Dave Portnoy details Barstool Sports' evolution from a 2003 Boston gambling paper to a digital empire with over 50 podcasts and a multi-state sportsbook app. He recounts his Deflategate rivalry with Roger Goodell, the "Call Her Daddy" contract dispute, and his $37 million pandemic relief fund for small businesses. Discussing the NBA as the top betting prospect and advocating that national polarization will not fracture the US center, Portnoy concludes that unifying factors outweigh divisive ones, though he warns against Trump's potential return to office. [Automatically generated summary]
Dave Portnoy, founder, president, or rather, El Presidente, as he calls himself, of Barstool Sports, the digital brand and news site for all things sports and pop culture, brought to you by The Common Fan, for The Common Fan.
Dave is chief of all content, but his candid, emergency press conferences, his very public opinions on past employees, and his unpredictable business moves make him a fascinating character for the job, and unlike anybody else.
Scrappy beginnings built a following around Barstool, not online, but actually in good old-fashioned print, which included Dave himself driving all around Boston delivering the publication.
That was back in 2003.
Dave's approach, aside from the sheer power of will, was appealing to sports fans in ways that major publications and networks simply weren't, making Barstool a mainstay in the market.
Fast forward nearly 20 years, and Barstool is on the bleeding edge of digital content.
They boast over 50 podcasts, with several top performers on podcast charts.
Last time I checked, Barstool's Caller Daddy was number one on Apple Podcasts.
One of their newest achievements is the Barstool Sportsbook mobile app, creating an easy-to-use sports gambling experience in the palm of your hand.
We'll discuss what the process has been like getting mobile sports gambling available countrywide over the last year.
We'll also discuss how Dave's pizza reviews became a thing, his fundraising of $37 million to save small business, the story behind interviewing President Trump, and a whole lot more.
All right, so let's start with your business philosophy, since I think that you're one of the more unique guys in business today.
You have this big crossover audience.
A lot of conservatives love you, a lot of people on the left love you, but it seems like your business philosophy is generally I don't give a crap, but you run this incredibly successful business.
I mean, that does take a fair bit of stones to be able to do that, because you've been in a bunch of situations, pretty obviously very focused on situations in which you've had to pivot super quickly, whether it is with you know, call me daddy, or whether it is with a particular business strategy or a controversy.
So what is the is that just you just wake up that morning like I'm making a call and we're doing it?
Yeah, I mean, things may be not as instantaneous as that.
But once we decide to do something, we really do it.
And it doesn't always work.
And obviously, you have to know when something's not working and probably, all right, maybe this isn't the right avenue, the right path or whatever it is.
But it's just believing in yourself.
And I also grow.
That's my personality.
Even to start a business like this, you kind of have to be a risk taker.
and willing to put yourself out there.
And then over the years, you know, Barstool's been wildly successful.
You know, I didn't start it to get it where it is.
Like, I just wanted to do my own thing.
And then at some point, when you have enough success and people are chirping you in or being like, don't do this, don't do that.
It's like, what does this person know from the cheap seats?
I'm the one who got us here, so I'm going to continue just to follow what I think is the right thing to do.
It was a sports gambling and fantasy sports newspaper that I would hand out outside subway stations in Boston.
And again, I never even, at the time, I never thought we would be online or anything like that.
So it isn't like this is what I thought the company would be.
But it was a four-page gambling rag and it slowly morphed over the years from More gambling and fantasy to more men's lifestyle, and now I would say it's you know both We have a lot of female content as well, but it's looking at life.
Not too seriously.
That's the goal From both a male and female perspective, okay So how did you decide that you were going to?
Start just doing a newspaper that you printed out and then handed out at subway stations in Boston So I I want to start a business so I always knew I didn't want to work for somebody else I had a sales job out of college, and I had I don't know three Possible, I guess, business ideas that I came up with.
One was this sports gambling newspaper.
The other one was a scouting company for high school athletes who were getting recruited and maybe aren't Division I athletes, but looking for a place to play and a software that could connect scouts.
And the third was used furniture.
As crazy as that sounds, I was always like, hey, college kids throw all their furniture away.
Maybe if I had a huge warehouse, drive around, get the furniture for free.
And this is like a different era.
The internet was just kind of getting going.
So let people buy this furniture that I'm getting for free online.
So it was always a business perspective.
