Thread by @amlewis4

How Barstool Sports is Building The Future of Media (Thread)

Barstool Sports has gone from a niche sports site to a $100M revenue company.

I explain how 👇

Newspaper Era

• Newspapers were the only game in town for writers to reach a mass audience
• Newspaper owned physical distribution
• If you wanted to compete with a newspaper, you'd need to invest millions to build your own infrastructure.

Internet Era

• Internet changed the distribution formula
• A writer could just start a blog and anyone could read it for free
• Media companies primarily started relying on advertising to make revenue (hard to make a profit relying on advertising)

How Else Could a Media Company Make Money?

• Enter @barstoolsports
• @stoolpresidente started Barstool in 2003 with a focus on sports and gambling
• The site was successful because of Dave's unique personality
• Content is a commodity, but a personality is unique

Barstool's Content Model

• Find amazing talent
• Give them a platform
• Provide them with the infrastructure to succeed
• Align incentives so they don't leave

Barstool's Content Lineup

• Barstool has 41 active podcasts
• Two podcasts are top 20 podcasts in the US
• For the month of May, Barstool had 55 million global downloads and streams

analytics.podtrac.com/podcast-publis…

Why Does This Work?

"We're able to take people who started as bloggers and wrote very funny commentary on sports and life and moved those to an audio form. It allows for authenticity, with a very low barrier to entry." - @EKANardini

variety.com/2019/digital/n…

The Appeal for Influencers

• @alyssa_schoener joined Barstool has an intern
• She has 124,000 followers on Twitter and 28,000 followers on Instagram
• She realized that it would be better to leverage Barstool's millions of followers than launching her own content channel

Call Her Daddy as a Case Study

• Call Her Daddy, a podcast focused on dating and relationships, was acquired by Barstool in October 2018
• The show went from 12,000 downloads to 2 million downloads in two months
• The show is now the 15th most popular podcast in the US

Influencers Make $$$ in This Model

• Call Her Daddy hosts made over $400,000 less than two years into launching
• It's likely that @alexandracooper received a pay raise plus other incentives in her latest contract renewal

What Does Barstool Get?

• Barstool owns the IP for all their podcasts
• This lessens the risk if a host decides to leave and start their own show
• Barstool makes additional revenue on merchandise from the content

Why Do Influencers Not Leave?

• Content creators want to focus on making content
• Who wants to deal with lawyers, accountants and sponsors?

Dave Portnoy as a Case Study

• Dave Portnoy sold 51% of Barstool to Chernin Group because he didn't know how to run the business side
• For example, Barstool didn't have an accounting system
• Dave became head of content while Chernin ran the business side of Barstool

People Follow Personalities

• Barstool succeeds because personality is at the forefront of their business model
• Barstool has built a community
• Fans of Barstool are known as "Stoolies"

Barstool Sports Business Model

• Annual revenue for 2019 was $90M - $100M
• Diverse revenue stream including advertising, gambling, and merchandise
• Sold to Penn Gaming for $450MM in January 2020

Barstool is setting the trend for the next wave of successful media companies by building a personality-driven site and diversifying revenue streams beyond advertising.

Read my entire article 👇

arilewis.com/aris-posts/por…