how much I actually love him. I've been on bar rescue before. He's the best. John Taffer is the best.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I'm thinking about, I drove like, oh, Little Vincent's is an overrated one. I don't mean to crush them with the cold cheese on it in Huntington. That was one that tons of people. I know there's one in, I want to say Park Slope that I didn't give a great review to. And the people are so passionate. They said they killed me if I've ever went back. They're kind of joking, kind of not. LMB in Brooklyn. I thought it was a little bit overrated. I guess my brain's starting to go here. I don't like to throw out the overrated ones, but I guess I just did.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there's a bunch in Pennsylvania. They have like these tomatoes. I'm trying tomato pie pizza. I knocked there's so many I'm going to draw a blank on what they are. I know I love those. There was one in Minnesota. There's so many. This I'm going to draw a blank on the best slice I was surprised by. Yeah, I don't know. My brain, I think is slowly dying. I've done so many. I can't think of that. I can't think of the surprising one. You know why? Because most of the time I can't be surprised with pizza. The audience is always correct. So if a lot of people say, hey, go to this place, go to this place, go to this place. It's going to be great. It generally is great. There is one that I thought was a little...”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we're probably at like 700 or 800. We have the app, which is, by the way, the best way for anybody who wants to find good pizza. If you go to the app for one bite.app, people can upload their own videos, their own scores. I use it myself. It is the best way to find good pizza near you.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I do know I'm going to have to explain. Well, it's this little newspaper I hand out, and I know you're not going to know what it is to almost 100% recognition now wherever we go. It has truly been an insane ride to this point.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, well, that was an ego boost. Obviously, the one you just said when you're standing with 5A list stars and the girl recognized as you amongst them all. I'm used to it. I've always said that this, it's not just pizza to our salespeople when we're selling ads. If you actually want to see the power of Barcelona sports, just come walk around the streets with me. Like, come walk with me, come walk with a couple of our guys. We've become very well known, approachable people. It's always astounding to people who don't really get the power of our stool when they see us out and about just how many people love the brand come up to it. I don't leave my apartment anymore at all. I know 15% of the people I just walk in the street are going to come up and say hello. That's just, it's been a wild ride from working in my parents' basement and being embarrassed or not embarrassed, but when someone asked me.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing because you got to see the citizens of New York and it just exploded. It is by far the most popular thing we do. It's what I am best known for and it spans every age, every demographic. And I always see different stats on it. People like it got 200,000 views on YouTube. Very rarely are people adding up. It's on every social media. It's probably about 3 million unique views across all the platforms every single day. It's insane.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. And so we actually like, okay, we're going to do it. So for about a month, that's all we ate, morning, breakfast, lunch, dinner. I just ate pizza. And I'm doing it. And I'm like, well, I'm eating so much pizza. I might as well start ranking these things. So I just say, here's my knee jerk. I'll take one bite, here's the store. And, you know, it started catching on. People, they liked watching these things. We were in Boston at the time. And then we're moving to New York. I'm like, all right, New York's known for what? Pizza. I said, I'm going to try every place when I went there. It was kind of an off-handed comment. But when we arrived, I did a couple. And the response is overwhelming. Everybody loves pizza. Everybody likes debating about pizza. It also, the fact that I just happened to walk out in the street and do it there, you start running into all these characters from New York. And it became almost more than the pizza. It became a lifestyle.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this would probably be if someone wants to describe how Barcelona stumbles upon ideas, the pizza thing may be the most apropos example. Essentially, five years ago, myself and another employee got in a debate. If you could only eat one food the rest of your life, what would you eat? I said, pizza. He said burritos. You had the right answer, buddy.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What was the experience like Well, the whole thing was surreal. So I've never been to the White House. And it's hard to put it into words. You're walking through the giving you the history lesson. They're telling you everything. I felt like back in high school getting the entire description. And then to be honest, it was fairly intimidating because, and I don't get intimidated easily. I've been in a lot of situations, but they limit how many people can be there. Like Erica, our CEO, wasn't allowed to be in the room, and it's all his people around you in a circle. And I hadn't met him before the interview started. And I wanted to conduct a good, interesting, fair interview. Not overly political because I'm not, but a good, interesting thing that people would be interested in. So it was a surreal, surreal experience and one that I'll really never forget.