Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast)

and he is the founder of Barstool Sports. And he has created a fascinating um franchise on the Internet, on social media and videos that began essentially as a fanzine covering sports in Boston and helping people with their bedding lines, and he has blown up into a full pop cultural phenomena. What's really intriguing to me is what he has built As an entrepreneur. He recognized the power of original content.

He ended up a acting a dynamic cast of people who were similarly enthusiastic about creating um fresh, funny, in many ways um edgy content. And he's just blown up into a full phenomenal. Bar Stool Sports is now part of a publicly traded company, pen National Gaming. And if you are in the content business, if you are at all interested in sports or trading, or a whole a lot of other stuff, including pizza, I think you're gonna

find this to be an absolutely fascinating interview. So, with no further ado, my conversation with Barstool Sports Dave Portnoy. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. This week, I have an extra special guest. His name is David Portnoy, and he is the founder of the sports and pop culture blog barstool Sports that has expanded into so many areas. I've really been looking forward to this conversation. David Portnoy, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks for having me.

So let's go back in time a little bit. You started Barstool Sports seventeen years ago. At the time, did you have any idea what you were creating? What what did you expect this to be? No, I had absolutely no idea what what's gonna happen, the journey that's going to go on. And really it didn't look any well, I was gonna say it didn't look anything like it

did now. But it did start as a gambling fantasy newspaper, you know, the four page black and white gambling rag that used to hand out around t stations and subway spots in Boston. We've come full circle since we're now, you know, have a gambling app and got purchased by Penn National, So it did come full circle. But no, I had no idea. The truth of the matter is I always wanted to try to start my own business, with the goal being I would rather work for myself

than somebody else. I'd rather work, you know, a billion hours a week than the normal typical work day where it was a night to five. But I wasn't in control of my own destiny. But I had no idea what was about to come with parcel? No clue. And you mentioned you're handing out written copies for pages. I had heard way back when you were literally outside of the Boston Garden and outside of other Boston sports arenas handing this out to fans on the way into games.

How much of that has urban legend? And how how true is that? Now? That's a true So the typical day or a week, however, you want to look at why I started it, It was myself. And you know, there'd be all these fake names in the newspaper because I didn't want people to know it was a one man job, you know, So I had just made up aliases for my sales guy in my marketing guy all this stuff. But I would generally wake up about four in the morning, go to a subway stop outside you know, Boston,

in the Financial District or wherever it may be. I'd rotate and I would hand out the newspapers as they were people heading into work, and I'd be yelling at people like, we're at this newspaper, take the newspaper. And then after I did that, so I would go from wake up four, get the subway around five, five five or steen, hand out newspapers probably till the morning rush

was done, I don't know, nine o'clock. Then I would go home and I would write, I would do or call for sales, ad to do everything else a day to day. Then around three thirty four I'd head back into the city and I would hand out newspapers again to catch people on the afternoon commute, on the people's way home from work. And then after that was done, I would go back home right some more and try to get asked to do everything else and the other

huge part of what I did. The newspaper started off weekly in the beginning, but that was not the right way to do it. It turned to bi weekly quickly. And I was also the newspaper deliver boys. So I bought this astro van off Craiglist. About eight bucks is what I paid for it. And I would load up the newspapers all the way to the roof, and I would go on about paper route all around Boston, the suburbs, outside of Austin, every single subway station, loading up my

news racks with the newspapers. So I come back looking, you know, disheveled to say the least. So that was that was my life. No vacation days, no nothing, but probably about a decade. It was. It was a grind. It was delivering newspaper, writing the newspaper, selling ads, pretty much a one man show. Really what what was the response to the actual printed product? How did how did Bostonians feel about barstool sports as a four page hands out?

