“The reason people love live sports is they don't know what's going to happen. The reason they like Barstool Sports is it's really the same thing.”
In July 2016, Erika joined Barstool Sports as the company's CEO. Known for its original takes and unfiltered view, Barstool Sports is a driving force in comedy, sports, entertainment and culture. Under Erika’s leadership, Barstool Sports has experienced explosive brand and business growth as one of the fastest growing companies on the internet. It is the 6th largest podcast platform in the world with the number one sports podcast and female podcast, and the 10th largest distributed media company in the US. Barstool Sports drives 1.6 billion social views and 26 million video views monthly and 11.9 million listeners across its platforms, owning the 18-34 year old demographic.
Coming from an era just before the social media boom, Barstool generated a massively loyal following. Now, in a fragmented media market with individual personalities taking over much of the Internet, Barstool stands alone as company that effectively leverages its team of unique personalities known for unfiltered views. This unvarnished approach to media stands apart from traditional sports outlets that prioritize production value and uncontroversial opinions. “What I saw was something that could never be replicated and a brand that understood how to live and thrive on the internet which is something I believe in.”
For much of its existence, Barstool was a much trafficked website with a passionate following, but lacked many professional elements like company email or P&L statements. This created an opportunity for huge growth with a community of consumers whose trust of Barstool employees extends to the products and brands they advertise.
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SPEAKER
Erika Nardini
CEO
Barstool Sports
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:08)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT which is a global thought leadership forum at the intersection of finance, technology, politics, and entertainment. What we've tried to do with these SALT Talks during the work-from-home period is to provide a digital forum similar to the SALT Conference Series that we host every year in Las Vegas and internationally. What we're really trying to do is provide a window into the minds of subject matter experts as well as a platform for big world-changing ideas, and we're very excited about another unique SALT Talk today. We're excited to welcome Erika Nardini who is the CEO of Barstool Sports to SALT Talks today. Welcome, Erika.
John Darsie: (00:48)
Erika, like I mentioned, is the CEO of Barstool Sports which is a very fast growing media company focused on sports, comedy, and entertainment as well as culture. It's known for its unfiltered views and having a very rabid following among young consumers. In July of 2016, Erika joined Barstool Sports as the company's CEO and under her leadership, Barstool has experienced explosive brand and business growth as one of the fastest growing companies on the internet. It's the fourth-largest podcast platform now in the world with the number one sports podcast and female podcast, and it's the tenth-largest distributed media company in the United States. Barstool drives 1.6 billion social views and 26 million video views monthly and 11.9 million listeners across all of its platforms, and it pretty much owns that 18 to 34-year-old demographic in the United States.
John Darsie: (01:41)
In under three and a half years, Erika has grown the employee base at Barstool from 15 to over 200 with its revenue approaching $100 million. She's launched over 35 brands including the breakout franchises in entertainment, sports, and sports betting. Erika was named one of Fast Company's most creative people and one of the most powerful women in sports by Adweek and Forbes Magazine. Prior to Barstool Sports, she had several notable positions at top internet companies including as the chief marketing officer at AOL and as an executive at Demand Media, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
John Darsie: (02:16)
A reminder if you have any questions for Erika during today's talk, you can enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen. Hosting today's talk will be Anthony Scaramucci who once upon a time appeared on a Barstool podcast, Pardon My Take, which is the number one sports podcast in the world. Anthony is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm, and the chairman of SALT. With that, I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (02:40)
Well thank you, John and Erika, I also got to sing Bohemian Rhapsody with your staff with my White House sunglasses on. So since I can't hold a tune, it didn't go very far, but it was very pleasurable for me. Great to have you on. I always ask people their backgrounds and I would just love to ... Because it's a fascinating story of your life to where you are right now and how you've intersected with Barstool. What attracted you there? How did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What did you do for sports?
Erika Nardini: (03:12)
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I grew up in New Hampshire. I grew up in a very small town. We basically had a couple choices. We had one television and my brother and I had an hour of television a week. So we could fight over that which we did. You could stack wood, read books, or play sports which is pretty much what I did for my childhood. I was a big field hockey player. I skied. I ran track. I went to Colby College in Maine. So I went to a liberal arts college. Played field hockey and lacrosse there which I picked up in college. I then moved to Boston. I thought that I wanted to be ... I had an internship at Fidelity Investments. I thought I wanted to be in banking or to be a lawyer, and I got a job in the legal department after I graduated and realized that was a disaster. I was just never going to be a lawyer and I was certainly not corporate.
