Jon Gruden now employed by Barstool Sports

[Sabres 2025]

Just now, Mr. WEO said:

Penn, a huge gaming/casino company, wanted Barstool for Barstool Bets to partner with ESPN in their online gaming venture.  ESPN  didn't want to be associated with Barstool in the creation of ESPN Bet.  Without this partnership, Barstool was of zero value for Penn (which had 6.5 billion in revenue in 2022) as .  They instead partnered with ESPN without BS.   If Barstool was printing money, it stands to reason that they would keep BS as a profitable asset, rather than taking a writedown.  Similarly, if they thought BS had significant market value, they wouldn't have sold it back to Portnoy (let alone for a dollar).  

 

Obviously not all (or, perhaps, any) revenue is profit.  Last reports I see online are losses of 16 million Q1 and 12 million in Q2 for 2023.  Can you link to the more recent public info re: current financials?

 

Barstool Bets is an insignificant online betting player---Penn thought BS would funnel tons of it's broke ass readers to "ESPN Bets" for them.  unfortunately their 18-34 viewers were the wrong betting demographic.

 

Portnoy's politics aren't an issue for me (it's worth familiarizing yourself with this guy's history though), but they were for others--he was the reason that Penn could not get licensed to operate gambling online in certain states. 

 

Barstool is not a gaming company. Whether you like Portnoy or not, he is a brilliant marketer. Barstool now has a smaller workforce and is in bed with DraftKings. Difference is Draftkings does not own them like Penn Gaming did.  Never really made sense for a gaming company to buy Barstool. Penn Gaming probably always preferred ESPN, but ESPN and all the sports leagues were publicly anti-gaming up until recently.

 

[Mr. WEO]

32 minutes ago, Sabres 2025 said:

 

Lots of people. Half their viewers are still between 18-34.  They have 41.2 million TikTok followers. ESPN, which is much larger basically has 48.5. They have 17M Instagram followes. ESPN has 28M instagram followers.  And ESPN has a monster company in Disney behind it.  Barstool is actually even more popular than ESPN with the demographic advertisers want.  People live in their bubbles on the internet, and obviously your bubble doesn't include Barstool, but millions of other people's bubbles does include barstool.  Barstool is very good at marketing. It is basically a marketing company.

 

 

 

in October, Barstool had 5.4 million unique visits.  ESPN.com had 632 million.  ad revenue was about 250 million vs 4.4 billion for ESPN

[extrahammer]

35 minutes ago, Sabres 2025 said:

 

Lots of people. Half their viewers are still between 18-34.  They have 41.2 million TikTok followers. ESPN, which is much larger basically has 48.5. They have 17M Instagram followes. ESPN has 28M instagram followers.  And ESPN has a monster company in Disney behind it.  Barstool is actually even more popular than ESPN with the demographic advertisers want.  People live in their bubbles on the internet, and obviously your bubble doesn't include Barstool, but millions of other people's bubbles does include barstool.  Barstool is very good at marketing. It is basically a marketing company.

 

In terms of uniques, they have pretty much the same number of unique audience they had in 2016 and similar marketshare of audience. They are good at retargeting marketing promotions to that same unique audience over and over. Continued growth is not something they're very good at, that's why when a lot of their talent reaches a certain mark and want to continue to grow, they know the best thing is to leave Barstool, even Penn knows that it has exponentially more value with ESPN. Barstool lost probably $500 million in market value just between the losses of Pat and Alex, and possibly more if Pat and Alex continue their growth. 

[Mr. WEO]

3 minutes ago, Sabres 2025 said:

 

Barstool is not a gaming company. Whether you like Portnoy or not, he is a brilliant marketer. Barstool now has a smaller workforce and is in bed with DraftKings. Difference is Draftkings does not own them like Penn Gaming did.  Never really made sense for a gaming company to buy Barstool. Penn Gaming probably always preferred ESPN, but ESPN and all the sports leagues were publicly anti-gaming up until recently.

 

 

Barstool operates it gaming arm as Barstool Bets.  It's therefore also a gaming company.  It sure "made sense" to Penn at the time to try to scoop up all those viewers as bettors and sweeten their deal with ESPN Bets.  

 

Penn bought BS to bring its readers in as potential bettors to offer ESPN in Penn's collab to form ESPN Bets. ESPN didn't want the toxic association (state licensing refusals were only part of their problem with BS).  So, Penn dumps BS, partners with ESPN anyway and has access to far more bettors.

 

 

[billsfan89]

Gruden is a turd of a person and coaching passed him by. But as a broadcaster and YouTuber he is entertaining. So I’m not surprised an alt media outlet took him on esp one like Barstool that’s not exactly concerned with image as much

[stuvian]

if he tells a lie on air, his lips will inflate the size of Michelin tires

[Sabres 2025]

59 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

Barstool operates it gaming arm as Barstool Bets.  It's therefore also a gaming company.  It sure "made sense" to Penn at the time to try to scoop up all those viewers as bettors and sweeten their deal with ESPN Bets.  