It's just like, which one did I think was most realistic and easiest to get started?
So I used to hand out the newspaper outside subway stations, wake up like, I don't know, 4 a.m., hand it out, go back, work, do sales, I was doing it all.
One day I handed it to a guy at South Station, Boston Financial District, and this is probably, we started in 2004, this may be 2007, and he was moving to New York City.
He's like, I love this newspaper.
If I move to New York, I want to be able to read it.
So if I build you a website, will you put the newspaper on the website?
If you want to do it for free, knock yourself out.
This guy, his name was Ian White, ended up being the CTO for Business Insider.
I got super lucky.
So he built the website.
I started putting articles and things.
Like, very quickly, that became obvious that would be the future of the business.
I could scale it a lot faster.
It was growing a lot faster.
And that's where, you know, the internet side of what we did came from.
But at that point, if you said we're a blog, people would have looked at you like 10 heads.
So, I mean, I was a diehard everything Boston sports fan, played my whole life.
I lived in Nara growing up in Boston.
Like, Dan Shaughnessy's a local sports writer, and they, and WEI was the local radio station, and they had a hammerlock, I mean a hammerlock, on how sports fans got their information.
And to be honest, like a Dan Shaughnessy hates the Red Sox.
He covers them, he hates them.
Ron Board just covered the Patriots, he hates them.
So everything was lecturing, and a lot of fans didn't like it.
I was a huge Bill Simmons fan, and he kind of modernized, or changed, The way the game worked, like, and the internet allowed him to have a voice.
But, like, the Boston Globe didn't hire Bill Simmons.
Like, nope, not right.
Shows you how crazy they are.
So, there was this opening, there was this window, basically, for a different type of voice to reach sports fans, and I thought maybe we could fill it with Barstool Sports.
That's a really interesting take because I hadn't really thought about the fact that there has always been this sort of gap between how many in the elite culture want to cover sports and what the fan actually wants to see from sports.
I remember reading Simmons in the early days and reading his blog.
And forget politics, he's a terrific writer and a really talented guy.
And the way he covered the Celtics, I'm a Celtics fan too, growing up in LA.
And the way he covered the Celtics, I was like, this is the way I want to hear people talk about sports.
We tried to get him involved in early Barstool, got nowhere with it, but it did.
There was an appetite for it.
When the established guard, whether it be EI or the Boston Globe, was so arrogant, almost in the way that they covered sports, they just, they weren't open to new ideas.
Eventually, you know, people like myself started eating them because they just didn't, they didn't pay attention to it.
I wonder if you feel like that gap is still there, because it feels like as Barstool grows and as alternative sports media grows, there's still this sort of ESPN out there that really is, you know, covering sports in a much more almost staid way.
You have to stay between these lines.
You're not allowed to talk about sports.
A fan would talk about sports.
You have to cover sports.
A journalist would cover sports.
And you get that also with regard to, you know, Sports Illustrated, which I subscribed to from the time I was a kid.
And then when I was in my mid-20s, I canceled it because I said, I'm not even reading about sports anymore.
I'm just reading about the kind of political takes of the particular sports writers.
Yes, I was going to ask you a little bit more about that.
So obviously we've seen that the sports have gotten overtly political in a way that they weren't when I was a kid.
Sports figures who were political.
I mean, I remember Charles Barkley posing in slave garb on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
I remember Michael Jordan in the 90s saying, Republicans wear sneakers, too.
So there was always like a touch of, sure, athletes will talk politics.
But it never entered sort of the field of play until the last 10 years when you had people doing hands up, don't shoot, running onto a football field, or you had Kaepernick kneeling on the sidelines, whether you like it or you don't like it, or whether you have on in the NBA actual labeling of the sidelines or labeling of the jerseys.
It seems like politics, which started off as political, you know, Athletes are just like everybody else.
They can say what they want to say on politics.
They move from that to, no, we as leagues are overtly going to now push forward a certain number of agenda items.
And if you don't like those agenda items, then I guess the sport isn't for you.
I mean, it feels actively alienating to a lot of folks.
You know, my view on that, I don't, I have no problem at a point with politics being involved in sports because at some level, It's like, where do you draw the line?
Because you can look at, like, what was it?
The Berlin Olympics?
Where, you know, they put the hand up.
Like, that's great.
Like, that's Hitler.
