Barstool Sports Is Mainstream Media, Whether Dave Portnoy Likes It or Not

· Yahoo Sports

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has a new book out that you should definitely read. Especially if you’re interested in the unique story of the digital sports content behemoth. The book is entitled Cancel Me If You Can, which is spot on for a person who built his content business by taking chances, being unique, and never settling for what everyone around him felt Barstool Sports should be. The rise of Barstool Sports has been transparent. Nearly everything is on film, and no questions go unanswered.

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The results are a massive following and a reach that many media companies around the world envy. A combination of colorful personalities who tell stories, interviews that shape narratives, and partnerships that continue to expand the brand with FOX Sports and Netflix, for example. Barstool Sports has risen to a level where many would consider the brand part of the mainstream media ecosystem. However, Portnoy denies that assertion. Why?

If you look up any definition of mainstream media, the key words are simple to isolate and examine: large, established, mass communications, and broad audience. Doesn’t Barstool Sports fit each and every one of those descriptions based on its own metrics?

Scale Matters

Large? Barstool Sports has offices in both New York City and Chicago. Both locations produce daily written content, record successful podcasts, and create long-form and short-form video for every major distribution platform. The company gained investment from both The Chernin Group and Penn National Gaming. Those investments allowed the brand to grow to a valuation of more than half a billion dollars.

Established? Barstool Sports began as a weekly print publication in the Boston area in 2003. Within a decade, it had expanded into five cities and operated a blog that drew more than four million unique users each month by 2013. By 2016, Barstool claimed to generate 250 million views per month. Pardon My Take, Barstool Sports’ most successful podcast, is now 10 years old. In the creator economy, many consider Barstool Sports ahead of its time, setting the standard well ahead of many companies in the digital content space.

Mass communications? On TikTok, only ESPN has a larger following among sports media brands. Regarding YouTube, Barstool has nearly two million subscribers on its primary account alone and 12 additional channels under its umbrella. On X, formerly Twitter, the main account has nearly seven million followers. However, each personality is a brand unto itself, further expanding Barstool Sports’ reach.

All of those factors lead to a broad and diverse audience: male, female, young, and old. Barstool’s personalities have become established pop culture celebrities. When they host events, they sell out. Who needs Super Bowl Radio Row when the celebrities of the Super Bowl come to them? The outlet has interviewed everyone from the president of the United States to the sixth man who went viral for hitting a last-second basket at a local high school.

The question is why Portnoy doesn’t consider his own brand mainstream media, especially since it appears to meet the definition.

“If you say Barstool says something versus CNN, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, that doesn’t, like, hit. We’re different,” says Portnoy during an interview with PBS. “When you say mainstream media, seeing a quote from Barstool still does not carry for most people the same weight, I don’t think, as like established blue blood-type news organizations. Nor should it, really.”

The Culture Shift

Does Barstool Sports break news like CNN, NPR, The New York Times, or even TMZ? Not necessarily. The brand has had its share of breaking news throughout its rise, but it has hardly operated as a traditional news organization. However, people are getting their news from more places than ever before, and that’s where Barstool plays best with its audience.

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 19% of Americans make social media their first destination for breaking news. That’s up 10 percentage points since 2018. Among Americans ages 18-29, 31% turn to social media first. A recent YouGov survey found that 60% of U.S. adults consume their news on social media first, including 73% of those ages 18-44.

That shift is why the debate over whether Barstool Sports is mainstream media feels outdated. Portnoy is comparing Barstool to the legacy institutions that defined mainstream media for generations. Newspapers, cable news networks, and national broadcast outlets earned that label because they were where the largest audiences gathered. Today’s audiences gather elsewhere.

Mainstream is no longer determined by a printing press, a television affiliate, or a cable channel. It’s determined by where people spend their time, where conversations begin, and where news, opinions, and culture spread. Increasingly, those places are YouTube, TikTok, X, Instagram, podcasts, and creator-driven platforms.

That’s the world Barstool Sports helped build.

Whether someone likes Barstool’s style is beside the point. Millions of people consume its content every day. Its personalities influence conversations, interview major newsmakers, partner with companies like FOX Sports and Netflix, and command an audience that rivals or exceeds many legacy media brands. Those are the very characteristics that have always defined mainstream media.

Portnoy may never embrace that label because Barstool was built as an alternative to the establishment. Ironically, that’s exactly what makes the company’s evolution so remarkable. The establishment has changed. When one of the largest and most influential voices in sports reaches millions where modern audiences actually consume content, it isn’t operating outside the mainstream anymore. It is the mainstream.

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John Mamola

John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at [email protected].

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