Erika Nardini: (04:10)
I mostly went out all the time and then would spend ... I'd get my work done in like an hour and then I would just write stories about what we all did the night before. Thankfully, this was pre-social media. I then went and worked at a bunch of ad agencies. I worked on the creative and marketing side and then later on in the media side, and I got my first big break really at Fidelity when the internet was really coming to be and no one really cared about the internet. I got an opportunity to work in and to really help define what Fidelity's internet strategy would be, and then I went on ... Once I engaged with the internet, I never left.
Erika Nardini: (04:52)
So I've been working in and around the internet since probably 1999. I've worked at Microsoft. I worked abroad for a long time. I helped take a company called Demand Media public. I launched a couple startups in between. I was the CMO of AOL, worked at Yahoo. I had an interesting opportunity to see all three portals during the portal era which was AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft. I worked very closely with Google during Google's era. I launched a startup in music which was really based on social media and the idea of maximizing what was happening with Facebook and Twitter.
Erika Nardini: (05:36)
All along, I read this little blog called Barstool Sports. I lived in Boston when Dave Portnoy, the founder, started it. I read it pretty religiously. Every guy I knew read it. I had a lot of the tee-shirts. Dave Portnoy was kind of this Don Quixote type of character. I loved the Patriots so I loved what he had to say. I modeled a lot about my company in music after Barstool Sports. I had gone to raise money from the Chernin Group, from Peter Chernin and his group and they said, "Hey, we've just invested in this company, you're a woman, you've probably never heard of called Barstool Sports." I pulled out the app. I was like, "This is everything right about this company. Here's everything wrong with this company. The technology's janky and they don't know what they're doing with this, this, and this."
Erika Nardini: (06:26)
I left very jealous. I thought that they would find someone ... They were looking for a CEO and I thought that they would find a guy with a business degree who came out of sports or sports media. I met Dave through a mutual friend probably six months later, and to be honest, I never looked back since. That was, I don't know, four and a half years ago.
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:48)
Well I'm going to read a quote because we're not that politically correct either, and we're going to talk about cancel culture in a second.
Erika Nardini: (06:54)
Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (06:55)
David, the founder, said in hiring you, typical irreverency of Barstool, "We needed someone with big balls dragging on the ground, alpha male. We have found out CEO, our boss, a masculine boy." Why were you so excited to lead Barstool and what do you say about that in the context of all this nonsense in our cancel culture and the need for all these people to be offended by all these microaggressions?
Erika Nardini: (07:22)
Yeah. Look, I thought Barstool was a diamond in the rough. There will never ever ever be another Barstool Sports. The reason there won't ever be another Barstool Sports is that Barstool Sports was born in a different time when media wasn't so fragmented, when social media really didn't exist. So the way that the brand was built, the loyalty that the brand garnered and has endured and nurtured and enjoyed for almost 16 years, brands that are being born today are personalities and they have to compete with so much that there is never going to be the type of audience, the type of loyalty, the type of love that this brand has enjoyed. I felt that very few people saw that.
Erika Nardini: (08:12)
There were 74 people that interviewed for this job. They were all men. I was the only one ... 75, I guess, if you include me and I was the only one that didn't say that Barstool needed to be changed. All other 74 said, "What are you going to change? You got to get a little bit more PC. This isn't appropriate." I really didn't believe in that. I actually believed that what Barstool had had propelled it to a place that was very interesting and if we were going to take this thing to the moon, we would need to evolve it, but that we shouldn't change the DNA of it and who was I, I didn't work there, to say what they should or shouldn't be doing.
Erika Nardini: (08:54)
So what I saw was something that could never be replicated and a brand that understood how to live and thrive on the internet which is something I believe in. I think the internet is all that matters. It's been incredible. I mean we've really skyrocketed this thing in four years, and I think to your question on cancel culture, look, part of the reason people like Barstool Sports is it's disarming, it's real, it's ... Authentic is a word that's greatly overused. I think a lot of big companies have big conference room meetings with words like, "How do we be more authentic?" If you're in a conference room talking about being authentic, you're not authentic. What's great about Barstool is we kind of shoot from the hip, we call it like we see it, it's personality based, it's opinion based, we're trying to give people an escape from their day-to-day cube life or their college life or their professional life or their personal life, and we do it in a way that's been a journey.
Erika Nardini: (09:58)
The camera has been on, the blog has been open, the microphones have been on every minute of every day really pretty much for the last 15 years and certainly in a very dramatic way for the last five years. I think that's what is compelling to people. It's real. You don't know what's going to happen. It's not always right. I think that is what keeps us so relevant and makes us so captivating.
