Barstool Sports: From Rags to Riches
Over the past decade, the internet has become a powerful tool for entrepreneurs who want to market their brand. The world has become consumed with social media, whether it be for communication, information, or entertainment. As society continues to transition towards the digital, marketers have had to adapt to the changing market by utilizing these platforms to promote their product. And there hasn’t been a company as successful at doing that than sports / pop-culture blog Barstool Sports.
Barstool was founded by David Portnoy in 2003 in Milton, Massachusetts. Having limited resources, Portnoy had to aggressively promote his then-newspaper by physically handing out copies to people throughout the Boston metropolitan area. At the time, Barstool primary covered sports gambling and fantasy sports projections, but has since expanded to many other topics.
Portnoy and his friends were aware of the internet boom that occurred during this time in the mid-2000s and used it to their advantage. What started as a newspaper turned in a blog, which they promoted through the earlier social media platforms of Myspace and Facebook. By blending sports and entertainment with a comedic twist, it attracted the college demographics, that fortunately, were the ones who were using said platforms.
One platform that they used brilliant was Twitter. Having a comedic angle with their content, they would post humorous videos taken by real people, and write very funny captions to them. This was the first time I personally got into the brand. And being a huge sports fan, it says something that what drew me into the brand that primarily covers sports was the hysterical videos they posted. By doing this, they reached a much wider audience that help catapult them to the top of blogging today.
Once they conquered the blogosphere, Portnoy and company thought they could continue to grow by transitioning to the podcasting world as well. The company has produced a staggering amount of highly successful podcasts over the years. The baseball podcast Starting 9, hockey podcast Spittin’ Chiclets, and golfing podcast Fore Play are just a few of their most popular sporting podcasts, which have garnered much respect amongst athletes.
Portnoy, starting back in the early years of Barstool, would do pizza reviews all around the tri-state area, where he would taste a pizza and rate it. As he became a much more recognizable figure in the public eye, he started posting the videos onto YouTube, and eventually became a huge phenomena by itself. Local pizza places started to take notice and reached out to Portnoy to come and rate their pizza. With the majority of the pizza places being in New York, along with the catapulting success, celebrities would join in on reviews, where they would plug in their own things in the process.
Barstool Sports is a “Cinderella story” of sorts; a true underdog succeeding at the height of digital supremacy. There are a million blogs and podcasts now, and most of them aren’t good. A lot of college kids see Portnoy’s story and they believe they could be the next big thing, but it’s not that easy. Barstool may be one of a million, but they are at the very top of that list. They benefited from the timing of everything, but they were smart, perceptive, and brave enough to take the plunge into this world before it became over-utilized. What started as a local paper turned into a $100 million company. Marketers, take note.
