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SPEAKER_03: slash twist. Hey everybody. Welcome to This Week in Startups. We've got an incredible guest.

SPEAKER_05: You know him as El Presidente. Everybody knows the rules. One slice. Stonks only go up. Dave Portnoy is the founder of Barstool Sports, which he has been building for two decades. It's another overnight success. 20 years in the making. A great, great entrepreneur. And an amazing ability to get attention, Dave. You've been able to just absolutely crush it the last year or two in terms of getting attention for the brand. But I've been watching you over these 20 years. What was the origin story of Barstool? I know it was like a zine or kind of a zine or something?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah. It was a newspaper. It was a newspaper. So it was like a four page and then slowly to eight.

SPEAKER_11: Basically gambling rag. It was fantasy sports and things of that nature. Black and white. I used to hand it out outside of like subway stations outside of Boston. We had news racks. So it was a

SPEAKER_12: free newspaper is what it started as. A really a gambling rag. And it's really interesting because

SPEAKER_05: people now don't know about the 90s and into the 2000s. When you wanted to be an entrepreneur and you wanted to get the word out, the internet was still pretty nascent. And zines, photocopied magazines were kind of how you started on entrepreneurship. I started Silicon Valley Reporter in the 90s. You started this. The source was kind of like a zine. Paper magazine was a zine. And you actually went and handed these out personally because you didn't have any distribution.

SPEAKER_18: Right. Yeah. And we weren't even online. It was it was purely like a physical publication.

SPEAKER_11: So, you know, I was interested in the gambling industry. I flew out to Vegas. I met with casinos, different companies trying to get involved in the industry. And they're all like, well, you got to be a dealer first. And I didn't want to do that. I had been working a job for four or five years at a college sales job. So but they did say at the time, which is like early 2000s, the internet was so cluttered. Like if you went to a gambling website, you'd see fireworks and spam ads. It looked like you were getting your credit card information stolen. So they actually wanted to

SPEAKER_21: move offline into a physical newspaper. So that's why I came up with that concept. Our early advertisers were like party poker. Online poker was just starting then. And some offshore like gambling

SPEAKER_12: companies. So that was the genesis of it. Yeah. And back then there was this massive

SPEAKER_15: poker revolution going on. People don't know, but it was basically up until Preet Bharara, the attorney general of New York, he just shut all the sites down that one Friday, the Black Friday,

SPEAKER_08: and all the revenue from that advertising, which was pouring out all over the internet was gone.

SPEAKER_12: Yeah. So I actually flew out to Vegas. Our first advertiser was party poker. It was the year

SPEAKER_11: Chris Moneymaker one that ushered in sort of the revolution. But I was with like the Indian software developers who like made the game. So yeah, they, I remember it was like a $20,000 like year long

SPEAKER_03: contract was our first deal with them. And at some point you start building an online presence and it

David Friedberg: becomes more like a blog and it gets a lot more attention. Yeah. So it wasn't intentional.

SPEAKER_11: You know, I used to hand the newspapers out and people would like it in the Boston area. And I met a guy who used to take the newspaper and he was moving from Boston to New York. He's like, I love reading it. It's not online. If I build you a website, would you use it? And I was like, yeah, knock yourself out if you're going to do it for free. His name was Ian White. He ended up being the CTO for business insider down the road. So smart guy. Um, and one of, you know, many breaks along the way that helped, but once he built the website, I was like, Oh, I can just type in stuff daily. Like, and we really kind of became a blog at the time. If you're like, Hey, we're blog. People are like, what is blogging? Like no one knew what it was, but that, that quickly was a way for us to grow faster than the newspaper, which had the physical distribution. And obviously the more you print, the more costs and you need everything, the website,

SPEAKER_33: we could reach people faster, easier, and cheaper than we ever could before.

SPEAKER_08: And the common thread was you're a gambler. You like to place bets. You like action.

SPEAKER_15: What was the first moment in your life? Do you remember your first bet? Were you doing football cheats in high school? Did you, were you, were you throwing shoes against the wall and doing dice

SPEAKER_37: in middle school? I remember like betting a dollar on the Patriots, like in the 85 Superbowl versus the

SPEAKER_12: Bears. So at that age, I'm eight years old. I was a huge Patriot fan. They were down,

SPEAKER_11: down like 30 to nothing at halftime. And I actually bet at halftime, they come back and win.

SPEAKER_12: They ended up losing by like a gazillion, but that I think was the first. You lost by 50. Yeah, no, they got hammered. It was 55 to 10.

SPEAKER_40: So that was your first taste of action, eight years old.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I, I always, my dad would take me to horse racing when I was a kid. So I, I always enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_42: Yeah. That's a, a day at the track is amazing. Like if you can make a day out of it.