Anthony Scaramucci: (10:27)
Well I mean one-third of your audience is women. So I mean you're doing an amazing job in that demographic as well. So why do you think it's so powerful? I mean you're referencing authenticity and it's very distinctive, Erika. We've sanitized our language. We have to sanitize our language in the workplace. We sanitize our language on social media. They're censoring now a lot of different bellicosity of rhetoric. So how are you getting the women here? What's the sauce, the formula that you've created that these other people cannot capture?
Erika Nardini: (11:07)
Yeah. Look, I think when you look at traditional media, you see, typically you see three guys and a very pretty woman at a desk. They're wearing suits. They have a producer and a producer behind that person and then another producer behind that. Their media is built with a tremendous amount of infrastructure, and the distance between the consumer and the person behind the desk has become very, very far. When you look at today's 20-year-old, they don't give a shit what somebody behind the desk thinks. You don't find real people in those positions. You don't find other humans who think like you and talk like you. There's nothing that embodies your group of friends or what you believe in.
Anthony Scaramucci: (11:57)
Like you don't think I should have been fired over my reference to Steve Bannon's anatomy? Shouldn't have been fired?
Erika Nardini: (12:04)
Look, I think different places have different values. Our value is that-
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:10)
You guys voted me to comeback player of the year the minute I came ... No, I was in love with you guys.
Erika Nardini: (12:16)
Yeah. Look, we like people who have the guts and the balls to call it like it is. What's great about Barstool, to your question about what's the secret sauce, is the reason people love live sports is they don't know what's going to happen. The reason they like Barstool Sports is it's really the same thing. You don't know what Dave's going to do next. You don't know what Big Cat is going to do next. You don't know what's going to be on the next episode of Pardon My Take. We are a constant conversation whether it's about entertainment or the internet or sports or people and personalities or celebrity. The unexpectedness coupled with the authenticity coupled with I would guarantee most people have someone inside of this company who reminds them of a friend of theirs and you're just like so-and-so and you love them one day and you hate them the next day, that keeps people very interested in us.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:16)
Well said.
John Darsie: (13:17)
Erika, I'm in that target demographic. Anthony's aged out slightly from that demographic that Barstool dominates. I've followed Barstool for a long time. I saw what you were describing earlier.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:28)
Erika, I'm not going to let him get away with that.
Erika Nardini: (13:30)
I was going to say.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:31)
I'm going to club him over the head a few times today.
Erika Nardini: (13:33)
You guys want a podcast?
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:34)
I'm not quite the Big Cat with my comebacks, but he's going to get karate chopped-
Erika Nardini: (13:40)
Oh, he is? Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:40)
... in his Adam's apple as soon as I see him which will probably be in two years. I'm going to take him out at the Adam's apple. He won't even remember why.
Erika Nardini: (13:45)
Okay.
John Darsie: (13:46)
Continuing on with my question-
Erika Nardini: (13:47)
Yes.
John Darsie: (13:48)
... before Anthony rudely interrupted me, you took what was sort of a ball of clay of great content, content that people loved, there was a ton of brand loyalty there, but to your point, the website didn't work that well, they didn't do a great job with targeting advertisers and things like that. You came from an advertising background and so I imagine you were salivating at the possibility of turning Barstool from a great content engine into a business behemoth which is what you've done which we'll talk a little bit more about the latest funding that you guys got, but what's so powerful from an advertising perspective about that 18 to 34-year-old demographic of which Barstool reaches one-third of men and women in that demographic which, by the way, is more than Vice and Business Insider, these ... Vice is an example of one that's gotten a billion-plus dollar valuation, but what's so powerful about that demographic? When you came to Barstool, what was your plan for taking that great ball of content and molding it into a business behemoth?
Erika Nardini: (14:41)
Yeah. Look, when I got to Barstool, there wasn't a P&L. They didn't have email. They texted one another and they knew to blog every 30 minutes, but they had built a brand that stood for something that was very different. That was the single hardest thing to do. Most startups get funding, they build all the infrastructure, you make a great product, you figure out your distribution strategy, and then you worry about the content and the brand. Look at Quibi, right? Quibi raised however much Quibi raised. $2 billion and they built big lobbies and big production teams and then nobody came. We had people that were coming, but it really, truly wasn't a company per se and it was single format. It was a blog.
