They already made a deal with the devil taking PE financing from a media PE fund. You get in bed with one of those, you can bet on aggressive revenue growth targets (already being managed) with a view towards an exit in 5-7 years. That's the typical holding period for the place they're in, and they're already 2.5 years in. There ain't no way they're going public, so they're probably getting sold (or dismembered and sold, except I'm not sure how you spin out parts of Barstool).
So they've got a 3-5 year window to make themselves palatable to other media companies. Their demographics, engagement metrics and various other measurables are doing well. So their task is mostly to get past the ick factor, and they have plenty of time to do so gracefully and give an acquirer plenty of room to rationalize it away. Shutting off comments when he did gives Portnoy the ability to say, when that day comes, "well, yeah it was bad back then, but we haven't been all about the comments for a while, our community is based around activities X Y and Z these days". And yeah, an honest statement like that would have X being facilitating sexual assault through keg stands on a tour through college spring breaks, but he'll have plenty of more-savory options to choose from too.