Radio Row is dead. The days of the convention center in the Super Bowl’s host city being filled wall-to-wall with sports stations from around the country is over. Plenty of them are still there, but now there are just as many ring lights and cameras as there are microphones and Comrex units. The podcasters sit side by side with the broadcasters. There’s a whole lot of audio production, but there is just as much video production. Now it’s Media Row.
And here is a dirty little secret: Media Row is kind of dead too.
Outlet participation is dwindling. The expense of taking a station or social network to Media Row isn’t worth the content many of these platforms are able to put out. Hell, ESPN Radio didn’t even send its shows this year.
If you were on Media Row this year, you saw as many ads as you did media outlets. Westwood One sold part of its set to Kay Jewelers. Sleep Number beds erected a huge podcast studio. Kansas City, Arizona, and Las Vegas all had huge booths to promote tourism.
On Wednesday of last week, JB and I were invited to check out Barstool’s Mini Golf Open. The event was live streamed on the company’s website and featured all of its top personalities. It made money and served the brand identity, but more importantly, it showed everyone that you don’t need to rely on the game and the NFL to make great content during Super Bowl week.
Mesa, Arizona’s Golfland Sunsplash was the home of the competition. That is a sixteen mile drive from the Phoenix Convention Center, where various former NFL players and OnlyFans girls were pedaling various offshore sportsbooks and boner pills.
Barstool came to Arizona with a plan to make entertaining content for its audience. The company was not going to leave itself at the mercy of Media Row. Local stations can take a lesson from that.
It’s no secret that Barstool and the NFL have a bit of an adversarial relationship. The league was never going to do the company any favors. The league office initially tried to keep the company’s popular podcast Bussin’ With the Boys off of Media Row entirely. That left it all up to the bosses, talent, and producers at Barstool to put a plan in place to generate the most entertaining content possible.
“We’re not knocking on the door. We’re just coming in. You know, we’re just going to go ahead and make ourselves at home here,” Adam Ferrone, better known to fans as “Rone”, told me. “We’re coming to the party, but our section of the party is going to be the most fun section of the party. It’s going to be where real fans want to come and hang out.”
Pringles made Barstool’s plan a little easier, at least for the Mini Golf Open. Omega Accounting Solutions and Curve served as sponsors of the event as well, but whether you watched the event live and in person or over the internet, Pringles was unavoidable.
“At one point, it seemed as though the chips became just as popular as the Barstool players,” Senior Account Executive Maggie McAteer said. “Over on the 6th hole, players had to stand on a Pringles branded platform and putt while having “can hands,” which meant their hands had to be in a Pringles container while putting. On the 18th hole, the 3D Pringles chip helped PFT Commenter secure a crucial play to make par. Carts of Pringles were displayed throughout the course, and other fun brand moments were captured.”
It wasn’t just mini golf. Pringles was worked in everywhere for Barstool. Cans showed up at the company’s New Amsterdam Vodka House, the home base for content throughout Super Bowl week, the Pardon My Take studio and at the live edition of The Dozen Trivia.
If your network or station is going to the Super Bowl, if it is going to travel and broadcast from any event really, it has to be profitable. Barstool took it a step further than profitable, and there’s a lesson in that. Barstool put Pringles in the center of the action for the entire week. It made the sponsor a star and likely earned loyalty from Kellogg’s for a very long time.
As for Bussin’ With the Boys, the podcast did eventually make it to Media Row. Hosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan got to experience both sides of the event. They welcomed guests of their own to tape interviews for their podcasts. They were also “lead around like show ponies” Compton told me, promoting their show with stations and networks that would have them.
After spending a few days in sell mode and having to fit into the sometimes stuffy culture of Media Row, Compton was happy to get back to a Barstool Super Bowl event.
“You’re at home here. You’ve got the boys around and everybody’s chirping,” he said of the competition at the Mini Golf Open. “Over there, you’ve got to be a little bit more buttoned up in front of all these other outlets. You got to know what’s going on.”
It may not always seem like it, but that is at the heart of every decision Barstool makes. Even the decision to hold a miniature golf tournament and stream the competition live instead of opening it to the public, is part of CEO Erika Ayers’ larger strategy for Barstool in 2023.
She still expects the company to “fly all over the place” and try a number of different things. When it comes to live sports though, Ayers is convinced that what Barstool pulled off with the Arizona Bowl in December is a model they can thrive with while the rest of the industry plays catch-up.
“What I really believe in is the infusion of comedy and entertainment in a broadcast experience of live sports,” she said on Variety’s Strictly Business podcast last week. “That’s going to be the future. And I really see us at the forefront of that.”
The Barstool Mini Golf Open delivered just that. Between the charisma of the company’s best-known personalities and the absurdity of mini golf in general, there was plenty to celebrate. But it didn’t all happen by accident.
Lisa Litvak, Barstool’s VP of Live Events, and her team staged a production that pulled out all of the stops. Drones buzzed overhead with cameras attached to them to capture aerial views of the action. Cameramen followed each group and framed the action perfectly without ever getting in the way.
Mini golf is not Litvak’s first rodeo with Barstool. Just like the content being created by Rone and by Bussin’ With the Boys, she wants her team to think about what works best, not what fits in with what everyone else is doing to cover the Super Bowl. The company has experience with live sports, first staging a college basketball invitational event and then a bowl game. Litvak trusts that she knows what works for the Barstool audience.
“I think we’ve learned a ton from doing basketball and football, and now this,” she told me. “I think the biggest thing we’ve learned is that we can do it and we can do it just as good as any network.”
Everyone involved had a plan, not just for the mini golf tournament, but for generating content and delivering for advertisers across the entire week.
“Some people expect Barstool not to be on the most solid footing,” Rone told me. “They used to call it the Barstool difference, where if a broadcast goes out, well that’s just part of Barstool being Barstool. At this point, there’s so many moving pieces and talented people that it’s like you don’t have that excuse anymore. Everything has to be perfect. So people are taking this really seriously to make it look like it’s not a lot of work at all.”
People feel all kinds of ways about Barstool, and you see in talking to members of their PR staff, that they get it. Some people’s minds are never going to change. But that is about content. Whether what the company puts out is good or bad or offensive or hilarious is always going to be subjective.
We’re talking about business. When it comes to getting the most out of its decision to invest money and resources into going to Arizona and making the most of Super Bowl week for its audience, Barstool objectively put on a clinic that is worth studying.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