Erika Nardini: (15:34)
There was, when I joined, I think Pardon My Take was in it's ... I want to say it had maybe six episodes. Pardon My Take was new, new, new. What I really did was to turn the gasoline on, build some infrastructure, create a P&L, create a business, prop up a company, and to take what was happening ... A blog is really what you're thinking and you're typing it into a CMS. A podcast is the same thing. You're just saying it. What our team was really good at it was creating conversation around every single piece of content that existed. We've always been good at that. I don't think anybody does social media better than we do.
Erika Nardini: (16:20)
But the advertising piece was important. The distribution piece was important. When I got to Barstool, I couldn't get anyone to come work here. I couldn't get anyone to give a meeting with us. I think we had four advertisers, but those four advertisers loved Barstool Sports for one reason. It worked. Barstool Sports converts. The same reason you're wearing a Waterdog shirt from PLL, you're telling me it's because of Big Cat and PFT. People care what we do. When Big Cat says, "I'm for the Waterdogs," you're for the Waterdogs. When Dave Portnoy says, "I'm going to drink High Noon," you're going to drink High Noon.
Erika Nardini: (16:58)
So we've just built people who are very influential and it works very well for brands because when you look at an ad dollar, you take an ad dollar, you put it on Vice, you put it on Buzzfeed, you put it on Barstool Sports, you put it on NBC, CBS, Turner, Bleacher Report, you name it, the dollar on Barstool Sports is going to work 100 times harder than any of those dollars because you actually care what our people think and what they're doing and you feel like you know them. You feel a personal connection to Dave Portnoy, to Dan Katz, to Kayce Smith, to Alex Cooper, to Wallo and Gillie, to Ria and Fran. There's a personal connection and as a result, our performance whether it's for platform, whether it's for a brand or a commerce partner is just dramatically and remarkably different.
John Darsie: (17:56)
One of the interesting things that you've done since you took over the company is helped grow it in a very broad type of way using different types of platforms. So you didn't come in and you didn't say, "Let's blog instead of every 30 minutes, let's blog every 10 minutes." You said, "You know what? Let's do social media very well. Let's do podcasting very well." I want to talk about the podcasting thing for a little bit. Barstool is the number four podcast publisher by monthly unique audience in the United States ahead of traditional heavyweights including people like ESPN and even people outside of the sports realm. Why has Barstool been so successful in that podcast medium and why have you emphasized it so much?
Erika Nardini: (18:35)
Yeah. Look, I love podcasting. When we first started really getting into podcasting and investing podcasting, people were still saying that podcasting would never be a real business. It wouldn't be a real industry. There was never going to be enough ad dollars or enough ears to make it worthwhile. Now flash forward, you look at what Spotify is doing, you look at what Apple is about to do, you look at what Sirius XM and Liberty are doing, podcasting is real and it's here to stay. We were just very early. I like podcasting because podcasting is ultimately based on personality and opinion. We do that very well. We also have built ...
Erika Nardini: (19:19)
What we have done traditional media hasn't done is when Barstool had never ... Had a small office in Massachusetts, but really hadn't had studios until we got to New York in 2016. There also wasn't real company infrastructure until 2016. So when you look at most media companies, they're trying to break down legacy infrastructure and to build new infrastructure that will be socially distributed. We started with that infrastructure and we're on the cutting edge of that. So when we think about a podcast, it's not just a podcast. It's video. It's franchises. It's segments. It's characters. It's personalities. It's tee-shirts. It's live events. So I think about it as it's just another way for us to grow personality and opinion and another way for us to connect with fans in a medium that has a low barrier of entry and a low cost to produce.
John Darsie: (20:22)
Yeah, and just to follow up on that, and you referenced it earlier, but I'm wearing a tee-shirt for the Waterdogs which is a Premier Lacrosse League team that is owned by one of your podcast Pardon My Take. I'm a listener of Pardon My Take and I also am a big fan of Paul Rabil who started the PLL. So when I listen to that podcast, I said, "You know what? I want to support the cause and buy a tee-shirt." It's back to your point about people not just subliminally wanting to buy products that Barstool has advertisers for, but me actively wanting to support that community. But I'll pass it over to Anthony for the next question.
Anthony Scaramucci: (20:57)
I'm taking off my sports coat now that I've been embarrassed by your Barstool fashion statements and everything else that's been said here. Let's go to Penn National Gaming.
Erika Nardini: (21:09)
Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (21:09)
They bought 36% of Barstool, valued the company at a beautiful valuation, and it's a bet that Barstool can drive some of the rabid fan base over to the sponsor gaming business. What are your thoughts on that and how do you feel about legalized gaming? What are Barstool and Penn National's plans to attack that market?