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone like us. So that was the only thing going in, it's like half the people gonna be great, half the people I'm going to say I'm the devil just by associating with him, even though he's the president. But it was a no-brainer. It is a huge.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. All I know was the same week I was on vacation and I think I did the interview on a Thursday, if I recall. And one of my guys who worked for me called me late Wednesday. They're like, President Trump wants you to interview him in the Oval Office or in the Rose Garden, excuse me. And I was like, what? That was basically my reaction. It wasn't like a previous conversation or anything. It was like, okay, is that serious? I'm not an interviewer. I really have never conducted an interview. But the presidents of the United States. And to be honest, we had to give a thought because he's such a lightning rod. There's very few people who are like, I'm neutral on him. You know, you either despise him or you love him seems to be the case. And I've always said almost like, oh, Michael Jordan, you know, blue states and red states buy t-shirts.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. Correct. So I'm up overall over a million right now. And before I started my comeback, I was down three. So I went down big in the hole right away. But that's how big the comeback was. And that's how strong the stock market was.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe it. And the thing that I find, I don't want to say, well, it's just funny to me is for six months I've been told it's going to end in tears. People have been listening to me. I'm going to ruin them. First of all, I'm only trading my own money, and I'm very clear, do what you want. But if you were listening to me, you'd be up. And the second the stock market has one bad day or two bad day or been a week. They're chirping me from the cheap seats, being like I told you. I'm still way up. I don't know. It went down for a couple days. That happened. But they are, they go silent. They're cricket. The stock market's going up. It goes down for a second and they come out of the wood nuts.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been saying the stock market is going to crash for the last six months and it hasn't. It's going to end in tears and you better give them their money because you don't know how to spend your money. Those are the guys that don't like me. And I don't know why people do that, by the way. I don't know. That's one of the things I found interesting is there's a lot of these talking heads who are seemingly rooting for the stock market to crash. Like they want people to lose money. I don't understand that. I feel like everyone should be on the same teeth. The stock market goes up. Everyone should be happy.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I should clarify I think a lot of people on Wall Street actually love it. I get so many comments that people work on Wall Street. It's refreshing. It depresses fresh air, even though you're making fun of us. We find it funny. The clown on Wall Street and FinTwit, the FinTwit guys are really the ones that I would say haven't been welcoming because they're used car salesmen. They're the ones trolling thing. They're trying to, they need money. They need to convince people that they're smarter than you and you can't invest your own money. And the only way to be safe, you know, or Ross Gerber. You're going to give Ross Gerber your money or else you're going to lose it all. I mean, he's a clown. I feel like they've been pretty inviting. Jim Kramer has been super, super friendly from the beginning and welcoming to me. And, you know, most of the networks are. But the issue is the guys who...”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hurts when they're bankrupt or Kodak and you think those I'm not saying who knows with those but those I'm in and out of the start that I'm saying always go up are stocks that truly always go up”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's a fair point. I think there's a misconception about the stocks I'm involved in. Like, Shopify is not going to zero. Amazon's not going to zero. A lot of stocks I'm in. I'm not in panic stocks. And if I am a panic stock, small stocks, if I'm in stocks like that, I'm not holding them very long. So those aren't going to zero. And you could get killed quickly. But a lot of my stocks are brand names. And I am buying and selling them. So those are what I'm referring to. If you're going with a penny stock or something that's under five bucks, clearly there's risk involved. And things happen like Nicola the other day, obviously, the guy got accused of fraud, the CEO, and he steps down and that takes the bath. So you take that risk, but by and large, as long as you're not dealing in high volatility, like if you buy, what was it?”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then you're always going to get it back. So, you know, I lost a million dollars. I don't know, like last week. That didn't bother me at all. I didn't lose like an ounce of sleep. That's the game. That's just the game.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really varies. When I started, I was down about two or three million instantly, almost I was shorting stocks, which I don't do anymore because I got killed. And that's the main thing I've gotten killed on. And then I ended up being up about 4 million at my height. I am now up probably about one the last couple of weeks has knocked three legs out. That doesn't bother me at all because I'm up. When you're down, it's a lot harder to go further down. But I do overall believe If you just hold and you have the time to hold, socks will always go up. So unlike sports gambling where the clock strikes zero and the game's over and you owe, the stock market really doesn't do that. It keeps going. So as long as you have time on your hands and patience, which I don't, but if you do...”