So, they're making a statement that I agree with.
So, where is the line?
Now, the leagues, how I view the leagues, I don't think the leagues are looking at it as we're doing what we morally think is right.
I've never thought that.
They're doing it as, how can we make the most money, appease our fan base, or do whatever.
Like Goodell, who's been back and forth, who I don't care for.
There's not, there's nobody on earth who can convince me he makes any decision based on, you know, this is morally the right thing to do.
You can agree morally whether something is right or protest is right, but I just don't buy that with the leagues.
They're doing it on what they think is best for their bottom line.
And that, you know, they'll find out in the end, I guess, whether that was right or wrong.
I'm a Patriot fan, diehard Patriot fan, diehard Tom Brady fan.
So, Deflategate, in which he was accused of cheating and deflating footballs, which they never proved or came close to proving.
We defended Tom, and we defended him at every step, and I had more information, I feel like Goodell had.
But when they suspended him for four games, we went and protested, and myself and three other Patriot fans who worked for me, handcuffed ourselves to each other at NFL headquarters and demanded to sit with Roger.
He did say he'd speak with the media at any point.
We got arrested, spent a night in jail for that.
That began what I would say is one of our true rivalries.
And now, if Roger Goodell had any self-awareness, he could have poked light at this and made a joke out of this.
But he didn't.
And it continued to escalate and continued to escalate.
I got dragged out of the Super Bowl.
It was Patriots-Rams Super Bowl.
I bought tickets.
And at halftime, they literally had about 10 security guards drag me out in handcuffs because they banned me from the Super Bowl.
It just continued.
For example, during COVID, they had a charity event, and they're like, hey, whoever bids the most will get to watch a game with Roger Goodell in his basement.
So I spent $250,000, I won the auction, and they nullified that.
So, I mean, it's just been one event after another with him.
We're banned from all NFL events, and we have a great relationship with the Patriots as well.
We sell this picture with his face, a clown, which actually, Trump stole from me.
They sell it.
It's like the clown knows.
So we had 70,000 towels the first time that Roger Goodell showed up at Gillette Stadium.
The entire stadium's holding them.
It's just been an ongoing rivalry that started with the Flakegate.
There are a lot of conservatives who worry that there's an attempt to sort of water down what men ought to be or what men ought to do in our society.
There's an attempt to censor men, that men are sort of being told that they need to sit down and shut up in their interests, take a back seat, that there's a sort of generalized feminization of society.
I think that is true, but with all critiques like that, They're almost social media echo chambers to me.
Like, that is 100% true.
And one of the things with me that I always find fascinating is, if you ask most people off the street, like, what is Dave politically, they're going to be like, he's very conservative.
That's not true.
People listen to, like, what I actually say.
But that sentiment of what you said, people view Barstool and they just put me in a bucket.
Now, we've done events.
That we used to do these like raves, for lack of better words, and we have DJs, we have girls scantily dressed, they're wearing like booty shorts, and we have protesters come and scream at these girls.
Girls.
Feminists.
Girls who identify themselves as feminists, being like, you shouldn't go to that, they're sexist, they're this, that.
And then we'd have these same girls who say, you know what?
You're sexist because you're telling me how to think and what I can laugh at and what I can enjoy.
As a woman, I have the right to make that decision.
So, there is that element, but I think the majority, like, and I've said this many times, I hate both extremes.
I really do.
I hate the extreme left.
I hate the extreme right.
They should be thrown on a battlefield and let them just, like, kill each other to death.
Because I do, what Charles Barkley said the other day on TV, he's like, I think the majority of people get along.
I believe that.
I truly believe that.
You have these extremes.
But I do agree with what you're saying.
The watered down, the culture.
I firmly believe, and people have said this, I have no problem with saying a girl is hot or pretty or sexy.
To me, that, you know what?
That's Adam and Eve type stuff like that is something so I don't have a problem with that.
That doesn't mean that I don't think that person I just said that could be brilliant and the smartest person in the room but physical attributes and things like that you shouldn't just because you say something's pretty that to me isn't Objectifying somebody, that's kind of like science.
So in a second, I want to ask you about the kind of wave of cancellations that hits the culture, because this goes to, if you say perfectly obvious things, sometimes you do have to be worried that advertisers will pull.