People loved it, you know, it's very different. And in the early newspapers, I said us looking for writers, and I got very lucky, and that we assembled a terrific group of writers who stuck with me and worked for free. So the early days, just because they want to write, they enjoyed it, and so the content was very different and always evolving. It was always humorous. It's a different taken and slowly more of a way from just strictly gambling and sports to more men's lifestyle. But it was

always a good reception. And when I judge it was ten people took the paper and said they enjoyed it. You know, the first time I did it, the next issue would be twenty people, and the next issue be forty, and the next eighty. So it always was slowly growing, and there was something in my gut that's like I'm onto something here. I don't know what it is, but it felt like it was growing every single week, and it was it was hard to put it into words. And I've also said, this is the only business I've

ever started in. Obviously the post businesses failed, especially in the print industry. So you know, I don't know if I about somewhat lucky on one for one and who knows, but I always had that stut feeling, hey, this is this is picking up. If I just stick with it, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing. So I always got a good reception. So at what point did that growth ramp up to where the business outgrew your ability to run it if you're a jack of old trades. At

a certain point you can't do everything. When when did it cross that line where hey, I need some help to manage this. Yeah, probably so start around two thousand four. Probably around two thousand and ten we're more hiring other writers. But I really did a bunch of it people. The model I went with and the first employee ever had is still with me. Who I call sales guy. You know,

the model was prove yourself and won't pay you. You want to work for me, if you can sell ads, I'll give you a huge commission, thirty percent commission, fifty percent commission. There's no risk on my end. If willing to do it, you can do it. So we had a very you know, prove it. Like if somebody said they wanted to work for us or to do something. It really was, will give you the opportunity, but you're not going to get like you're gonna have to earn

everything you get. Once you earn it, then you got a spot at the table, so to speak. But it was, you know, we really did it bootstrap and watch costs and all that stuff. Once we switched, so basically I did everything again. We were able to get some advertisers, and once we switched the website, you know rendant advertising and banner advertising, you didn't need a huge staff or force to really run the thing. You needed more people to try to grow it more than anything. And that

was something I did consistently throughout Barstool's career. Is I didn't really take any profit or money off the table, even when money start coming in, I just kept reinvesting it, reinvesting it, hiring more people, trying new events, trying new things to try to grow the brand. Let's talk a little bit out the team you mentioned earlier, because it's not just Dave Portnoy. You've gotten, pardon my take, KFC radio chicks in the office caller Daddy. Are you guys

like the Avengers? Do you assemble the whole team and and go out? How does that mass come together? Yeah? So, you know, I a lot of times I say we are one of the oldest digital media companies on the planet. So when I started Barstool, it was a newspaper, as we discussed, and then it morphed to a blog. And when we started blogging, if you told somebody what a blog was, they would have been like what is that. We're very early to the game. And I also say

the Barstool Sports was born from the Internet. So all of the talent, all the people we have, the only way people know who they are is because they were able to essentially stand out by working harder, smarter, being funny. It's not because they put on ESPN or something like that. So we were born from a different generation and we

had a good eye for talent and podcasting. We were very early too, and we let our talent basically do whatever they want as long as we think you're funny, and it's like, okay, this person may have something, We'll let you run wild, so you know, call her Daddy. Is an example that is probably a pretty good one and not everyone's cup of tea, but the largest female probably podcast in the world. I mean, it's gigantic and it's a girl, Alex Cooper, who we saw a very

rough sketch of a podcast she did. It's like, oh, this is interesting, this is something we haven't seen before, and and there was a promo video with it that was very slick. It looked like it was professionally done. So we reached out to her and had a meeting with her and I sat down and she's a beautiful blonde girl, and I was like, who made this? Who made this video? This this promo video? And she's like, I did, I edited it, I got it, I did everything.