 

Penn bought BS to bring its readers in as potential bettors to offer ESPN in Penn's collab to form ESPN Bets. ESPN didn't want the toxic association (state licensing refusals were only part of their problem with BS).  So, Penn dumps BS, partners with ESPN anyway and has access to far more bettors.

 

 

 

Barstool is not a gaming company. You can't bet on barstool bets or whatever it is you are referring to. Draftkings is the gaming company and has an exclusive deal with Barstool which markets Draftkings in all their gambling social media.  You can't just make yourself into a gaming company. It is not easy to get a gaming license.

[Mr. WEO]

1 hour ago, Sabres 2025 said:

 

Barstool is not a gaming company. You can't bet on barstool bets or whatever it is you are referring to. Draftkings is the gaming company and has an exclusive deal with Barstool which markets Draftkings in all their gambling social media.  You can't just make yourself into a gaming company. It is not easy to get a gaming license.

 

Barstoolbets was created when  bought by Penn. Bartstool Sportsbook was formed in 2020.  Their recent agreement with DraftKings ended Barstool sports book.

 

 

[Sabres 2025]

4 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

Barstoolbets was created when  bought by Penn. Bartstool Sportsbook was formed in 2020.  Their recent agreement with DraftKings ended Barstool sports book.

 

 

 

You posted that Barstoolbets is the operating arm of Barstool and said then said Barstool is also a gaming company. That is just wrong. Portnoy bought back Barstool and it was no longer a gaming company. The recent agreement with Draftkings didn't end anything. It is a marketing deal, not a gambling deal.  After Portnoy bought back Barstool it was his and he doesn't have a gaming license. 

Edited November 17 by Sabres 2025

[Nelius]

Can’t wait until the Gruden vs Shane Gillis case race.
 

This seems appropriately on brand for all but it’s still content, I’ll check in and chuckle with chuckie every once in awhile. Absolutely a downgrade though, and he probably knows that.

[Mr. WEO]

1 hour ago, Sabres 2025 said:

 

You posted that Barstoolbets is the operating arm of Barstool and said then said Barstool is also a gaming company. That is just wrong. Portnoy bought back Barstool and it was no longer a gaming company. The recent agreement with Draftkings didn't end anything. It is a marketing deal, not a gambling deal.  After Portnoy bought back Barstool it was his and he doesn't have a gaming license. 

In my post you quoted, I said Barstool bets as a gaming entity ended when Portnoy bought back the company.  
 

 

[Sabres 2025]

40 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

In my post you quoted, I said Barstool bets as a gaming entity ended when Portnoy bought back the company.  
 

 

 

Fine, keeping thinking whatever you want. It is your truth. lol

[FireChans]

8 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

Barstool operates it gaming arm as Barstool Bets.  It's therefore also a gaming company.  It sure "made sense" to Penn at the time to try to scoop up all those viewers as bettors and sweeten their deal with ESPN Bets.  

 

Penn bought BS to bring its readers in as potential bettors to offer ESPN in Penn's collab to form ESPN Bets. ESPN didn't want the toxic association (state licensing refusals were only part of their problem with BS).  So, Penn dumps BS, partners with ESPN anyway and has access to far more bettors.

 

 

Penn just does bad business. They overpaid for a piece of BS thinking it was their gateway to a new market to outpace DK or Fanduel. Then they buy the rest of the company for almost 400M, and 6 mo later give it away lol.

 

 

[Mr. WEO]

 

20 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Penn just does bad business. They overpaid for a piece of BS thinking it was their gateway to a new market to outpace DK or Fanduel. Then they buy the rest of the company for almost 400M, and 6 mo later give it away lol.

 

 

 

They assumed that BS followers would be a boon to their nascent gaming book.  Unfortunately, they didn't consider 2 important details:  BS followers, particularly 18-34, are broke-ass bros, by and large...and also that Portnoy was so toxic that too many jurisdictions would not grant it gaming licenses.

 

So they simply gave it away, wrote off the loss  and partnered with the biggest sports content in the world to be their sports book.

[FireChans]

47 minutes ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

 

They assumed that BS followers would be a boon to their nascent gaming book.  Unfortunately, they didn't consider 2 important details:  BS followers, particularly 18-34, are broke-ass bros, by and large...and also that Portnoy was so toxic that too many jurisdictions would not grant it gaming licenses.

 

So they simply gave it away, wrote off the loss  and partnered with the biggest sports content in the world to be their sports book.

Like I said, bad business lol