By 

Annie Goldsmith

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Sep 16, 2022, 10:30am PDT

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The Barstool Sports offices are heard before they are seen. Raucous cheers and hollering permeate the elevator bank inside its Manhattan headquarters—the sound of an ever-rowdy 400-employee media company revving up for the day.

Located on the second floor of a nondescript building a few blocks from Penn Station, the offices are not as glossy as the standard New York publisher’s. Turning into the waiting area, visitors are greeted by oversized tchotchkes: a giant golden hamburger, a comically large golf ball and a life-size cardboard cutout of a shirtless muscle man with CEO Erika Nardini’s face plastered over his head. “Stoolie” insignia is everywhere.

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The real-life Erika Nardini—clothed in a sharp blazer, sleeves rolled up to reveal her tattoos—presides in her office, just off the vestibule. She’s in her seventh year running Barstool, acting as the company’s steady business brain alongside its tempestuous founder, Dave Portnoy. During her tenure, Nardini has shepherded the company through both enormous growth and withering controversy, culminating in a $550 million acquisition by casino and racetrack company Penn Entertainment (formerly Penn National Gaming) that will finalize in early 2023. Portnoy and Nardini each received 45% cash and 55% Penn stock for their shares in the sale of Barstool.

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One of the few women to helm a sports media company, Nardini has been integral to the company’s success, according to The Chernin Group partner Mike Kerns, whose firm sold its majority stake in Barstool to Penn. “Of all the players involved—Dave, TCG, Erika, the rest of the management team, leadership, etc.—I think that Erika deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the growth of Barstool. Full stop,” he said.

But along the way, Nardini has also been forced to reckon with a founder, and a Stoolie community, that is fierce in its passions and unchecked in its actions. By choice and circumstance, she’s become the designated grownup inside Portnoy’s digital “Animal House.” And while she’s not usually the one committing unsavory acts, she’s also not here to kill the buzz. “People are passionate about Barstool,” she said. “Most of them are rational people. We have assholes and trolls too. This is the nature of the internet.”

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In the 20 years since Portnoy founded Barstool as a free Boston-based print newspaper detailing his obsessions with the Red Sox, gambling and fantasy football, the company has risen in the image of its provocateur founder. But as it has grown, it has also taken on the organized, strong-willed pragmatism of its CEO, Nardini. No longer just a beer-addled sports blog, Barstool has expanded its interests into pop culture, music and, notably, sex from a woman’s perspective, having been the original home for Alexandra Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast before she left in a $60 million deal with Spotify.

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Today, the typical Barstool tone ranges from harmless levity (how bacon is becoming “like lettuce”) to snarky pop-culture riffs (“King Charles Has Been in Charge for Less Than a Week and He's Already Acting Like a Whiny Little Bitch”) to barely concealed misogyny and racism (recurring series like “Guess That Ass” and “#TwerkTuesday” focused on women’s rear ends, and Portnoy saying on air that Colin Kaepernick “looks like Bin Laden”).

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It’s a mixed and sometimes tasteless buffet, and there appears to be an insatiable appetite for it, primarily among the core Stoolie demographic: men, and a growing number of women, between the ages of 18 and 34. The company now claims 172 million social media followers, 2 billion monthly video views and 40 million monthly podcast downloads across more than 90 shows.

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It’s also engaged in a slew of other business endeavors, like merchandise, live events and now an aggressive push toward sports betting. According to Penn CEO Jay Snowden, Barstool’s revenue at the end of last year was around $200 million, double what it was two years ago. (Per Barstool, that figure also represents 3,650% growth over the past six years). Penn’s separate interactive gaming division also reported $155 million in revenue last quarter, most of which derived from online casino businesses like the Barstool Sportsbook.

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However, it’s hard to talk about Barstool without acknowledging the dark cloud of controversy that seems to follow it, morphing into new shapes every few months. Again and again, Nardini and the new bosses at Penn Entertainment have found themselves playing defense, fending off swarms of accusations about company culture and Portnoy himself.