I learned how to do it all myself. And that was when it's like, Okay, we're gonna We're gonna give her a chance because that's the type of like basically motivation desire that we look for. Somebody has something unique and also the basically the energy and the motivation to do something like that. And they've exploded almost instantly. But and I 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, number one female podcast. What our audience is very good at. Don't give you a chance, and if you have something unique and good,

you'll have a huge hit right off the bat. And iron well, not ironically, but one of the things I always said about Barstool or my goals once we started actually making progress and when I sold the Turning Group, the time, I wanted Barstool to be the place that a young college graduate who is in comedy, the first place they applied to work is Barstool. They used to maybe be Saturday Night Live or or you know, I don't know, some other comedy brand. I wanted 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. Speaking of talent, you just signed a deal with Dion Sanders. How on earth did that come to fruition? That's a giant name. Yeah, so we have another podcast that we uh signed million

dollars worth. The game based out of Philadelphia. Again, something I had never I've never heard of either the guy's Wallow and Gilly their Philly legend um, you know, very well known actually that like Gilly was the ghostwriter for Little Wayne. So we listened to their podcast in right away we thought, oh, this is a hit, this is we need this, and so we signed 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 it's early, but he has fit into the barcel culture as well as anybody possibly could. People would be stunned the general public on how many people have the talent at other established networks who want to all come work for us because we're competitive pay wise with all of them may be better, and there's no there's no you know, Restrectes. You can be yourself. We want you to be yourself. We're never gonna say, hey,

you can't say that, you can't say this. Everybody can be exactly who they are, and we find that that amula works for us and a lot of people want to be a part of it. So we've seen some upstart digital brands that started on the Internet like Vice and a CEOs explode into the video space. Either with HBO or some other broadcasting UM channel. What are you guys thinking about in terms of bar stool sports? So we're gonna ever see that on a mainstream cable channel,

I don't know. We had a brief dance with ESPN. Uh for part of my take, they they greenlit TV show UM and then they canceled it because there were there were people at ESPN who don't like us, and we have our detractors uh in ESPN. That that left a bad taste in my mouth. Uh. I was hesitants

of that deal to begin with. The thing that we need UM to do a deal like that is to find a partner who knows exactly who we are, who did their research, who can stand by us in the first time you know, the wind blows maybe the wrong way, they don't run for the hills. I thought ESPN was wildly coward was cowardly and how they dealt with us,

UM and you know, my instinct sensed it. So it would have to be the exact right, perfect guilty because honest, unlike a lot of digital media comes to this, we can bring people to network, which is TV and an older demo like no other brand. We bring a lot more than I think they bring to us, So it really have to be the absolutely perfect deal for us to do that. Again, I think it would be more likely we buy a network, to be honest, and just

run our own channel. So it sounds like you spend a lot of time thinking about business strategy and your overall media approach. How do you spend your day, How much of it is on creating content and how much of it is on these bigger picture Hey, we want to hook up with this company? Do we want to create something new with that company? That's one of the

toughest challenges I have. Um, 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, Eric and Ardini, best higher we've ever made. But you know I we work closely on almost everything, so it is a mix. Um, it varies, like the day trading stuff I'm still doing.

We had a big deal that a lot of people know about what Penn National and we just launched our Barstool sports book in Pennsylvania. Um, so I'm pushing that now and doing content with that, but there's much larger discussions on the way to you know, roll that out nationally and acquisitions and things we want to do. So it really varies day to day, but I'd almost say it's sixty forty business verse content at this point. But

quite interesting you mentioned Eric Nardini, she's your CEO. How did you find her and what does she do for barstool so Erica. So so, basically I sold half of Barstool Sports to the Turning Group. Uh and I believe it was two thousand sixteen ish two thousand sixteen, and Barstool was about ten to fifteen people at that time, and we were 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 that was Turning, we gotta 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 did a lot of we just didn't do things that a lot of other similar companies were doing. And if we could, you know, get the business 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 powered recruiting firm. They had seventy I think interviews are so all men. None of them made it to the second round. I just none of them clicked. Uh. 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 she spent time in Nantucket and I was introduced to her and she became I think our only like advisor. She was basically an advisor to Barstool. 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? Was like, sure, So I walked over.

