When Dave Portnoy secured a deal to buy Barstool Sports back from Penn Entertainment for $1, along with a plethora of other regulatory conditions, he joined the company’s chief executive officer Erika Ayers Badan for dinner at Zero Bond in NoHo. Information from a recent profile of Ayers Badan in Vanity Fair states that there was little celebration about the deal, which facilitated Penn and ESPN to ink a 10-year, $2 billion contract to launch the ESPN BET sportsbook. The mission of Barstool Sports from its early days in Massachusetts was to provide fans with niche content, and they consistently stress the brand’s reach and appeal to consumers that allows it to “move product.”
As it pertained to gambling though, the regulated industry caused Barstool to put Penn in difficult situations in order to ensure it could retain its licenses. The onerous partnership was perhaps most accentuated with the firing of Ben Mintz after he uttered a racial slur during a live stream. Penn Entertainment demanded he be let go of the company despite Portnoy, Ayers Badan and other high-level Barstool employees believing that he was sincere in his apology.
“We underestimated how punitive the regulatory environment was and how stringent it was going to be,” Ayers Badan said. “Really, at the core, what Barstool is about – entertainment; satire; comedy; opportunistically capturing and creating viral conversations on the internet – that is so antithetical to what a highly regulated industry wants or what the stock market likes, that [Penn] just became a place where this just was not working.”
Portnoy frequently grabs headlines throughout the media for his opinions on topics in and outside of sports. On top of other regulatory challenges, the deal with Penn Entertainment ended up having the opposite effect it intended to. The two sides agreed that a divorce was for the best, allowing Penn to capitalize on a chance to work with ESPN and take advantage of its portfolio of live sports rights.
“Everyone is all focused with their mouths hanging open over what Dave Portnoy’s doing,” Ayers Badan said, “and I’m over here building a business.”
The profile, which is authored by Emily Jane Fox, details how the cameras are always on throughout the Barstool Sports offices in New York City in order to capture content. Throughout the piece, it is expressed how Ayers Badan truly cares about all of the platform’s 95 personalities and the future of the brand, which is currently estimated as reaching one-third of people between the ages of 18 and 34. She is ready to lead the company into the future as it moves on from their collaboration with and ownership by Penn Entertainment.
“I’m so psyched for Penn and ESPN,” Ayers Badan said. “I think they’ll be a great match for all the reasons we weren’t. Now this can go back to what made it so genius, which is being comfortable on the edge of something.”