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Top of mind is a series of Business Insider stories published beginning in November 2021, accusing Portnoy of sexual misconduct. In the articles, three women alleged they had met Portnoy for sex “that began consensually but during the course of the encounters turned violent and humiliating in a manner they wouldn’t have agreed to if he’d asked.” Two of the women also alleged that Portnoy filmed them without their consent. Earlier this year, the publication published a second story in which three more women alleged that Portnoy filmed them during sex without their consent. (Portnoy and Barstool have denied the claims and are now suing Insider, its CEO Henry Blodget, editor Nicholas Carlson and reporters Julia Black and Melkorka Licea for defamation.)

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In the investigation’s aftermath, Penn’s stock dropped about 20%. “Frankly, it really hasn’t recovered much,” said Bernard McTernan, a senior internet analyst at Needham & Co. (Penn shares are down nearly 60% in the past year.) Through it all, Nardini stood behind Portnoy. She released a podcast episode explaining her belief in Portnoy shortly after the accusations came to light. Now, almost a year later, she continues to defend Portnoy and disavow the stories, along with Business Insider itself, calling it a “really shoddy publication.” “I don’t think you think about Business Insider as high journalistic integrity,” she told The Information. “I think it’s rather salacious, to be honest with you, and I don’t think it’s journalism, I think it’s opinion.”

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Regarding the claims against Portnoy, Nardini said she has “zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace” and “zero tolerance for nonconsensual sex.” However, with the sound of bellowing male voices leaching through her thin office doors, she struggled to explain the nuances of the situation. “Dave’s been single for a long time,” she said. “Dave has a lot of women who he’s engaged with on the internet, right? I care that, you know, obviously—let me think—how would I say this to you?”

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She paused, looking away, collecting her thoughts. “I don’t think that it is appropriate for me to judge Dave’s sex life, and that’s really what this becomes a question of—it’s how they had sex. Now, do I like it? Absolutely not. Would it be my choice? No, it wouldn’t. But that said, there aren’t any allegations. We’re not dealing with any accusations.” (A Barstool spokesperson later clarified that Nardini was referring to a lack of any criminal charges against Portnoy.)

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Over and over, Barstool’s controversies have slipped off Nardini like oil off Teflon. Given the company’s monumental growth, she has emerged from the past year looking stronger, and, despite Penn’s sagging stock price, her star within the company only appears to be rising. “It doesn't take very long to grasp that she's a really unique leader and somebody who is going to be successful wherever she is at whatever she's doing,” said Snowden.

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“In the cliché of radiator or drain,” said Kerns, “she’s the ultimate radiator.”

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If the rest of the Barstool Sports office feels like a media-themed sports bar, Nardini’s private workspace is more curated than chaotic. One of the walls is a gallery-style arrangement of posters, with messages like “STRONG TAKES” in all-caps font. Another poster displays a small graphic of a woman paired alongside the phrase “Bitch, it’s cashmere.” By her desk there’s an unopened bottle of Barstool-branded Pink Whitney New Amsterdam vodka, a lemonade-flavored booze collaboration with the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast. By the back window rests an orange Hermès shopping bag the size of a small child.

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Like so many in the Barstool universe, Nardini has her own podcast. It’s called “Token CEO,” and it has given Nardini a public outlet for discussing the goings-on at Barstool and offering career advice. “Token CEO is raw and candid—just like its host,” reads the Spotify description. Despite the fanfare, Nardini said she never envisioned herself becoming a public figure alongside the podcasting talent she hires. “I never wanted to be public. I was a marketing wonk,” she said. “It’s certainly something that just comes along with working here, which is the expectation by the fans that they’re going to know you.”

