Rethinking Barstool?

steveluck7

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May 10, 2007
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I wonder if they want to or can get into the transactional side of things. So much of their content is focused on betting that offering the actual transactions would be (even more) huge for them
 

The Needler

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Dec 7, 2016
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And Penn National Gaming stock is up more than 11% (increasing its market cap by more than $300 million) on the news.
 

Senator Donut

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Apr 21, 2010
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I've been skimming through Penn's form 8-K on the deal and I found some interesting details. Immediately before the sale, Dan Katz received and additional grant of BSS shares, which Penn immediately purchased for $7,000,000, in addition to the BSS equity he already owned. He's been one of my favorite sports personalities, and I'm glad he's getting a fat check today. It's also fascinating to read Penn's investor presentation. Essentially, they believe Draft Kings and Fan Duel are the market leaders because of their tremendous head start in the DFS industry, which has given them brand recognition well ahead of all of their competitors. Penn sees the Barstool brand as an easy way to achieve brand recognition parity with those two giants for their under development mobile platform.
 

CantKeepmedown

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Yeah, Big Cat getting paid is really cool. He wasn't even initially sure he wanted to go all in with Barstool way back in the day (when they were branching out to cities) and I think they at one point they had decided to go with another guy before Big Cat went all in. He's always seemed like the most normal, down to earth guy they have. PMT is obviously huge and it's good to see him cash in on some of the risks he took and the hard work he put in.
 

TFP

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I've been skimming through Penn's form 8-K on the deal and I found some interesting details. Immediately before the sale, Dan Katz received and additional grant of BSS shares, which Penn immediately purchased for $7,000,000, in addition to the BSS equity he already owned. He's been one of my favorite sports personalities, and I'm glad he's getting a fat check today.
Would that additional grant come with retention conditions to keep him around as part of this?
 

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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Would that additional grant come with retention conditions to keep him around as part of this?
Portnoy specifically mentioned Big Cat as someone who is "locked in" in his announcement, so I suspect that's the case.
 

Senator Donut

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Apr 21, 2010
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Would that additional grant come with retention conditions to keep him around as part of this?
The document mentions Key Employee Agreements are in place for Portnoy, Katz and Nardini, but we don't know the details. They will also have their remaining shares locked up for 4 years.
 

steveluck7

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May 10, 2007
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Good on them for recognizing that he needs to be heard by their demo.
And good on him and the admin for recognizing that Barstool has the demo that needs to hear him
 

TSC

SoSH's Doug Neidermeyer
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Oct 25, 2007
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Between here and everywhere.
Another Barstool Podcast (Hard Factor - a daily news show) had DJT Jr on the podcast last week for a 30-40 minute interview.

Portnoy rubbing elbows with Hannity and Carlson seems to be paying off.
 

allstonite

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Oct 27, 2010
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Fauci was excellent and weirdly calmed my nerves a lot this morning. Trump shouldn't be speaking off script for about a million reasons and we've been getting mixed messages from everywhere else so it was nice to hear him deliver a straight, consistent message. It walked the line of (hopefully) letting their younger listeners realize the severity of the situation while laying out that self-isolation doesn't exactly mean living in a glass bubble for months on end. It was nice to hear him say go for a walk and, while not encouraging it, saying it was fine to get small groups together.

I know he's busy (understatement of the century) but I really hope he can come on weekly/bi-weekly to provide updates and guidelines going forward
 

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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Big Cat has a uniquely charming personality. I'm not quite to the point of adding a reminder to watch the Cat Cave Derby every day, but I'm getting close. There is absolutely no reason an electronic horse race should be fun to watch, have storylines developing, etc., and yet...
 

TFP

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Big Cat has a uniquely charming personality. I'm not quite to the point of adding a reminder to watch the Cat Cave Derby every day, but I'm getting close. There is absolutely no reason an electronic horse race should be fun to watch, have storylines developing, etc., and yet...
The photo finish one on the day he first setup the finish line camera was absolutely electric.
 

CantKeepmedown

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Jul 15, 2005
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Pretty cool what he was able to do for Chelsea the painter as well. For background, last week, Big Cat was checking out different periscopes and then putting out the link to his followers. So these people were going from 10-20 viewers to thousands and not understanding it. Some hits and misses, but all in good fun. But Chelsea really took it in stride and had fun with it. Looks like she ended up getting a ton of work out of it. She seems extremely grateful.


Sold out!! Every single one of my commission spots have officially been claimed in less than 4hrs!! I don’t know if you understand how much this means to me! Love you guys!! It’s time to go hard in the paint.
 

