Who is Dave Portnoy
Dave Portnoy is someone who I found on YouTube because of his Pizza reviews. I thought it was so refreshing seeing someone going to these family-owned pizza shops, reviewing pizza and giving it a score. I instantly thought this guy was brilliant because many of these older, traditional pizza shops don’t do as much marketing. Dave’s reviews will reward the quality shops with customers from all over, as his videos get millions of views. Anyway, I discovered him as the “pizza guy” and later found out he’s the guy who founded Barstool Sports — a print newspaper, turned blog, turned media empire.
When successful people give advice saying “do what you love” it’s not just a cheesy (no-pun intended) saying they got from a hallmark card. Dave Portnoy is the epitome of “do what you love”. Portnoy grew up a big fan of sports and was a successful high school varsity athlete. Portnoy was considered to be a special talent in both football and baseball. He also became a gambler at a young age after placing a bet on a horse with the help of one of his coaches. These two passions are the juice behind Barstool Sports.
Barstool Sports was founded in 2003, just before the Boston Red Sox had made history, winning the world series. Portnoy grew up a huge Red Sox fan — of course being from the New England Area. Having fallen in love with Baseball in 2004 after watching the Red Sox win, Portnoy’s passion for sports resonates a lot with me. Although I am a die-hard Blue Jays fan, the 2003-2004 Boston Red Sox were what developed my passion for the sport — which I have since transferred to the Blue Jays.
History of Barstool Sports
Back to Dave and how he built Barstool Sports. Dave Portnoy graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Education. While in College however, he started a website called “thegamblingman.com” where he gave out his gambling picks on a daily basis (for free). This foreshadows the concept of the Barstool Sports. He worked for a few years, making a six figure salary but did not like working for someone else, so he came up with three business ideas —
- Scouting company that pairs lower tier athletes with coaches looking to fill spots for various sports
- Furniture arbitrage business taking free furniture college students threw away and selling it online
- Barstool Sports — a publication centered around fantasy sports and gambling picks
He wound up choosing the best idea of the three and Barstool was born. Dave was building this business at a time when the newspaper and print media was falling out of favor. This was all taking place during the dot com bubble where internet was beginning to take off. Dave bought 100 newspaper racks reading “Barstool Sports” and put them at train stations all over the city. Dave got a friend of a friend to publish the newspaper as she had been in the industry for many years. He then purchased an old Astro van and began distributing the first edition in August of 2003.
Good Businesses Provide Real Value
The value proposition that Barstool Sports provided was fantasy sports information and gambling lines/picks. To the target audience Dave was appealing to, this was huge, because it was free. For the non-sports fans, Dave was basically saying “here’s how to make money” to his audience. One brilliant move on Dave’s part was writing under many different fake names to make the company seem bigger than it was. He had already been dealing with online gambling sites through his personal habit, so he got them to advertise in his paper, although this wasn’t enough. He also convinced a local steakhouse he liked to advertise in his paper by pretending there was an ad for their competitor in the paper and then calling them up to let them know.
Overcoming Adversity
At one point Dave was working 15+ hours a day but they still had no money, so his wife convinced him to get a job. He left that job at lunch on the first day. Dave was convinced all his efforts were working. It got so bad he would play party poker to win money so they could eat.
Barstool began throwing events as they gained more and more exposure. Early on, Dave would hold events to watch the NCAA tournament and only 5 people showed up (including them). However, the following year, 250 showed up to the same event. Dave’s relentlessness in continuing to build what he believes in is what enabled Barstool to survive in the early days.
Growth
Barstool began its online presence after a day Dave was handing out the paper in the financial district in Boston. He handed the paper to Ian White (who ended up becoming CTO for Business Insider), who told him he loved the paper but he was sadly moving to New York and wouldn’t be able to read it anymore. He offered to set up a website for free if Dave would post the paper online. Dave agreed. Barstool began growing rapidly once it migrated online in 2007.
In 2016, The Chernin Group bought a 51% stake in Barstool Sports at 10 to 15 million dollar valuation. At the time there were 5 million monthly visitors of the website and Barstool Sports was a lifestyle, sports and comedy content brand. According to Portnoy, at the time the website was profitable but they were valued based on revenues. Dave grew his website by continually delivering viral video content and podcasts on social media and his website. With the added investment, Dave was able to have all his writers and content producers under one roof when he moved the company headquarters to New York.
In 2018, Barstool Sports got another 15 million dollar investment from The Chernin Group, valuing Barstool at over 100 million dollars. Barstool Sports intended on using the money to hire more staff and invest in their already successful boxing and pay-per view events. In the same year, SiriusXM gave Barstool a 24-hour channel on its service for talk shows on mixed-martial arts, pro-wrestling and boxing.
How Barstool Sports Makes Money
The revenue streams for Barstool Sports consist of podcasts, display advertising, video advertising, subscriptions, betting, pay-per-view events and Ecommerce sales. Barstool makes most of its money through podcast ads.
As of 2019, Barstool Sports had 25 active podcasts under its umbrella, bringing in $15 million in ad revenue. Among the shows under the Barstool Sports umbrella is Million Dollaz Worth of Game. You can check it out embedded in the middle of this post. Podcasts get a fixed rate from advertisers based on the size of their audience. Podcast hosts typically read out advertisements multiple times throughout the show to fulfill their obligations to the advertiser.
Barstool makes money through video advertising on YouTube, Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram, among others. It also makes money off the impressions (or views) the banner ads on its website receives.
Moreover, its website generated subscription revenue from over 30,000 paying subscribers in 2019. It was so successful in its initial year that The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have copied the business model.
Barstool Sports generated revenues of $150 million in 2020 and has continued to grow since then.
Pizza Reviews
Most people know Dave Portnoy for his Pizza reviews. He actually started doing reviews of pizza places as part of a challenge within the Barstool office. He was asking his employees “if you could eat one food every day what would it be?”. His own answer was Pizza. He ate Pizza for all three meals of the day for a month. This is how one bite pizza reviews was born.
He has now reviewed well over 650 pizza places – from Florida to Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and more recently my hometown of Toronto. Check out one of ~15 pizza reviews he did while he was in town below.
One-bite pizza reviews are so easy to watch and you never know what’s going to happen when it comes to Dave. No footage is ever cut out and anyone walking by on the street can end up in the review. It is both entertaining and informative (to us lovers of pizza). Whether it’s cross-marketing to fans of celebrities who join Portnoy, or the sheer virality of this type of content, it’s easy to see why it’s such a hit.
Dave is well respected in the pizza industry and by consumers of pizza all over North America. Why is he so respected? He gives his brutally honest opinion on what is good pizza and what isn’t. The honesty and demanding the truth is part of the reason Portnoy and Barstool Sports has such a cult following and is therefore successful.
Final Thoughts
Dave Portnoy has built a strong following due to being a man of the people and telling it like it is. From reading this post you can see how he built this empire from nothing to something. It was not easy and not everyone will be cut out for a journey like his. But it is definitely possible. As of July 2021, Portnoy had raised over $40 million to help small businesses during the pandemic.
