SAN FRANCISCO — Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy was once arrested at NFL headquarters and mimicked a dead fish as police kicked him out of the Super Bowl. Wednesday, he was swarmed at Radio Row. He says he was permitted to be there after a Boston radio station made a simple credential request for him that was accepted by the league.
“98.5, the Patriots’ radio network, asked me to come on and they got me the pass,” Portnoy told Front Office Sports as he was wearing six replica Super Bowl rings, one for each Patriots championship. While a sticking point with the league in the past was that Portnoy and other Barstool cohorts falsified credentials to get into Super Bowl media night, this time around was apparently an easy process. “I just took my picture, got a pass with my name and face and everything,” Portnoy said. “I would say [the war with the league] has thawed, considering I wasn’t allowed to do any of this in prior Super Bowls … I think time basically healed it.”
NFL spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment on Portnoy’s entry into Radio Row, or if it means that other Barstool personalities are or will be allowed in. Last week, an NFL spokesperson told FOS that Portnoy would be permitted to go to the Super Bowl to see his beloved Patriots, provided he buys a ticket.
Portnoy for years referred to Barstool as the “pirate ship.” As it’s become something resembling more of a pirate yacht, the once-radioactive media company is not just partnering with big institutions, but being sought by them. In 2017, Barstool Van Talk lasted just one episode on ESPN before internal uproar among a group of employees led then-president John Skipper to cancel the show with Pardon My Take hosts Dan Katz (“Big Cat”) and Eric Sollenberger (“PFT Commenter”).
Last year, Barstool did a huge deal with Fox for Portnoy to appear on the flagship Big Noon Kickoff pregame show, and another one worth more than $10 million annually with Netflix to license the video rights to Pardon My Take, The Ryen Russillo Show, and Spittin’ Chiclets.
“It’s kind of surreal, but at the same time it’s not,” Portnoy said. “Because if you go back and follow things I’ve been saying for 10 to 15 years, media’s moving towards us. It’s not moving the other way. We were maybe a dirty secret in some of these boardrooms. What are these guys doing over here? Why are they getting the young demo?”
Portnoy pointed to Burke Magnus, now ESPN’s president of content, who was the driving force behind adding Barstool Van Talk nearly a decade ago. Magnus has also been pivotal in adding Pat McAfee to ESPN, as well as a contributor deal with Bussin’ With the Boys hosts Taylor Lewan and Will Compton, all of whom were ex-Barstool hosts.
“They’ve wanted what we do the entire time. They had a hard time navigating those waters within [ESPN],” Portnoy said.
Jerry Silbowitz, one of the agents at UTA who sold Barstool’s deals to Fox and Netflix, told FOS, “Dave and Dan [Katz] and the whole team have built not just an incredible following but a scaled business that other big brands and platforms want to be a part of.”
Nevertheless, there is still at least one key adjacent partner that hasn’t rolled out the red carpet. When Fox did the Barstool deal last summer, one idea was for Portnoy to be a Big Ten homer, in some ways akin to how Paul Finebaum is an unabashed SEC cheerleader for ESPN, and it would be embraced by the conference. (Portnoy is a Michigan alum and zealous fan.)
“I think that’s what Fox thought would happen. It didn’t. It’s very similar to what we just described. You know when people turn to Barstool or what we do? When they need it,” Portnoy said. “When they’ve been arrogant for years. It started with sports talk radio, or like newspapers when blogs showed up. Who are these guys in their parents’ basement? We don’t need to pay attention to them. We don’t need them. The world changes, and it’s like, Hey, we need these guys.”
While Portnoy fulfilled his role as a Big Ten supremacist—even after getting barred from the stadium at Ohio State last year, he brashly picked the Buckeyes to beat Texas in the season opener as he declared he was tired of hearing about the SEC—it was the Big 12 that embraced Portnoy and Barstool.
“The Big 12, they need audience. Their commissioner [Brett Yormark] is progressive, and he knows they need to steal market share and get in front of young people,” Portnoy said. “I think the Big Ten right now feels like We’re the Big Ten. We have Michigan and Ohio State. We don’t have to change the way we do things. That type of attitude will always come back to bite you in the long run. It hasn’t [yet] in the Big Ten, but you have to adapt.”