Senator Donut

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Apr 21, 2010
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Behind a paywall but BS is losing a lot of money (loss of advertising revenue) due to Covid:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/barstool-sports-hemorrhaging-money-top-editor-flips-out-at-writers?ref=home
I got stuck at the paywall, but I was curious how Daily Beast obtained an internal email, only to find out "the email and subsequent text messages sent by Markovich—in one, he called a blogger “super-retarded”—were read aloud during a contentious, heated exchange on Monday with the four hosts of the SiriusXM radio show Barstool Chicago." Wow.
 

nattysez

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Earnings reports are always sunny, but Penn Gaming sounds like it has big plans for Barstool in the future. Of course, there's nothing about Barstool's ad revenue drop in here:

"While our operating team has been busy reconfiguring our casinos for a post-COVID-19 world, our interactive team has been hard at work laying the foundation for future growth online. We have been able to continue the development of our Barstool Sportsbook app and remain on schedule for launch in the third quarter of 2020 on what we anticipate will be a more level playing field with our competitors given the extended absence of major live sports in the months leading up to our launch. Our team of engineers is creating a best-in-class sports betting product, and the Barstool brand, loyal audience and marketing engine will help drive meaningful market share as the product is introduced across our database of 20 million casino customers and Barstool’s audience of over 66 million fans.

"The past several weeks have also reinforced our investment thesis in Barstool Sports. Despite the lack of live sporting events, Barstool has continued to create highly entertaining content in recent weeks, with blog traffic increasing over 20% in April, video views up over 50% and social media accounts seeing meaningful growth. In addition, Barstool has shown continued success in utilizing emerging platforms to expand its reach, including explosive growth on TikTok and the introduction of live video game streaming on Twitch. Barstool’s highly diverse and engaging content is proving to be more relevant than ever in the key demographics we will be targeting, and we continue to believe Barstool’s growing, loyal audience will lead to meaningful reductions in customer acquisition and promotional costs for our sports betting product.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/penn-national-gaming-reports-covid-110000338.html
 

bandito0

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Jul 16, 2005
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Big Cat has a uniquely charming personality. I'm not quite to the point of adding a reminder to watch the Cat Cave Derby every day, but I'm getting close. There is absolutely no reason an electronic horse race should be fun to watch, have storylines developing, etc., and yet...
I came to post something similar to this, even though I haven't checked out the horse races. I'm not a huge fan of the Barstool brand but Big Cat is one of the more enjoyable media personalities going. He's running an NCAA 14 coach career called Coach Duggs on Twitch and it's well done. His commentary is good, his playing skills, well not so much, which makes it even more enjoyable.
 

tmracht

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Aug 19, 2009
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Man I miss the NCAA series so bad. I may have to grab the 360 and fire it up again.
 

jsinger121

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Jul 25, 2005
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He’s a coward if he doesn’t honor this. It’s for charity. The NFL will take a PR hit if they don’t honor it.
 

CantKeepmedown

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Jul 15, 2005
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I don't think he's capable, but RG could turn this whole thing around and be a good sport. Wear one of the clown shirts. Engage in some back and forth. Problem is, I don't think Portnoy is capable of dialing it back just a little bit so RG will play along. And really, I don't think RG has it in him to actually play along. They did ban barstool from all NFL things during Super Bowl week.. And had Portnoy kicked out of the Rams one. We'll see.

$250K is $250K and they'll have to do something. I think RedOctober is right and they'll just match the donation so they can save face.
 

Mystic Merlin

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Sep 21, 2007
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Yeah, I think the dealbreaker problem is that Portnoy is a gigantic asshole who will try to make the meeting with Goodell a spectacle as an end in itself. Any attempt at compromise/playing along by RG can’t be accepted by DP because his entire RG bit will be predicated on creating the perception he is a Goodell antagonist/troll. If RG is in on the joke the bit falls apart.
 

RedOctober3829

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Jul 19, 2005
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deep inside Guido territory
Yeah, I think the dealbreaker problem is that Portnoy is a gigantic asshole who will try to make the meeting with Goodell a spectacle as an end in itself. Any attempt at compromise/playing along by RG can’t be accepted by DP because his entire RG bit will be predicated on creating the perception he is a Goodell antagonist/troll. If RG is in on the joke the bit falls apart.
Portnoy will want to film this for web content. There is no possible way RG will agree to it. I also agree that the Barstool schtick is about being perceived outsiders who are rebelling against the man so to speak. Portnoy gets kicked out of multiple Super Bowls/handcuffs himself outside the NFL building and gets arrested/etc. and now will agree to be nicey nice with RG? He will lose credibility.