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very good. Their earnings were actually the same day. That's why I thought it was a no brainer. So they had great earnings.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's all over the map. It really is. There is strategy to it. I'm always looking at earnings and what I think. I'm using my own logic in regards to what I think may be good COVID or not COVID stock is. And then it could be, for example, I was on vacation for a week and a deer, I woke up, there was a deer outside my window. Like it was very beautiful, actually. But anyways, I saw the deer and I thought that was a sign. So I bought John Deere.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was big. I don't know what it is. We definitely have far more people now. The live stream always is, you know, four to five thousand people concurrently on it at once. I don't know what I had. It's definitely picked up. It's a new demo. It's a new audience. But, you know, Twitter actually is super hard to grow your user base. So it hasn't grown dramatically.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a different kind of way, really. People are paying attention how I do daily. And then obviously it starts getting picked up within the financial Twitter community. Then it started getting picked up by the networks who, in my mind, were kind of making fun of me in the beginning, but I don't really care. It's like anytime we can get publicity, that's good for overall Barstool. Then I started winning. And then it kind of changed the tone of it. And it's been an interesting ride. I mean, I think I may be for the last couple months. I shouldn't say maybe. I'm the most talked about person on Wall Street. If you told me that was going to happen six months ago, I would have looked at you like you had 10 heads. What are you talking about?”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, there was an early element to it. I didn't know what the hell was doing clearly. And I don't even mean with stocks. I couldn't figure out the platforms. I couldn't figure out necessarily how to trade things. I was making mistakes. So those meltdowns were very real because it isn't the easiest thing to use right away. You got to kind of get used to it. So that element of it certainly captured people's attention. And then obviously I have a very large fan base who know me and know my personality and they're interested to see what's going on. So sports was canceled, but it was a sport”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think anybody on Wall Street had ever seen Somebody like myself basically doing what I was doing on Wall Street with large amounts of money and being very upfront about it. And, you know, it was just very different. There isn't much out there like what the Davy Day Trader stick was. So it clicked.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never know what's going to work or what people are going to like. It's no different than my pizza reviews that I do. I didn't start that with some grand plan that was going to become the preeminent pizza review guy and basically the world, but it was obvious when I did it people were paying attention. So I started with that one video in the suit ringing the bell. And the next day I put a live stream on for a couple minutes trading stocks and people tuned in and were fascinated. So the next day I did it again. More people paid attention. And it was just one of those organic things. And it was real like everything we do. I was trading with real money and I was going to kill this beginning, which is always there's that, you know, it's a train wreck, but you can't look away vibe. So it was very clear right away that people were interested in watching it. And like you said, I heard it's colorful. It's different.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So once quarantine hit, we needed something to do something to pass the time. And we're searching for answers. So the stock market was still going in one day. I decide almost as a gimmick, you know what? I'm going to throw on a full suit. I got a little bell like I was ringing the stock exchange to start the day and made a quick video and put it on. And, you know, it clicked like people were interested. Like, all right, this is interesting.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is wild to think about. So we've always been very good at being creative, reinventing, and that's because, not to say it again, but we're born from the internet. If you're not creative, if you can't create waves, if you can't get people to pay attention to what you're doing, I probably wouldn't have found you in the first place.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An accident that we've stayed relevant. We've always reinvented ourselves. We've always had something new. So, you know, it's just the latest generation. And I'd argue that outside the obvious negative impact of quarantine and the pandemic for Barstool and eyeballs and growth and presence, it's been a very beneficial time. Like we grew in Paye's views, we grew in how many people knew us, our footprint, our impact has never been stronger because people had nothing to do, nothing to consume. And we were consistently on the cutting edge of putting out content, not just myself, but like Dan, Big Cat, you know, he has, he never twitched as one of our bigger stars. He had never been on Twitch. He went on Twitch and played an old college football game and created a fictional college football coach. He became the number one Twitch stream on Twitch within like three weeks.