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Nardini’s “wonk” years were spent at Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, Yahoo, Demand Media, and finally AOL, where she served as chief marketing officer from 2013 to 2015, just before Verizon Communications acquired it for $4.4 billion. Afterward she was president and chief revenue officer of startup Bkstg, which aimed to help musicians connect directly with their top fans. Mark Cuban, Scott “Scooter” Braun and Lerer Hippeau, among others, backed the company, which raised about $20 million, per PitchBook. Both Nardini and CEO Ran Harnevo left the company in 2016, and Bkstg shut down in February 2019.

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When Nardini joined Barstool in July 2016, the company had about 12 employees, 10 of whom produced content, mostly in blog form. Nardini has often said the company considered more than 70 other CEO candidates, all of them male, before settling on her. The headlines announcing her hire all focused on her femaleness, a well-timed counterpoint to the dominant media narrative of Barstool as a frat bro playground. “Erika Nardini, Ex-CMO of AOL, Joins Dude-Focused Barstool Sports as CEO,” blared Variety. “Barstool Sports Names New CEO and It’s Not Who You’d Expect,” announced Forbes.

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Of Nardini, Portnoy said simply in a statement, “Erika is the best hire I made in 20 years doing Barstool.”

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From the start, Nardini has been threading a difficult needle—she often discusses her role as a female CEO in sports media while also pushing back against the notion that her gender has made a difference in her job. The name of her podcast, “Token CEO,” is a play on the idea that Nardini is a “token” woman at Barstool. But, while Nardini often urges audiences to look beyond her sex, it’s hard to ignore the fact that a female CEO has to constantly clean up the messes left by the men in her company.

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It’s not just about Portnoy either; there have been accusations of inappropriate comments, misogyny and racism in the workplace. (The non-profit watchdog Media Matters put together an extensive timeline here.) Just last month, The Daily Beast reported that the company “apparently rehired Francis Ellis, the blogger who was fired in 2019 after publishing a story mocking Mackenzie Lueck, a Utah college student who’d been missing for more than 10 days and was later found dead.”

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Nardini is steadfast in her belief that Barstool is a positive and healthy place to work. “The thing I love about Barstool is we never profess to be perfect and we never professed to have it all figured out or to have the right way of doing things,” she said. “We didn’t play by anyone else’s rules. We didn’t buy into what the quote-unquote media establishment said for how you were supposed to do things.”

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Nardini believes that what keeps Barstool relevant—and inspires its voracious fan base—is its sixth sense for talent. Throughout Nardini’s tenure, Barstool has made stars, sometimes losing them to rivals, only to elevate others in their place. Exit Alexandra Cooper, enter Brianna LaPaglia, who started as a Barstool intern and now hosts multiple podcasts, sharing them with her 1.5 million TikTok followers. Out goes former MLB pitcher Dallas Braden, host of the podcast “Starting Nine,” and in comes Jake Arrieta, a former Cy Young winner.

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The star-centered philosophy begins with Portnoy himself—a figure whose fan loyalty can only be compared to that of Elon Musk or Joe Rogan (or even Donald Trump). For better or worse, the Stoolies deify “El Presidente” and will follow him to the ends of the earth (or, more realistically, to New York pizza parlors). The Barstool brand rests on Portnoy’s larger-than-life presence even though the machinery doesn’t operate without Nardini. Said Kerns: Nardini “embraced the radical authenticity of the brand”—an unabashedness seeded by Portnoy, but grown by Nardini.

Nardini speaks onstage at the 2022 SXSW Conference. Photo Getty Images.

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As its power has grown, Barstool has become a cult of personalities, one that expects every member of the team (including Nardini herself) to become public personas with opinions on everything. Nardini’s philosophy for assembling talent is simple—she never looks to fill gaps in coverage or chase a different audience, instead basing hiring almost exclusively on personality. She asks herself, “Does this person have something to say? Are they confident and authentic and can they sustain it? Those types of people are actually quite rare. What they talk about is secondary.”

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Kayce Smith, who is a sports commentator at Barstool, is one such personality. Portnoy discovered Smith while she was on air at NBC Sports Boston in 2017. After he brought her to the Barstool offices and had her meet with Nardini, Smith signed a contract on the spot. “My experience here has been complete freedom to be who I am without being put into a box of what someone thinks I should be,” she said. “That’s been very different from anything that I experienced at network TV.”