Erika Nardini: (21:29)
Yeah. Look, we're really excited about Penn National. We have been talking ... We crossed paths with them probably about a year ago today, a year ago at this point. I'm a big believer in sports betting. Dave Portnoy is a big believer in sports betting. Same with Dan Katz. These guys have been betting for years and I think one of the things that is going to be very interesting about the legalization of sports betting in the US is that there's going to become a first generation of betters. I think that Barstool Sports and the Barstool Sports Book can become the leading brand in that. Our intention is to become a top-three player in every state that we operate in.
Erika Nardini: (22:17)
We really liked Penn for a couple reasons. They have a great management team. Jay Snowden is their CEO. He's fantastic, but they had a lot of things that we didn't have and we had things that they ... It was very complementary. They had physical casinos. They're the largest retail casino operator in the US. What they didn't have is a brand. What they don't have is expertise in digital and in media. I think when you look ahead at sports betting, when you look at how the casino operators or the daily [inaudible 00:22:51] who've turned into sports betting companies, they're going to be spending their money on marketing. That is where the majority of their [inaudible 00:22:57] will go.
Erika Nardini: (22:59)
When you look at a partnership with Barstool Sports, what they bought into is a brand that's beloved, that's been around for 15 years, and they're going to see a way of engaging consumers to bet, to be loyal, to be deeply engaged, and also to be funny, to think about sports betting in a way that can be conversational, in a way that can be social, and a way that can be funny and irreverent. I think that's really what we'll bring to the table for Penn. I think it's going to be an enormous business. I think when you look at young people and the way that they consume sports and engage with sports, betting is going to be a very natural part of that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:48)
I think it's an amazing part of your story that more people need to know about. In the context of your market, like let's say we have someone asking us a question about marketing on Barstool, how do they get in touch with you guys?
Erika Nardini: (24:07)
So they can ... Obviously my DMs are open. You can DM me. You can ... We have a fantastic partner team. Shout out [Greth 00:24:16] Lester who's listening to this. So we have a ... Deirdre Lester is our CRO. We work with all types of companies whether it's in the sports betting space and thinking about what we're doing in and around sports content, whether it's from an advertising perspective, a licensing perspective. So you can email us at advertising@barstoolsports.com or partnership@barstoolsports.com or you can DM me.
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:42)
Okay. Okay. Great. Do you know who's going to own the Mets, Erika? I'm dying to know that.
Erika Nardini: (24:47)
I'm hoping it's Alex Rodriguez.
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:49)
Okay. Okay. Tell me why. Why do you want A-Rod?
Erika Nardini: (24:53)
Well I love A-Rod. I'm an A-Rod girl. Look, a couple things. I think Alex-
Anthony Scaramucci: (24:59)
I'm a huge A-Rod fan as well. I had dinner with A-Rod a year ago.
Erika Nardini: (25:02)
Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:02)
I'm a little more partial to Steve Cohen only because-
Erika Nardini: (25:05)
Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:05)
... we're best friends and I have a lot of money-
Erika Nardini: (25:07)
I think Steve Cohen's going to get it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:09)
Okay. You think it's going to be Steve Cohen? Okay.
Erika Nardini: (25:12)
I do.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:12)
I'm sort of not allowed to talk about it 100%-
Erika Nardini: (25:14)
I bet.
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:15)
... because-
Erika Nardini: (25:15)
I'm probably not ... Shouldn't get into this either, but-
Anthony Scaramucci: (25:17)
Okay. Let's go to A-Rod for a second. You said you love A-Rod. Why do you love A-Rod? Because I think A-Rod has had a huge comeback and I think he is the man on broadcast announcing and I think he knows a tremendous amount of baseball. If he ends up owning a team, he'll add huge value to a baseball team. Let's go to-
Erika Nardini: (25:35)
Yeah, I agree. I think he has a bigger vision for baseball. He and I have talked about it a lot. I think, look, what's interesting about Alex and Jennifer is they understand sports and entertainment. Sports is becoming entertainment and entertainment is becoming sports. That's just a reality. Everything is blending together. I think he has ... He's someone who has been on journey. He's exceedingly curious. He is the only person who sits at Barstool Sports, Fox, and ESPN. In and of itself, that's quite a feat. You don't see that happen ever. He's interested in ... He obviously loves the game of baseball. He obviously understands media. I think he has a lot of ideas of how to bring new viewers and younger viewers in particular to the game. So that's why I like Alex. I think he's parleyed an incredibly stratospheric baseball career into a media and broadcast career into an investment career and hopefully one day into an ownership, into an ownership career.