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's the great thing about, I guess, the way Barstol has been trained. Like I said, born from the Internet, vacation certainly didn't cross my mind. Okay, we got to reinvent ourselves or do something different. So I was never worried that once sports went away for a little bit, somehow our content would suffer. You know, the day trading thing, which I started doing when sports went away because like, okay, I got to pass the time somehow. The stock market's open. I'm going to start dabbling with that. I never imagined it would become what it had become. But at the same time, and I've said this to Erica, our CEO when she came in, we've been around for 17 years. We've stayed relevant for 17 years. I'd say we've stayed edgy for 17 years. We've stayed cool for 17 years. That is almost the biggest accomplishment. So many brands like ours or in the space, they come and they go. I've seen them a million times.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who owned it? Now it's over 100,000 Robin Hood traders. That's a marketing army. People wear the merch. They root for us like we're a sports team.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saying the same thing. Come bet with us. Come do this. You get $10 here, $100 there, a free $500 bet. It's all whitewashed. There's so much of it in a weird way. It's like a race to the bottom. There's only going to be so many of these companies that can survive. We will compete and compete effectively, while most likely being profitable, which will be probably the only company that can say that because we're not going to have the marketing cost that these other companies have. They have to spend, spend, spend to get any share or else they won't get it because no one really cares about draft kings versus Fanduel versus NGM versus Points Bet. They don't. With us, they're playing with us because of our logo, because it's a 17-year story because they root for us. That's why I think if you look before we did the deal with Penn, there was like a handful of Robin Hood trailers.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, yeah, and they are big. They're big competitors. And I know them intimately because we've been working with those guys for a decade. Like at one point, Giraffe Kings, I was offered equity in just so they could lock us up exclusively for advertising. This is a long time ago. So we know those guys well, and they're not going anywhere. They've done very well with what they've done, and they have a huge database. What we're good at is why pen invested because we can reach our crowd, our audience, who's wildly loyal and wildly engaged and get them to download the Barcelona Sports Book app, place bets through us without spending really any money on marketing. So right now what you have is a marketing war. If you watch a football game, you'll probably see 37 different ads from 10 different companies all basically.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Casino brand, which grants them access and licenses into so many different states, but they didn't have a well-known brand. We have a well-known brand but no access. So the deal was struck basically that Penn National, they bought a, I think it's 36% with the option to buy more in three years and get the whole company, and they would lead their sports gambling efforts with our brand. So the Barcelona Sports Book, which just launched on Friday in Pennsylvania and will be rolling out across the country in states we have access. So it's the perfect kind of mix of Penn having all these physical properties and the licenses in Barstool having the online presence in digital marketing combining forces to hopefully become one of the premier gambling companies in the United States.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Offer, which stunned me, which absolutely stunned me because I thought. They are a huge regional casino operator. In all the casinos are operating, or most of them under unique names. So, you know, they're all different. Like I had been in their casinos, but I didn't know that I had been in their casinos, if that makes any sense. So we met with them, and it was a perfect marriage because they had this huge...”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, as we mentioned in the early part of the interview, Barcelona sports actually started back in the newspaper days as a gambling and fantasy rag. As a newspaper I handed out about a year and a half ago, I don't know the exact date, but the legislation on sports gambling was overturned in the United States. So always it had been illegal, and now it was going to be legal on a state-by-state basis. Once that law was changed, I basically knew this was a huge opportunity for Barr Sul because our core DNA was sports gambling. So, and I knew there was going to be basically a gold rush of all these companies trying to get in this industry. So we had meetings with everybody under the sun, Vandill, DraftKing, MGM, SARS Group, you name it, we met with them. And none of them actually yielded solid.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She said that she liked about Barcelona and the business model. I was like, yep, that's what I think. That's what I think. So after Eric and I met, I called the turning guys and I was like, have you ever heard of Eric and Ardini? They had, she was a former CMO of AOL. And like, I just met with her and I love her. Like, I think she's the perfect fit. If she's willing to do it. So they reached out to Erica to gauge interest. She had just started her own company. So she was like, let me think about this for a day or two. And she came back. She's like, yes, this is too good of an opportunity to pass. Let me meet with the guys. And she did. And that started the process. So it was unintentional. A lot of people, one of my pet peeves is a lot of people say we hired Erica because she's a female. It was an all-male company. And it's just going to be further from the truth. It's insulting to me. It's insulting to her. But she has been the absolute perfect hire.