The digital media world evolves and shifts so quickly, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has never seen himself as a big vision entrepreneur.
Portnoy joined The Will Cain Show this week and was asked if he had a grand vision for Barstool or if he was the kind of businessperson that keeps perpetual motion going until success is struck.
Dave said he was very much the perpetual motion type. With so much happening so quickly online and in the world of social media, it was hard to develop a grand vision for what to expect.
“In my world, we started as a newspaper, and then the internet wasn’t really humming so there was no way to predict it,” Portnoy said.
Not tethering the company to one thing or a small handful of things has allowed Barstool to succeed, grow, and sustain in Portnoy’s eyes.
“The biggest advantage, there’s a bunch of things. Right place, right time, right guy. But we’ve been nimble. Just nimble,” he said. “We’re not stuck in our ways. And a lot of networks that we competed against are the opposite. They’re stuck in their ways, old school, older.”
“I like to say we’re one of the first true digital media companies, and we’ve just reacted quickly and been able to maneuver,” he added. “I think people ask me, what is the best compliment you can give to Barstool Sports. We’ve managed to stay cutting-edge cool, if you want to say it, for 20 years. Very hard to do for a media company. Eventually, you get stale, get old and the next new guy comes. Maybe thanks to Roger Goodell, thanks to whoever, we’ve managed to stay cool.”
While being able to ride the social media and internet media wave, Dave Portnoy did admit he hasn’t always had the exact formula for success. But it’s all about trusting in the people around him to come up with something or find something, make it work and then milk it for what it’s worth.
“I never thought podcasting would be big,” Portnoy said. “I made fun of our guys doing it early. Good for us they kept doing it, and it exploded. So I’m not the end all be all with knowing what works. We also give our talent a ton of freedom.”
“It’s just finding talent and letting them go nuts,” he added.
