Dave Portnoy just announced on Twitter that he is buying 100% of Barstool Sports, back from Penn Media. It’s a lot to take in for a guy who failed macroeconomics. But I think I have made sense of this situation.
Here’s a quick backstory for those of you who don’t take diligent notes on the corporate sales of their favorite sports books. Thirty-six percent of Barstool was sold to Penn Entertainment in 2020. When this happened, the Barstool Sportsbook was launched. Three years later, Penn Entertainment bought the rest of the company. The total price was around 500 million dollars. This officially made Dave Portnoy too rich to eat as much pizza as he did.
What is essentially happening with this latest transaction is Penn is selling Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN, and it will be renamed ESPN Bet. ESPN has agreed to pay two billion dollars for this, which is a lot of money in my book. The thing that affects commoners like us much more, is Dave Portnoy purchased back 100% of Barstool Sports.
Before diving into this, it’s pretty unbelievable how rich Portnoy has gotten off of trying all of New York’s pizza. For some reason, this only landed for me after he bought Barstool back, not when he sold the company.
This is probably a big win for the internet. Dave Portnoy is a polarizing figure. But at the very least, he treats Barstool Sports like the world’s highest paid group of friends. Half of their employees appear to only be there to entertain him. Their employees already seem to get away with a lot. But now they will really be able to do what they want, which is what the internet desperately craves.