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recruiting firm. They had 70, I think, interviews or so, all men, none of them made it to the second round. None of them clicked. It was always they were telling us what we should do. And you should do this. You should do that. I think you should change this. I think you should change that. And it just didn't click. We had a woman by the name of Betsy Morgan, who used to be the CEO of the Huffington Post. I'm a Nantucket guy. She spent time in Nantucket. And I was introduced to her. And she became, I think, our only advisor. She was basically an advisor to Barcelona. We hit it off. And one day she was in my neck of the woods in New York. She's like, you want to meet for a coffee? I was like, sure. So I walked over. And with her was Erica Nardini, who was friends. So Erica just happened to be there for the coffee. And Erica and I started talking. And she was a fan of our school.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Erica, so basically I sold half of Barcelona sports, 51% of the Chernin group, and I believe it was 2016-ish in Barcelona, it was about 10 to 15 people at that time, and we were just didn't have time to do anything on the business side. It was all making content and making content and making content. And part of the thing I said when I met with her, and I go, we got to hire CEO to basically run the business side. I always felt we had this huge audience, but we weren't overly organized on the business side. We just didn't do things that a lot of other similar companies were doing. And if we could get the business side in order, we'd be putting gas on a fire. So they agreed, and right away, one of the first things we did after the acquisition was set out to find a CEO. They hired a recruiting firm, high power.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's one of the toughest challenges I have. I think my role, me personally, and I'm sure maybe there's others like it, but I can't really think of anybody who is as involved in the content in a company as well as the big picture. Obviously, we have a CEO who's unbelievable, Erica Nardini, best hire we've ever made. But we work closely on almost everything. So it is a mix. It varies. Like the day trading stuff, I'm still doing. We had a big deal that a lot of people know about at Penn National, and we just launched our Barthool sports book in Pennsylvania. So I'm pushing that now and doing content with that, but there's much larger discussions on the way to roll that out nationally and acquisitions and things we want to do. Really varies day to day, but I'd almost say it's 60 40 business versus content at this point.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. We had a brief dance with ESPN for part of my take. They greenlit a TV show, and then they canceled it because there were people at ESPN who don't like us, and we have our detractors in ESPN. That left a bad taste in my mouth. I was hesitant of that deal to begin with. The thing that we need.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As well as anybody possibly could. People would be stunned, the general public, on how many People, the talent at other established networks who want to all come work for us because we're competitive pay wise with all of them, maybe better, and there's no restrictions. You can be yourself. We want you to be yourself. We're never going to say, hey, you can't say that. You can't say this. Everybody can be exactly who they are. And we find that formula works for us. And a lot of people want to be a part of it.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we have another podcast that we sign million dollars worth of game based out of Philadelphia. Again, something I never heard of either the guys Wallow and Gilly. They're Philly legends, you know, very well known as Philly that, like Gilly was the ghostwriter for Little Wayne. So we listened to their podcast. And right away, we thought, oh, this is a hit. We need this. And so we sign those guys. They were friends with Dion Sanders, who was looking for maybe new opportunities, opportunities to be himself, basically. Because when you're on a network, he's on NFL network. You have to watch what you say. You have to be guarded. And right now, people want unfiltered. They want authenticity. So he was looking for a place where he could be himself. It was one of those marriages. The second we met with him, we kind of knew that we were the right partner for each other. And to be honest, he has been, and it's early, but he has fit into the parcel culture.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, not ironically, but one of the things I always said about Barcelona, or my goals once we started actually making progress. And when I sold to Turning Group the first time, I wanted Barcel to be the place that a young college graduate who is in comedy the first place they applied to work is Barstool. It used to maybe be Saturday Night Live or I don't know, some other comedy brand. I want it to be us. And we're sort of there. So we have our pick of the crop of all these talented people. The hardest thing is actually going through the applications to find talent. It's a huge advantage.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the type of like basically motivation, desire that we look for. Somebody who has something unique and also basically the energy and the motivation to do something like that. And they've exploded almost instantly. But I've barely listened to any of the episodes, but it was clearly something different. She was clearly a talent. We put the barstool marketing engine behind it. And with podcasting right now, I think we have the number one hockey podcast, the number one football podcast, the number one female podcast. What our audience is very good at, they'll give you a chance. And if you have something unique and good, you'll have a huge hit right off the bat.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source