John Darsie: (26:47)
Erika, I want to talk a little bit about working at Barstool. It was somewhat or it still is somewhat of a controversial website that people label with that misogyny tag. So when you were named CEO, it was sort of a middle finger from Dave to everyone saying, "Listen, we are one of the only media companies out there with a female CEO." You're the only sports media company today to have an all-female C-suite. Why do you think Barstool is so controversial and what have you learned about dealing with that criticism while working there?
Erika Nardini: (27:17)
I don't think we're that controversial. I think that we ... Look, I think we're a well-run company. I don't think our growth from $5 million in revenue, neighborhood of $5 million to nearly $120 million in revenue in four years is an accident. It wasn't happenstance that that happened. We're a well-run company. We have a good way of doing business. We have a very strong management team. We're the only company not just in sports, but in entertainment media, with the profile of an exec team that resembles ours. It's diverse. It's female-led. You just don't see that right now. I think the reason people think Barstool Sports is controversial is we're, in general, at the cross hairs and we're becoming increasingly at the cross hairs of exactly what you guys are investing in and talking about: news, sports, entertainment, the internet, politics, local events, celebrity.
Erika Nardini: (28:25)
We are talking about whatever it is people are talking about, looking at, or listening to and we are doing it with very strong opinion from very influential personalities. As a result, when we have an opinion, there's naturally an equal and opposite opinion to that. I think that that's one reason people think Barstool Sports is controversial. I don't think Barstool Sports is controversial by design. I think it's opinionated and vocal by design.
Erika Nardini: (28:55)
I think the other reason we are very interesting and talked about is that we're a company that has a history and we're a company where these guys have called it, they've been making jokes, they've been in the comedy space for 16 years at this point. Most of that content still lives on the internet, and when you look at most companies and most brands, the stuff that they were doing five years ago, three years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago is gone because the things that were considered appropriate, the things that were considered funny, the type of dialogue, the type of humor that was permissible has changed. We still have that history out there and I think that, personally, that's what makes, is in part what makes Barstool Sports compelling because it's very real. Anyone who is enjoying our content for the most part was alive 16 years ago. They were making their own content. They were saying their own things. We're different in that the cameras have been on and we're different in that we recognize that this is a reality show as much as it is anything else. A lot of that content and a lot of that opinion and a lot of those jokes still are out there.
John Darsie: (30:17)
It's almost one of those things where people have in their mind that you're controversial because they watched some program that convinced them you were controversial, but if they were to point to any individual instances, they would probably struggle to find something that was particularly controversial. But I want to talk a little bit about Barstool's ability to dominate sort of the pop culture zeitgeist. So the COVID pandemic is a perfect example. You have Big Cat who's one of your personalities for people who aren't familiar with Barstool. He started playing an old video game that he had in his living room, NCAA Football 2014. He turned that into he became the largest streaming Twitch personality sort of on that platform. He had something like 200,000 people watching him at one time, watching him play that video game.
John Darsie: (31:06)
Then you have Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, has become Davey Day Trader Global where on CNBC, it's hard to watch CNBC for a day without them talking about Dave Portnoy and what he's done to create this legion of sort of retail traders that are trading while they can't bet on sports during the pandemic. So what do you think it is about Dave and about Big Cat and the team and the personalities you have there that are so good at drawing on those little things and becoming sort of those on-the-fly phenomena?
Erika Nardini: (31:38)
Yeah, I just think they're insanely talented. Dave Portnoy's dream when we opened up our office in New York was that if you were funny, instead of applying to Saturday Night Live, you would send your resume to Barstool Sports. I think we're there. I think if you are funny and you want to build a brand for yourself and you want to be part of something very creative, we're as good as it gets. I also think Dan, Dave are two phenomenal examples of just incredibly captivating personalities who made a lot of content in a time when there was no resource. So when you look at big media and you look at the pandemic, those personalities were kind of stuck. The studios weren't open. You couldn't liaise with your producer. You didn't have your set. There was no infrastructure. We're a company that has very little production infrastructure. We have a very unlayered approach to production, and so as a result when our office closed, these guys had what they always had from the beginning. You have the internet.