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The unfiltered nature of many of Barstool’s content creators is, of course, all part of the point. Polished, manicured personas don’t drive clicks. “I don’t think Barstool is particularly controversial in our own right; I think we have a bunch of personalities who have a lot of very hot takes,” Nardini reasoned. “Controversy has as much to do with the culture as it does with the company. It’s what’s happening in the zeitgeist at the time.”

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It’s the zeitgeist-iness of Barstool—both its wokeness-defying tone and the way it provokes its unfailingly loyal audience—that appealed to Penn Entertainment. The company, known as Penn National Gaming until last month, bought a 36% stake in Barstool for $161.2 million in 2020. Penn will complete the purchase of the remaining Barstool shares by February 2023, for a total of $550 million. The acquisition will allow Barstool to grow in the sports gambling marketplace while giving Penn access to a younger audience.

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Investor, Metromile founder and “All-In” podcast co-host David Friedberg recently called the Penn purchase of Barstool “the most important M&A deal of 2022.” He told The Information, “It’ll be looked at somewhat historically as one of the first content deals by a truly noncontent business to really drive audience, adoption and marketing.”

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Friedberg compared Barstool’s influence to that of YouTube star MrBeast and Joe Rogan. Indeed, like those modern-day web icons, Nardini has expanded the Barstool brand from that of a siloed niche publisher to a sprawling media empire. She’s built up the company’s merchandising and advertising businesses, alongside licensing and live touring, and fostered partnerships with what she calls “recession-proof” ad categories, like alcohol.

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“Despite the recession, despite the headwinds, one reason that I feel bullish is there’s not a lot of places anymore for a brand to achieve influence with a consumer,” she said. “You can run as many programmatic ads as you want, you can create as many radio spots or video spots or pre-roll as you need, but to really break through with a consumer, you need to have something that people can hang on to, and we do that better than anybody.”

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But for all the bullishness, Portnoy’s drag on the company persists—and not just on Penn’s stock price. Penn CEO Snowden has vocally and vehemently stood by Portnoy throughout the sexual misconduct allegations. “[Portnoy] has said he’s innocent. I have never known him to be anything other than honest and transparent and truthful,” Snowden said. He continues to defend the Barstool founder in inquiries from gambling regulators in two states. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the accusations prompted an investigation by the Nevada Gaming Control Board and a review by the Indiana Gaming Commission. (“Penn provided a written response to the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s questions and is not aware of any outstanding requests for information,” wrote a Barstool spokesperson. “In the case of Indiana, there are no outstanding requests for information that we are aware of there regarding this matter.”)

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The company’s leadership has not just closed ranks around Portnoy—they insist the allegations have only heightened their loyalty to him. “We talked every day, as you can imagine, multiple times a day,” Snowden said of the period after the Business Insider stories broke. “And, ultimately it has brought all of us a lot closer at the end of the day, having gone through something like that.”

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Nardini emphatically denies that the company is hostile to women, pointing the finger back at reporters and media outlets who report about her company or its founder. “It’s the exact same people who will say that this is a bad culture or you know, that Dave’s a misogynist, who say that I’m only here because I’m a woman and that I’m only here because I wear a skirt,” she said. “I find that to be so insanely insulting. To me, it’s a case in point, right? It’s so hypocritical, to be honest with you.”

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Some of the Barstool employees contacted for this story bristled at the allegations related to their workplace. “Being here for as long as I have, I’ve gotten past having to defend it all the time,” said Kayce Smith. “People that like to read salacious headlines and like to assume that one piece of content that they read is the entire story.”

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George Wells, Barstool’s chief financial officer, started working at the company six months ago and often finds himself defending Barstool to his peers. “As a gay black man, obviously, I have friends who are like, ‘You’re working for Barstool? What’s going on?’ And it’s almost like debunking myths,” he said, before admitting that he sort of enjoys the chatter. “If you ever met me in person, I love a little controversy.”