In with her was Erica Nardini, who was friends. So Erica just happened to be there for the for the coffee and Erica and I started talking and she was a fan of bar School and everything. She said that she liked about barstool in 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 Turn of Guys and I was like, have you ever heard of Erica

and Nardini? They had She was a former CMO of a O L 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 to said, yes, this is too good of an opportunity to pass. Let me meet with the guys um and she did and that started the process. So it

was unintentional. A lot of people, one of my pet peas, there's a lot of people say we hired Erica because she's a female. It was all male company, and it just couldn't be further further from the truth. It's insulting to me, it's felt like to her, but she has been the absolute perfect higher and the most important higher that we've had. Let's talk about something that is really serious. You're part of pen Gaming. How did that come about? And what's it like being part of this giant company.

Y As we mentioned in the early part of the interview, Parcels 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, and on a state by state basis, states could decide whether they want to allow it once that law was changed.

I basically knew this is a huge opportunity for Barceol because our core DNA was sports gambling, so and I knew there was gonna be basically a gold rush of all these companies trying to get in this industry. So we had meetings with everybody under the Son Vandal, Draftking, MGM, Stars Group, you name it. We met with them, and you know, none of them actually yielded solid offer, which

stunned me. Which absolutely stunned me because I thought it was a no brainer fit that one of these companies should acquire Bars to give them a gigantic competitive advantage because how good we are at acquiring clients. And then we met penn National Gaming and Jasonde in the CEO,

and almost instantly we clicked with them. I had actually never heard of them, and primarily because they're a huge regional casino operator and all the casinos are operating or most of them under unique names, so you know they're all different. You made 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 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. Though the deal was struck basically that Penn National would they bought a like I think it's thirty six, 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 Barstool sports book, which just launched on Friday in Pennsylvania and we'll be rolling out across the country in states we have access. So it's the perfect kind of mix of Pen 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. So you have some pretty big competitors in that space.

You have DraftKings, Fan Duel, there's lots of other smaller entities. How does barstool compete with the big guy is and what is your specific advantage that nobody else seems to be able to match. So yeah, and they are big, they're big competitors, and and I know them intimately because we've been working with those guys for a decade. Like at one point for Raftkings, I was offered equity and 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 They've done very well with what they've done, and they have a huge database. What we're good at is and what why Pen invested because we can reach our crowd, our audience who was wildly loyal and wildly engaged and get them to download the bar Flo sports book app play 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 thirty seven different ads from you know, pen different companies, all basically saying the same thing. Combat with us, you get ten dollars here a hundred dollars day are pre five hundred dollar bet. It's all whitewashed. There's so much of it in a weird way. It's like our 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 gonna have the marketing costs 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 DraftKings versus Fandel versus MGM versus points bet.

They don't with us. They're playing with us because of our logo, because it's a seventeen year story, because they root for us. That's why I think if you look before we did the deal with pen there's like a handful of robin Hood traders who owned it. Now it's over a hundred thousand robin traders. That's a marketing army. People wear the merch, they root for us like or a sports team. So it's all that is what the

competitive advantages? Huh? Really interesting? So so, given how much of what you've been doing for the previous seventeen years has been driven by sports and bedding, what went through your mind when suddenly in March the NBA cancels the season and soon after almost all other sports grind to a halt. You you had to stop and say, well, I guess we're on vacation for six months, or do

I need to come up with something new? Yeah, well that's the great thing about I guess the way barstool has been trained, like I said, born from the Internet, vacation certainly didn't cross my mind. It's 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 I got past the time somehow the stock

markets open and I started dabbling with that. I never imagined it would become what it had become. But at the same time, and I've said this to Eric, our CEO, when when she came in, We've been around for seventeen years. We've stayed relevant for seventeen years. I'd say we've stayed edgy for seventeen years. We stayed cool for seventeen years. That is almost the biggest accomplishment. So many brands like ours or in this space, they come and they go.