Erika Nardini: (33:05)
You also have complete creative freedom to do what is interesting to you and for Dave, Dave was missing betting so he took after the stock market. You truly cannot watch CNBC for a day or read anything about trading and not see Dave mentioned. This is something he picked up in March of this year. He was like, "I'm going to figure out day trading." Dan took a different approach and said, "Hey, I'm going to play NCAA '14 and I'm going to invent this big fat coach named Coach Duggs," and you have 160,000 people watching him live every night. As big as multiple stadiums are watching an NCAA video game football game on Twitch with Dan. So I think partly it's the ingenuity of the people who are here. Partly, it's the freedom to create for the most part whatever they want. I think the third part of it is a very complete comfort in making content with very little resource and very little production and very little infrastructure.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:15)
Well I've got to compliment Dave Portnoy because I watched that entire interview with President Trump and I don't know David, but I do know the president and I thought he captured a lot of what the president is about. I always say to people if you like the president or you dislike the president, don't demonize him because he's another human being like everybody else. Then you just have to look at him qualitatively and objectively to assess if you want him in that role, but I thought Dave captured his personality. So kudos to him. It's an interesting thing to do coming from Barstool Sports because you've got the White House as the largest fish tank or aquarium in the world and here comes Barstool and the great maverick Dave Portnoy and he's all of a sudden opening up a sleeve into something that other people would not have seen without him. So give you a lot of credit on that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:07)
But I want to ask a meta question if that's okay, and I know John has a couple more questions for you before we break. This is about ... It's sort of the five-year question. Now, we all got the five-year question wrong. If I asked you in 2015 what were you going to be doing late July 2020, it is not sitting in your house with a mask on walking outside. I don't think you would have gotten that right, Erika. Nobody that I know has gotten that question right, but the five-year question going forward for Barstool, where is it? What happens to token CEO? What happens to your programming? You're a visionary. What does it look like in 2025?
Erika Nardini: (35:47)
Yeah, that's hard. I think you will see a couple things. In 2025, my hope is we are an extremely dominant player in sports betting. I think you're going to see that from us, that we have not only created the playing field, but we have really built something very durable and very robust and high-performing and valuable. So I think you're going to see us be a powerhouse in sports betting. I think in five years, the way people watch sports is going to be dramatically different than it is now. I think all the rights deals will change. I think who is broadcasting what will change. I think who you listen to when you're watching live sports is going to change. I would bet that some of the voices you're going to want to listen to are from Barstool Sports and we will be in that game is the second place I think you'll see us be.
Anthony Scaramucci: (36:53)
[crosstalk 00:36:53]. You had that moment with ESPN. You almost had a full Scaramucci with ESPN. I mean a full Scaramucci is-
Erika Nardini: (36:59)
We had a one-night stand with ESPN.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:01)
Yeah, a full Scaramucci is 11 days. I think you got to-
Erika Nardini: (37:04)
Yeah, we didn't even make that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:05)
... 10 out of a Scaramucci.
Erika Nardini: (37:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:08)
Any chance to reset that ever, ever going back? No?
Erika Nardini: (37:12)
Not in that way because it's not in our interest to be totally frank with you. If you look at ... It was great to have the chance to do a show on ESPN. I loved that. That was great for us. Same with we did ... We had one of the highest rated Super Bowl shows on Comedy Central the year before. So it was great for us to play with television. Television is in decline and when you look at a show at 1:00 AM on a secondary network, I'm not sure I would do that today because we're bigger than that show-
Anthony Scaramucci: (37:49)
Right.
Erika Nardini: (37:49)
... just by turning on the lights in the video game. So I think our world has changed from where we were in 2017 and I think network and cable television has changed from where it was in 2016 and 2017 which is why I think in five years when you look at the leagues, they want to be in a place where they're going to get the biggest amount of eyeballs. Those-
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:18)
Those sports franchises are worth more in five years?
Erika Nardini: (38:21)
Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:22)
Tell me why.
Erika Nardini: (38:23)
Because I think live sports is the single most valuable thing on television bar none because it's-
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:34)
[crosstalk 00:38:34] platforms, right? It's valuable on streaming. It's valuable on the internet. It's valuable on-
Erika Nardini: (38:37)
It doesn't matter where you put it. People will come watch it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:40)
So it's almost like the Swiss Army knife of programming-
Erika Nardini: (38:43)
Completely. I mean I'm a Patriots fan. I don't give a shit what network the Patriots are playing on, not to be crass.
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:49)
[crosstalk 00:38:49] Patriots fan. How could you not tell me she was a Patriots fan?
Erika Nardini: (38:52)
Who are you a fan of?