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So let's talk about the fact that if you say anything that is remotely edgy these days, there's this deep worry that you're going to get canceled, that people online are going to come after you, and then they'll come after your advertisers.
Now, as it happens to us on the show all the time, people are constantly beating us up.
I trend approximately once every three weeks, I think, as much as the algorithm will allow me to trend on Twitter.
But at the same time, the real fear is that eventually these folks will mobilize against advertisers, against paying customers.
If you have a real fan base, which we do and we've cultivated over almost two decades, it allows you to withstand that.
Because I know, and I've known this for a long time, if I went to our readers, who have been a lot of them for a long time, said, listen, we either have to cater to what the advertisers want, or we have to be us.
But you may have to pay more, and we may have to come up, maybe buy a t-shirt, pay a model.
I know what our crowd would say.
So it does not bother me that way, because our audience is real, and we just stay true to ourselves.
The second you let advertisers So one of the things that you've been doing is you're out there really helping out small businesses in a way that nobody else is, and that's been an initiative since COVID.
So what gave you the idea that you were just going to step into the breach and you were going to just help out these small businesses that have been destroyed by COVID?
It was towards, I think it was around December when I started this and basically New York City shut down indoor dining again.
And, you know, as somebody who started a business and can certainly identify with how much work it, I mean, Barstool was my work's life.
I spent 10 years before we made any money.
I just couldn't imagine not having that decision.
So, as I'm prone to do, I went on a rant and put it on Instagram.
And then somebody challenged me, like, hey, Big Mouth, instead of just talking about it, why don't you do something about it?
And that was the initiative.
I was like, all right.
We like to control when we do charity, which we've done a lot of, because I don't necessarily trust everybody that the money is getting directly to who it needs.
So we came up with the Barstool Fund.
I put $500,000 of my own money in, solicited donations from people I know who may be wealthy, whatever, Tom Brady's of the world, Aaron Rodgers, whoever I may have been lucky enough to form relationships.
And to our readers said, hey, we're doing this.
If you guys have money to donate, any amount helps.
And then we simultaneously said, if you're a business, and you just need to bridge this gap, because for a lot of the restaurants and bars, it was all small business, but a lot of the restaurant industry, they just needed warm weather.
They need to be able to open outside and get things going.
Solicit, send in a reason what you need and we'll try to help as many people as we can.
So I think we raised about $40 million and have helped countless businesses.
We started doing FaceTime videos by accident, basically the first company we helped.
The girl, Liz Gonzalez, who helps go through the emails and submissions, she's like, this person specifically said they're a huge fan of you, Dave.
Just surprise them with a call.
So I did.
And when we gave them the money, their reaction was so overwhelming that I knew we had to capture it moving forward because that would drive the donations.
And then it just kind of took off.
You know, it was one of those things, it's so obvious that small business was dying because of COVID and that nothing was being done to help them.
It was just common sense.
But once you actually see the people and just it's everyday like Americans and how much it meant to get, it could be $10,000.
Like that's what they need just to get over the hump.
It, that's what drove it.
And in a weird way, there's so much crap that was going on in the country and has been for a little bit.
This was something that everybody should have been behind no matter what, because it's just, it didn't matter if you were a Democrat, Republican, if it was a small business owner.
We're just helping you get through this thing.
So it was finally, I think, something that had a positive message.
And even though a lot of people don't like me, even the people who didn't like me got quiet for a little bit because they'd wait to come out.
And I said in my rant, and I do believe this, obviously it's easier said than done, but if you told me after 10 years COVID is going to hit and I lose what I built, I would have been like, I'm going to risk my life trying to save this.
To me, this is, I don't want to go work for somebody else.
I can't really start over.
Like you said, it's not that easy.
This is my life's work.
I've poured everything into it.
I want the chance to save it.
And I said that from the beginning with COVID and I, you know, as it developed or whatnot, it's not taking anything away from how serious it is or isn't.
But I couldn't stand not letting a business owner decide how they want to handle their future.
And frankly, in like a restaurant...
I know COVID's there.
If I want to go into the restaurant, that's up to me.
That's how I felt about it.
But I just, to not give these people, let them control their own destiny after some of these businesses we helped were around for 40 years, grandfathers, it was insane to me and remains insane to me.
Well, unless you want to give them money, which we weren't doing.
It, you know, they weren't, nothing was being done.