I've seen them a million times. It's not 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 our stool and eyeballs and

growth and present, it's been a very beneficial time. Like we grew in pays, views, we grew, and how how many people knew us, our footprint, our impact has never been stronger because people have not 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 create a fictional college football coach. He became the number one twitch stream on Twitch within like three weeks, 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 ways, if you can't get people that pay attention to what you're doing, I probably wouldn't have found you in the first place.

My special guest today is David Portnoy, better known as Davy day Trader. How on earth did the idea of videotaping yourself day trading? I'm about because when you think about it, it's not the sort of thing that lends itself to an obvious visual medium. We'll take us through the process as to how that got launched. So, uh, 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 mimick, you know what, I'm gonna throw in a full suit. I got a little 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 and you know it quick like people are interested, like, all right, this is interesting, and I never know what's gonna work or what people are

gonna like. Is no different than my pizza reviews that I do. Yeah, I I didn't start that with some grand plan that's going to become the pre eminent pizza review guy in 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 you know, a live stream on for a couple of minutes trading stocks

and and people tuned and then we're 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 gonna kill this. The 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 not like you said, I heard you, it's colorful,

is different. I don't think anybody on Wall Street had ever seen somebody like myself basically doing what I was doing on Wall three with a 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 clicked. It certainly did click. I recall back in either March or

April seeing an early video of yours. You're having a meltdown because you're losing a ton of money, and I remember saying to myself, either this guy is the greatest actor in the world or he is really getting buried in trades today. And it was you described it perfectly. It was a train wreck. You could not look away, right And although there was an early element to it, I didn't know what that's doing clearly. And I don't even mean with stock like I couldn't figure out the platforms.

I couldn't figure out necessarily how to trade things. I was making mistakes, So those melt onems were very real. Because it isn't the easiest thing to use right away. You gotta kind of get used to it. So that element of it certainly capture people's attention. And then obviously I have a very large fan base who know me and know my personality and they're interesting to see what's going on. So sports was canceled, but it was a sport in a different kind of way. Really, it's people

are paying attention how I do daily. And then obviously it started getting picked up within this financial Twitter community. Then it started getting picked up by the networks, who in my mind, we're kind of making fun of me in the beginning, but I don't really care. It's like any time we can get publicity, that's good for overall of our stool. And then then I started winning, and then it kind of changed the tone of it, and

it's been an interesting ride it it. I mean, I think I maybe for the last couple of months, I shouldn't say maybe I'm the most talked about person on Wall Street. If you told me that was gonna happen six months ago, I would have looked at you like you had ten heads, what are you talking about? Yeah, and you're now up to one. Point eight million Twitter followers. When you started live streaming your your day trading, you didn't quite have that same size following, did you. Uh,

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 your user base, so it hasn't grown dramatically. Huh.

And how well thought out is your your training? Do you go in with a plan, do you have a strategy or do you just looking at whatever is moving and catches your eye. 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, you know, my own logic in regards to what I think maybe a good COVID or not COVID stock is and then it could be for example, you know, I was on vacation for a week and uh, 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 Deer. So it can really be anything that can be all over the minute. How did that trade work out? Very good? Their earnings were actually the same day. That's why I thought it was a no brainer. So they had great earnings. That's very funny. So the question that you kind of raises, so let me let me back up and ask this.

So you've talked about losing six hundred thousand dollars in a day. I don't care. Markets are gonna go up eventually, I'm gonna make this back. How much does a half a million dollar swing affect your psyche or are you able to just put it behind you? It really varies. So when I started, I was down about two or three million instantly, almost 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 end up being up about four millions at my height, I am now up probably about one the last couple of weeks of knock 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, stocks will always go up. Like 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, 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. So so let's stick with stocks only go up. That's true if you're brought buying broad indo indexes or buying

broad asset classes. Hey, stocks as a hole always go up. But as we've learned over the years, individual stocks can go to zero. How do you balance that when you're trying to decide what to trade. 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 Panics are small stocks. If I'm in stocks like that,