Anthony Scaramucci: (38:53)
I knew you were a Patriots fan. I knew you grew up in New Hampshire. I'm a suffering Met, Jet, Knick, and Ranger fan. Okay. I hate going to Logan Airport for the ... You know the reasons why I hate going to Logan Airport. You guys do that at the shuttle for us New Yorkers-
Erika Nardini: (39:09)
Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:09)
... okay?
Erika Nardini: (39:09)
We do.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:10)
It causes tremendous pain seeing 26 championships up there-
Erika Nardini: (39:15)
Just a little kiss for when you come into town.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:17)
Yeah, when you're leaving too. I mean it's a TSA nightmare for me in Boston.
Erika Nardini: (39:22)
It is true, but anyways, it doesn't matter. If you're watching your Jets lose, you don't care where you're going to watch them. I mean you'd like to see them win, but what you're going to be able to do in five years' time is you want to listen to the game in Spanish, you want to listen to Big Cat, you want to listen to Chris Collingsworth. You're going to get your choice, and I think that's where the world gets very interesting. Look at John's wearing PLL Waterdogs shirt. The PLL was-
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:52)
With George Washington behind him, but he's wearing the Waterdogs shirt. You know he's a very complex guy.
Erika Nardini: (39:57)
Yes, yes.
John Darsie: (39:58)
That's America.
Anthony Scaramucci: (39:58)
You know there's a lot of psychiatrists-
Erika Nardini: (40:00)
There's a lot going on there.
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:03)
A lot of psychiatrists would like to get in there and figure out what's going on. Trust me.
Erika Nardini: (40:05)
Completely, but that's a league that was created two years ago. It's brand new. So I think in five years, the way we watch sports, the way we engage with sports, who's commenting on sports, who has the rights to sports will change and you will see us be a part of that. I think you'll also see us get physical and you will see ... If you look at One Bite, we have the largest database of pizza in the world. We have an app where people review pizza hundreds and hundreds of times a day. Why don't we have a pizza restaurant? Should we have a pizza restaurant? Should we be making pizza? So I think those are the places you're going to see us be in five years.
Anthony Scaramucci: (40:50)
All right.
John Darsie: (40:51)
We're going to leave it there. We could do this for a couple hours, I think. I'm fascinated by the growth of Barstool. You grew it from a scrappy little blog and a leaflet that Dave Portnoy handed out on mass transit in Boston to a $450 million media empire. I think you're still just scratching the surface. I think people, when they saw that number, they said, "Oh, my goodness. What's going on," but I think the value that you create inside of Penn National and what you can do to become sort of the leading player in the online gambling space is unlimited. The potential is unlimited especially in an environment where states are trying to generate revenue and are probably going to accelerate that timeline in terms of legalized gambling.
Erika Nardini: (41:29)
Yeah.
John Darsie: (41:29)
Thank you so much for joining us, Erika. Maybe we'll have to do this again in the near future, maybe after Anthony goes back on Pardon My Take. I know he's been itching to get back on.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:40)
[crosstalk 00:41:40]. I was the man of the moment for that moment, but make sure you tell Dan, the Big Cat, that that was a lot of fun for me in a lot of ways. Every time I walk in the airport, there's a 20-year-old, they say, "Oh, my god. You were on Pardon My Take."
Erika Nardini: (41:55)
That's great.
Anthony Scaramucci: (41:57)
How powerful your messaging and your medium is and congratulations to all of you guys. You built a-
Erika Nardini: (42:04)
Thank you.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:05)
... fantastic business. Even though I'm outside of the demographic as John has pointed out seven times since we started, I am one of your big time customers.
Erika Nardini: (42:15)
Awesome.
John Darsie: (42:15)
Just by a couple years. Just by a couple years.
Erika Nardini: (42:18)
We'll take him. We'll take him.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:21)
We'll see what happens to him when he gets to my age. Okay? By the way, since I'll be controlling all the Botox supply in America by then, you're going to look like S-H-I-T. Okay? Let's just put it that way. Erika, you can have as much Botox as you want, but you probably-
Erika Nardini: (42:34)
Thank you.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:34)
... won't need it.
Erika Nardini: (42:35)
I do. I enjoy it.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:36)
God bless you, Erika. Let's stay in touch, okay?
Erika Nardini: (42:38)
Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:38)
Hopefully, we can get you to the SALT conference one year.
Erika Nardini: (42:41)
I would love that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (42:43)
I think you guys would enjoy that. We do get a lot of cross-section of athletes. We had Kobe a few years ago who gave an amazing speech, and we obviously miss him a great deal. Thank you, Erika, and we wish you the best. Stay safe and healthy.
Erika Nardini: (42:57)
Great. Thank you guys.