Okay, so you have all this stuff going on, and then you've got the entire podcast sphere, so run through how all these podcasts get bolted on, because how'd you get up in the podcast space?
They could have been making a ton more if they did this independently.
Would anybody have known what it is?
Who knows?
I look at it like a talent, like a sports contract.
Like, if we sign a rookie, or somebody who's, nobody knows who they are, and they hit 100 home runs at the all-star break, and you're playing for the Red Sox, you can't be like, guess what?
I'm gonna go play for the Yankees now.
You gotta wait until your contract's over.
They didn't necessarily feel that way, and they started a plan and hatch a plan to basically break the contract with us.
Go do their own thing.
There was this guy from HBO who was involved, who was the boyfriend of Not Alex, the other guy.
And it turned into a big, he said, she said.
It was they were telling their side, I was telling mine.
And eventually, the two of them, I offered them a sweetheart deal.
It was in the middle of COVID, and we needed them to work because they sell a ton of merch, make a lot of money for the company, and I didn't want to lay anybody off.
They got a deal that they could only be offered during COVID times.
They could keep the IP, which we owned, And I shortened their contract.
They couldn't agree on signing that, which is insane.
Alex wanted to sign it.
Sophia did not.
We cut a deal with Alex.
Sophia went her own way.
And that's where it is now.
Alex has been wildly successful.
But it made big news because it was so popular.
And I also hijacked the podcast.
So they stopped doing their work.
They weren't putting it out.
And I had enough.
And finally, I just went on their feed.
And I said, hey, this is Dave Portnoy.
A lot of their fans are like, who the heck is this guy?
And I just said exactly what was happening.
Now, my crowd and people who know me, for better or for worse, I'm very blunt and honest.
Like, if people who don't like me, they'll never be like, oh, he lied or he's dishonest.
They'll just be like, he's a jerk and he's too blunt.
So when I say something, people know I'm generally telling the truth.
So it's that kind of stuff where I asked you before, is it like you just make a split-second decision, you're like, you know what, I'm just taking over the podcast feed today, or?
They're all very old, so I never dreamed, like, hey, people are going to want to watch me have sex.
That was just not something that crossed my mind.
So is it just like, one day I'll break this up for the grandkids, or what was the... No, we do it for... It's like, you know, I spice it up in the bedroom a little bit, but it was meant for just the girl and I and nobody else.
I don't know why that the only thing I think is maybe people are super smart on wall street, which I don't necessarily I think that's always the case, but they're like, oh, this could cause a buying opportunity, like people are going to see it, it'll go down, we'll rebuy when it goes down.
But other than that, I don't know.
It's, you know, it's two consensual adults.
Having sex, and as far as I know, unless you have evidence to the contrary, we wouldn't be here if people weren't having sex.
So it's not like everybody has sex, or else we wouldn't be here.
So who cares?
That's also the Dave Bourne, I don't give a crap about much.
I very much, and the girl didn't either.
I would care very much if the girl cared.
That's the only thing I care about.
Because whoever releases this on the internet, and we haven't been able to find, I'd like to make an example out of that person, so it stops.
They don't think of the, not about me, they're trying to get at me, but they don't think of the repercussions of the other person who's a nobody, and that can severely hurt somebody, a female, if she's like, oh my god, I don't want to be seen like this.
So that is the part that whoever releases this really doesn't think about at all.
I lost $700,000 on GameStop, or not GameStop, on AMC, but it was the same.
They stopped the trading.
I didn't even know you could do that.
I literally didn't know you could just say, hey, you can sell the stock, but you can't buy it.
They essentially tanked the stock price.
And nobody will ever convince me if the shoe was on the other foot and, you know, the hedge funds and the billionaires were making a ton of money in a volatile nature, that it would be stopped.
To be like, oh, you guys are making too much.
The little guy's getting killed.
But that's what happened here.
And do I think there are phone calls made and things behind closed doors?
And if you've seen the show Billions, Steve Cohen even is Tied into these companies.
I think there was shady stuff that went on and I think the little guy got screwed for the most part to save billionaires.
I think he sees, and that's the CEO of Robinhood, I think he sees me as a conduit to their retail traders and they're trying to go public and all this.
So, as a way to build trust back up, he's like, let me talk to Dave.
And I'm no expert on a lot of the things he was talking about.
I at first thought he was a criminal.