I'm not holding him very long. So those aren't going to zero. You could get killed quickly. But a lot of my stocks of brand names and I am buying and selling them, So those are what I'm referring. If you're going with a penny stock or something that's you know, under five bucks, clearly there's a 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 take the bath. So you take that risk. But by and large, as long as you're not you know, dealing in high volatility. If you buy what was, it hurts when they're bankrupt or Kodak and you think those those I'm not saying as who knows that those but those I'm in and out of the stock that I'm saying always go up. Our stocks that truly always go up. And you mentioned traditional Wall Street hasn't really been very welcoming.

Who on the street has reached out to you? Who do you have a good relationship, who's got some longevity in finance and says, hey, here's a new guy. Journal lot of attention. Let's let's get in the hands. Yeah, and I should clarify, I think a lot of people in Wall Street actually love it. I get so many comments that people working on All Street yount refreshing at the breast, fresh air. Even though you're making fun of us,

we find it funny. The clowns on Wall Street and Finch with the Fince with guys are really the ones that I would say haven't been welcoming because they're used car salesman. They're the ones trolling thin give up. They're trying to get 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, a roth Garber. You're gonna give roths Garber your money or else you're gonna lose it all. I mean,

he's a clown. But the people who are doing this the right way, 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 have been saying the stock market is gonna crash for the last six months and it hasn't is gonna 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 that 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 seat. The stock market goes up, everyone should be happy. If everyone's on the same team. Who's

going to take the other side of your trades? Well, that's something that I'll have to let the scientists and the mathematicians find out, right. So so so it's fascinating. But by the way, I've been on the street long enough that I've seen this debate take place. I saw it in oh six oh seven, before the crash. There's always a contingency that missed the run up and they're waiting for the next big move down so they could make up what they lost. And then some people philosophically

are more intrigued by the idea of a crash. It's just their personality. They think markets get she lacked, and you know that's when everything becomes more intriguing. I can't explain the psychology behind it, but I can tell you it's been there for as long as markets have been around. I believe it in the in the thing that I find well, it's just funny to me is for six months I've been told on it. It's gonna end in tears. People have been listening to me, are gonna I'm gonna

ruin them. First of all, I'm only trading my own money, and I'm very clear to do what you want. But if you were listening to me, you'd be up in the second the stock work, it has one bad day or two bad days in a week. It's chirping me that from the cheap seats, being like, I told you, what are you talking about? Still way up? I don't know. It went down for a couple of days. That happened, so but they go silent. Their crickets star just going up.

It goes down for a second and they come out of the wood nuts and and let me let me put some numbers on on that. From the march lows, the Nasdaq one hundred is up seventy seven percent, and over the past couple of weeks it pulled back almost eleven percent. You're still way way ahead if you were bullish from the lows forward. There's a wheeze to go before the bears can declare victory. Correct. Correct. So I'm up.

Were all over a million right now, and I was before I started my comeback, I was down three, So I went down big in the hole right away. How big the comeback was, that's how strong the talk market was. So so, you've interviewed or been interviewed by a number of interesting people. You mentioned Jim Kramer. How did the

interview with President Trump come about? That's absolutely fascinating to me. Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that all I it 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 worked for me called me late Wednesday, like President Trump wants you to interview him in the Oval office and 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,

because okay, is that serious. I'm not an interviewer. I really have never conducted an interview, but it was the President of the United States, and to be honest, we had to give a thought because he starts a lightning rod. There's very few people were like, I'm neutral on him. You know, you either despise them or you love them. Seems to be the case. And I've always said, almost like old Michael Jordan's you know, blue states and red states by T shirts, I want everyone to like us.