It may be that a love of “controversy” is necessary for employment at Barstool. “Certainly some of the content is not for everyone and maybe all of the content is not for everyone and that’s OK,” said TCG’s Kerns. “To be authentic and to speak your voice, you’re not always going to make everyone happy, and ultimately you’re going to offend some people.”

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“I was not going to come into Barstool Sports and just spend all my time apologizing for everyone that they offended,” Nardini said. “Legitimately, that’s a full-time job.”

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But there’s offending, and then there’s the threats and abuse directed at people who have publicly challenged Barstool about Portnoy’s personal and professional conduct. Reporters from Business Insider, Deadspin, The Daily Beast and ESPN have all faced a variety of personal attacks, including death and rape threats and doxxing, after they published unflattering details about the Barstool founder. Portnoy has repeatedly responded to media stories by unleashing the full fury of his audience on media members themselves. (One of Portnoy’s recurring commands to his followers is simply, “Attack!”) After ESPN’s Samantha Ponder criticized Barstool on an  Instagram Story in 2018, Portnoy wrote, “Not only is she a dishonest scumbag, but she is so insane she thinks she [can] lie like this without being called out for it.”

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When approached for this story, several journalists who’ve been on Portnoy’s revolving “Enemies List” either didn’t respond or declined to speak on the record. “There’s no upside” to talking about Portnoy, said one reporter, who didn’t want to risk inflaming Barstool fans. The reporter cited the inevitable avalanche of online harassment following criticism of Barstool and noted that their experience was not unusual—a 2019 story in The Daily Beast outlined a number of accusations of harassment from predominantly female sportswriters.

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Wrote Nardini in an email response to these assertions by journalists, “We are in an era of cancellation by headline. Opinions elicit reactions. Reactions drive page views. I don’t believe in harassment for opinions. But I also don’t believe in journalism couched as opinion.”

But that doesn’t quite account for the harassment from Portnoy himself. As reported by The Post, after the first Insider story was published in 2021, Portnoy posted a video on Twitter where he pantomimed hitting the Insider CEO and co-founder Blodget in the head with a mallet, saying, “Your head is going to be on my spike.…I’m coming for his throat and anybody who stands by him’s throat.”

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After the acquisition of Barstool by Penn Entertainment goes through, likely in February 2023, Nardini will report directly to Penn President and CEO Snowden. His message to Nardini is essentially to keep doing what she’s doing while continuing to explore more areas for growth. One possible focus may be attracting more women to the audience—per Barstool, a third of the audience is currently female, a 200% increase from last year. “She is very competitive,” he said of Nardini. “I think a lot of us that work together at Penn and at Barstool share that competitive spirit.”

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Snowden also sees Nardini taking on a greater role in the organization as a whole, as more and more states legalize online gambling and the pool of potential bettors grows. He called her a “very close, important strategic partner of mine and our executive team and our board. She’ll play even more of a role on the strategic side than she does today.”

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From all appearances, little about Barstool is set to change under a new parent company. And, from Nardini’s perspective, why should it? It may not be for everyone, but it’s got rabid fans and solid growth. It shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s lived through the past decade that polarization is good business. But when a company seems to have breezed through scandal after scandal, it begs the question—what, or who, will keep it in check?

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The buck stops with Nardini, and she has set a low bar for what is acceptable at Barstool. “Our work is fun. Our work is dynamic. Our work can be crazy—the people doing the work can be crazy: to your word, controversial; to my word, polarizing,” said Nardini. “But that’s what makes it so interesting.”

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Penn’s Snowden is confident that with Nardini and Portnoy at the helm, he’ll be happy with his acquisition. His long-term objective for the company: “For Barstool to be Barstool.”

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Annie Goldsmith is a New York-based reporter covering culture for The Information’s Weekend section. She can be reached at annie@theinformation.com or on Twitter at @annie_goldsmith.

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