I've changed to be he was inadequately prepared and borderline incompetent because it was bubbling.
Like what was going on with GameStop and AMC?
It wasn't something that just you snapped and it happened.
It was over the course of a couple days.
So to not be ready for it?
That to me is incompetence.
But he brought up a fair point.
It's like, if we folded, it would have been worse for our clients.
Right, there came a point where they were losing money on every single trade because they'd actually over-leveraged themselves in order to fulfill the contract.
Although, I have to say that I did get a kick out of my co-religionist spotting you on the street, knowing exactly who you were, in Fairfax, and one of them bar mitzvahing you.
I mean, I sort of asked this earlier, but are you concerned that as the culture decides that jokes are forbidden, that that's going to be bad for your business?
Or you think it's going to provide an opportunity to open wider?
I'm curious to see what the next couple of years are like, because he just had people Like, everybody who complained about something we, a joke we made, and this isn't 99.9% of the time, this was 100% of the time.
If I looked at their Twitter profile, it was political.
Underneath what they said about me, it was politics 100% of the time.
So, maybe that goes away and opens up.
The flip side is...
There is an audience that appreciates, and it's not even left or right, it's kind of both, like, I like how these guys aren't backing down.
And our audience allows us to do that.
So people have always asked, why do you fight back?
Or why do you push back?
Or why don't you just shut up when someone takes a shot at you that you feel is unfair?
It's like, I'm not going to do that.
Like, I will never throw the first punch, but if you Throw a shot at me on Twitter out of the clouds.
It's not my responsibility to protect you.
I don't feel that way.
I haven't felt that way since day one and I don't feel it now.
But that's what all these people do.
They'll throw grenades and then they'll cry when you're like, well, we're shooting back now.
It's like, why'd you throw the grenade?
So, and I've offered this is, I know it's kind of cliche.
I'll talk to anybody.
If you have a problem with me, I'll talk to you anytime, any place, anywhere.
You can bring a hundred people and I'll debate you by myself because I'm confident Now, are there jokes I've made that I wish I didn't and are perceived differently now?
Of course!
But I've been doing this for 20 years, so I'll go through point by point by point everything I've ever said and done.
Some, maybe I wish I didn't do that, but I know my character and our intent has always been to make people laugh.
You know, religion, I think, is great if it's used the right way.
I think a lot of times over, you know, history, it's been used In a weird way, I like how politics, like for power and things like that, as basic as it sounds, it's like, be nice.
That is a religion I think everybody should just basically have.
I think the widespread perception of you is that, not total perception, but there is this kind of media-created perception that you're the guy who's out of control, that nobody You like that?
And maybe it's not as seat of our pants as I'm making it seem.
Like Eric Andradini, who our CEO is brilliant.
And we have a lot of really smart people working there.
But everyone just has a similar mindset.
Not afraid to take chances.
And, you know, we haven't changed what's worked.
And what's worked is us being truly authentic.
There's been so many stories now.
Authentic really, I feel like, became a huge buzzword.
In media the last couple years and I always hear stories like someone told me ESPN had a Meeting on how to be authentic.
It's like well, you already lost like having a meeting on how to be authentic.
We don't do that We're just ourselves.
We don't handle PR differently.
Like I mean We just do things in a different manner like we yet we do have PR people they don't even talk to me because when someone asked me about a sex tape or a controversy I I answer honestly, like, who cares?
I feel like that is sort of the new wave in business, though, because I will say we have a very slim management structure at Daily Wire, too.
And one of the things we pride ourselves on is the fact that we can react incredibly quickly, whereas a lot of these bigger companies, it takes a while for them to turn the ship.
If they're headed in a particular direction, it's just going to take them forever to steer that ship.
And once they're committed to that course, it feels like They're kind of, they're kind of done.
And that's probably why, by the way, people, because they identify as super left and they're the worst.
Absolutely no fun club.
And I made fun of them because they basically went bankrupt.
And all their writers lost their jobs.
And they had this great union.
And we don't have a union, and no one wants to leave our company.
And I made fun of them, like, hey, that union did great for you guys, huh?
You all got fired.
Total joke.
And it became an issue.
AOC, who sucks.
Jumped in on this without any knowledge.
She's just looking she used it I think as a fundraiser like I she put me in her fundraising letter the next day shocking.