So that was the only thing going in. It's like, this is half the people are gonna be great. Half kind of people. I'm gonna say I'm the devil just by associating with him, even though he's the president. Um. But it was a no brainers. It is a huge Yeah. What what was the experience like showing up at You show up at the White House, You get to the gate and you say, they asked for I D take us through the rest of the day. What what was

the highlights of that? Well, the whole thing was the real So I've never been to the White House, um, and it's hard to put it into words. You're walking through the giving you the history lessons. They're telling you everything I felt like back in high school, getting the entire you know description, And then, to be honest, it was fairly intimating because and I don't get intimated easily.

I've been in a lot of situations, but you know, they limit how many people can be there, Like Erica, our CEO wasn't allowed to be in the rum 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, you know, a good, interesting, fair interview, not overly political, because I'm not, but you know, 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. But yeah, it's hard to believe that had happened, to be totally honest, I think a lot of a lot of people share that sentiment, and I found it to be absolutely fascinating. So I have to talk about I'm gonna pivot now from the White House to something that everybody uniformly loves, and that's pizza. How on earth did one bite with Davy page views come about? What? What was the thinking I want to I want to

review every pizza place in Manhattan. Yeah, so this this would probably be if someone wants to describe how barstool stumbles upon upon ideas. This the pizza thing, maybe the most afropo example. Essentially five years ago, myself and another employee got in a debate. If you can only eat one food the rest of your life, what would you eat? I said pizza? He said burritos, And you had the right answer, by the way, I agree, and so we

actually like, okay, we're gonna 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 tell you, I just say, here's my knee jerk, I'll take one bite, here's the store, and you know it start catch and on. People were there, they were they liked watching these things that we were

in Boston at the time. And then we're moving to New York, like, all right, New York's known for what pizza. I said, I'm gonna try every 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 like 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. Became a lifestyle thing because you got to see the citizens of New York and 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 two hundred thousand views on YouTube. Very rarely are people adding up. It's on every social media. It's it's probably about three million unique views across all the platforms

every single day. It's insane that that is insane. Not some of them that stood out to me. Well, one, you have the cast of Tag, including John Hamm and Ed Helms, and a girl recognizes you, she doesn't recognize anybody else walking down the street, a young woman and she starts talking to you. Then she recognizes John Hamm and you you bring her into the review and say, okay, take a byte. You know the rules, one bite? What's

the score? Don't forget the decimal point? And then bang, suddenly she sees elm ed Helms behind her and has a meltdown. What how surreal is this when people New York has just come up to you on the street while you're doing a pizza. Yeah, I mean, well that was an ego boost obviously, the one you just said when you're standing with you know, five a lists bars, than the girl recognizes you amongst the hall. I'm you it.

I've always said that this, but it's not just pizza to our sales people and when we're selling ad if you actually want to see the power of bar Stool 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, and you know, it's always astounding to people 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 I know the people I just walking in the street are gonna 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 what I do know that to have to explain, well, it's a little newspaper I hand out, and I know you're not gonna know what it is too almost recognition now wherever we go. It has truly been an insane

ride to this point, to say the very least. Have have you crossed a thousand pizza reviews? Yet? What number are you up to? I think we're probably like seven or eight hundred we have, which is, by the way, the best way for anybody who wants to find good pizza to go to the app for one Bite dot app. People can upload their own videos, their own scores. It's I use it myself. It is the best way to find good pizza near you. So so let's talk about not just good pizza, but best pizza. What's your best

favorite slice in New York? And then I'm gonna ask you a twist on that and see if I can throw you. So, what's your favorite slice in New York? I know the answer, It's one of mine. Say it out loud, John's a bleaker that that is such a safe bet. It's such fantastic pizza, you simply cannot go wrong with that. Tell Us here's the twist question. Tell us a slice that you really enjoyed, that was a giant surprise that you weren't expecting it to be that good,

or a very less known pizza place. M you know, there's a bunch in Pennsylvania they have like these tomatoes. I'm trying tomato pie pizza knocked. Just so many ONNA draw a blanket what they are. I know, I love those. There's was one of Minnesota. There's so many. I this this. I'm gonna draw a blank on the best slice that is surprised by. Yeah, I don't know. I that my brain, I think is slowly dying. I've done so many the 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 and it 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 gonna be great. It generally is great. There is one that I thought was a little now that I'm thinking about the drow of like, oh, Little Vincent's is an overrated one. I don't meet the crust, crush them with the you know, cold cold cheese on it.