She did fundraising I can't know no And I know she didn't know anything about what she was talking about it But it made it a much bigger issue, and then we have people coming at me.
It's like you you don't even know The analogy I use with us a lot of times is going to a comedy show that you don't know who the comedian is, you didn't buy a ticket, you walk in, you hear a joke, you walk out in the street, you're like, you never believe what this guy said without mentioning you were in a comedy club.
That's what I feel happens and that's kind of what AOC did.
So, you know, It wasn't even the, whatever they're called, like they didn't know what was going on either.
All these people issued complaints and once AOC makes it seem like it's a real thing, which it's not, it would be like taking a joke from American Pie and be like, oh my God.
So once it became that, they said, well, the end result of this was I had to send a letter, oh no, an email to my company saying I was kidding, which by the way, I was, so I didn't care doing it.
We're having the same issue and we're probably going to fight it all the way.
Because they basically, once I tweeted out that members of my company, I'd be happy to fire them if they wished to take the company in a different editorial direction.
Which is not, by the way, a unionizable issue.
I issued a tweet saying we follow all of the NLRA, we follow all of the applicable law.
NLRB still sent us a letter asking me to take down the original tweet and then apologize for ever having made a joke about this sort of stuff.
I'm never going to apologize for making a joke about this sort of stuff.
Like I, you know, I didn't take a vacation day for 10 years.
Like I worked my ass off for Barstool.
I really did.
And, you know, I hired people.
I put my own money back into it, risk it, hire people.
We have a great thing, but it's like now you're going to tell me what I have to do on a talent business, by the way.
I always said that we're talking about people who, if you don't think you're making enough money with me and you're talented, then you can just not re-sign with me.
And if you're as talented as you think you are and you're being underpaid, somebody else will pay you.
If somebody else won't pay you, you're probably getting what you deserve or maybe more with me.
So, like, you don't need a union for what we're doing.
But it was more I was just making fun of this company.
Because what we've seen over the past few years is the viewership on sports is just hitting the skids.
I mean, it's really, really bad, except for, you know, maybe MMA, which continues to do really, really well.
I think in part because Dana White runs his company kind of like you run your company or I run my company.
He's just like, you know, this is my company.
I'm doing exactly whatever the hell I want.
And if you don't like it, you can shove it.
But all these other big kind of sporting conglomerates, NFL, NBA, MLB, they seemed like they were in growth mode, some of them, NFL and NBA particularly, five years ago.
But it seems like now they are running into some real headwinds.
And it's hard to actually, in my mind, pull out necessarily what's happening.
Like e-gaming, for example.
People grow up.
The kids nowadays are doing different things.
Like, I used to go play wiffle ball and baseball every day.
Now people are playing video games.
And that's a world that is exploring TikTok and things like that.
The kids, they're making videos of dancing in front of mirrors.
They're not doing traditional things.
And I think that effect plays out on ratings and things like that.
I really don't know.
I mean, I think the sports will be around.
Football's got a little bit of probably an issue with like, not only whether it be political stuff, but actual like concussions and things of that nature and taking hitting out of the game.
I don't know.
I think it really varies sport to sport, but I couldn't imagine a world where they're not here.
It seems like there's, oddly enough, this very culturally unifying figure we mentioned right at the very top.
There are a lot of people across the spectrum who love Barstool, who love what you're doing.
But it feels politically, from where I sit, because that's what I do every day, that the country's falling apart.
It feels like people are polarizing.
I think the center will hold.
I just think there's too many people who get along than don't.
There's more that unites us than doesn't.
Do you think it's going to be that the country falls apart, or do you think that there is this center that is going to hold, or are just people too apathetic?
I just think there's too many people who get along, then don't.
There's more that unites us than doesn't.
And one of the things people always mention is, I don't know anyone else does it better.
I don't think so.
So it's very easy here to criticize, and there's no doubt there's problems.
There's problems in every country.
But then you're like, all right, go pick where you want to go.
Like, what other country do you want to go to that is this utopia that you think exists?
Because it doesn't.
So I think the center will hold.
I don't think it would be good if Trump ran for president again, because I think he is, like, I think the Republicans can find People who unite the country, if you're a Republican, you can get a lot of things you want done without somebody that, whether he's right or wrong, he's going to divide again.
So I hope that doesn't happen, to be totally honest.