And Huntington's that was one that tongues of people. I know. There's one in I want to say, Park Slope that I didn't give a great review too, and the people are still passionately said they killed me if I've ever went back there. Kind of joking, kind of not l B LMB. In Brooklyn, I thought it was a little bit overrated. I guess my brain is starting to go here. I don't like to throw out the overrated ones, but

I guess I just did. So you'll travel, You'll go to the outer Borrows, You'll go to Brooklyn, Queens elsewhere. And you did a great I don't want to obsess on pizza, but you did a great. Um a review with somebody I've had as a guest on the show, John Taffer, It's the first time I've seen you genuinely surprised by one of your reviewers ability to really explain exactly what was going on in a ice of a slice of pizza. Yeah. Well, I love John. I mean,

when we've had a long relationship with him. Uh, years and years and years ago, we did like a mock bar rescue where he was saving barstool sports. We went in, he was screaming at us. It was the first time we met him in The relationship is really blossom. He's the only guy who has done to review. That's how That's how much I actually love him. I've been on bar rescue before, so he's he's the best. John Taffer

is the best. Yeah, he's he's terrific. I know we only have you for a limited amount of time, so let me jump to our speed round. These are the five questions we ask all of our guests, so we have a little bit of a baseline to compare everything. To tell us what you're streaming these days. Give us your favorite Netflix shows, Amazon Prime or whatever podcasts uh you're listening to. I was catching up on Schnith Creek who won all those awards actually the other night. But

I don't watch much TV. I watched sports and my favorite show which is not on TV right now. I love successions. Interesting. Tell us about some of your mentors who helped shape your career, whether it's in publishing or trading or anything. Nobody I would say, I haven't really worked for anybody that my 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 Geared, two widely different people, but two guys who basically took a small thing that they did and turned it into a lifestyle brand. So Jimmy Buffett, you know things about beaches and bars, and turned it into yeah, exactly, So taking something one concept, Rob Gardick was eight boarding and really making an entire lifestyle brand that you can sell across every channel. So those that

those are my two inspirations, I guess or models. Interesting? Have you been doing much reading under lockdown? Tell us tell us some books or other things you're reading that that you can enjoy you now, reading is for suckers. I'm one of those guys that believe, you know, TVs were invented before books. Books wouldn't exist, So I don't know. It's like if you drive around on on square wheels, like why why would you do that? That? The circle wheels?

That's very funny. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad who was interested in becoming an online entrepreneur. I always say, just do it. I've met so many people. Uh, and even when I started, all my friends like, hey, we're gonna do this idea with you and everyone Hendon Hall and had a uses in this and that there's nothing like doing it. There's nothing better than just getting up and doing. 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 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 will take you. Like I didn't know Barcelo would end up being this. You just got to get your oars in the water. I like that expression.

And our final question, what do you know about the world of investing stocks and trading today? You wish you knew back when you were first getting started, not the short stocks and stocks always go up. I'd be probably three million dollars richer. Thanks Dave for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Dave porton Ay. He is the founder and l president A of Barstool Sports. If you enjoyed this interview, we'll be sure and check

out any of our prior three hundred such conversations. You can find that at iTunes, Spotify, overcast that you're a cast wherever final podcasts are found. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at M I B podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and give us a review at Apple iTunes. Check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. You can sign up for our daily reads at Ridholts dot com or follow

me on Twitter at Rid Halts. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that helps us put these conversations together each week. My recording engineer is Charlie Vollmer, My producer is Michael Boyle. Atica val Bron is our project manager. Our research director is Michael bat Nick. I'm Barry Ridhults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.