SPEAKER_43: Yep. And I still love it. I love horse racing. I'm still heavily involved in it.

SPEAKER_44: Yes. And we used to go out to Santa Anita track and I grew up in Brooklyn, but when I lived in LA

SPEAKER_15: for a while, we go to Santa Anita. What a day that is, man. Beautiful track. You better all nine, 10 races. A great day out. But then podcasting video comes out and your personality starts to really blossom online and you start being like a page view machine. When did that happen? When you started realizing audio video was like going to be a key driver. You know, it, I had become

SPEAKER_11: well known and well like entrenched in Boston and like podcasting probably. So we started 2004 around 2010, maybe it wasn't even me. It was one of our guys, Kevin Clancy, who had a podcast and, and he was talking about, I really didn't know what it was. I'm like, yeah, do it. I didn't never saw, to be honest, the future in it. He did it. It went well. And then, um, we had part of my take, which was another one of our employees, Dan Katz did it with PFD commentator and that exploded. And then we started seeing, you know, Oh, there's, there's money to be made here. And we really did more, but I personally haven't done much with podcasts. Our company has, it's a huge podcast company and we're good at identifying talent and we have a huge network and it resonates with our demo

SPEAKER_21: and it resonates across all like skews, you know, Caller Daddy is like the number one female podcast, part of my take, which we have is number one, uh, sports podcast. You have the number one golf podcast for play. Um, so we have a lot, but I personally, in terms of people recognizing me

SPEAKER_15: through podcasts, hasn't really been that. Why do you, why do you think podcasting became so addicting and so, uh, it just, why do you think it broke out? I mean, blogs were pretty obvious. It was so cheap to do. You don't have any editors. You can be up to the minute,

SPEAKER_51: but what do you think it was about podcasts? I mean, I think it's a lot the same. It, it, you know, when I started, it's always like there was a barrier to entry. Like I remember the local

SPEAKER_11: radio stations, they kind of thumb their nose on bloggers. It's like, Oh, bloggers in their basement, but it didn't matter how talented you were. You may, if you don't get the right opportunity, you're kind of stuck. There's no way to, to get your voice out. And, you know, like Bill Simmons is an example of that. He couldn't get a job in Boston. It's like, obviously a super talented guy, but if nobody gives you the opportunity, what do you do? Well, somebody like me or a lot of people, it's like, you know what? No one's going to give me an opportunity. I'm going to create my own. And if I'm talented enough, work hard enough, I'll be able to create an audience. It's really no different than podcasting. It's not expensive. And if you're talented and you have the motivation, you can do it. And if you're really good,

SPEAKER_14: you can find audience. And there seems to be some real significance to doing it consistently and

SPEAKER_15: showing up every day. That is the key, isn't it? Like, if you just don't stop doing it,

SPEAKER_37: you build an audience. Yeah. Like, you know, the number one thing, which I always, I don't want to

SPEAKER_11: say bothers me, but everybody who sends me resumes and we get a gazillion of them, as you can imagine, because like kind of a fun looking company on the outside, we cover sports, girls, girls cover guys. So like, if you can't throw a baseball 97 miles per hour, what's the next best thing? Like here would seemingly be it. But people send resumes. I'm perfect. I want to work here. I'm made out. Give me a chance. Like, yet they've done nothing. It's like, you don't need me.

SPEAKER_15: It makes no sense, right? Like, it'd be so impressive if the person just did 100 days of blogging and said, hey, I'm a big fan. For the last 100 days, I wrote 100 blog posts on the NBA, on, you know, movies from the 90s. Here's my resume. Here's my body of work as opposed to

SPEAKER_60: a resume. But young people are so dumb, they don't do any work. It's crazy. I don't even look

SPEAKER_11: at the resume. And the people that we've ended up hiring have been much more of the unique ways to get my attention, whether it's creating content. But I've always said the beauty of now, you don't need like whatever you're saying you can do with us, you can do without us. You don't need us to do it, do it. So yeah, they are idiotic in that regard. We preach it. It's like just sending

SPEAKER_62: emails saying you're perfect and you're born for this does nothing.

SPEAKER_64: Well, you guys know all about Masterworks. If you don't, it's the first company that allows

SPEAKER_66: any type of investor, whether you're retail or accredited, to gain exposure into the blue chip artwork asset class. I had the founder and CEO, Scott Lynn, on the program. Back in July, it was episode 1087. Now I had one question that I wanted to answer during the podcast with Scott Lynn, which was, what are the signals that a young artist is going to break out and maybe

SPEAKER_67: appreciate? How do you know that? Because that's what I do with startups. Well, here's his answer.

SPEAKER_68: What gallery represents the artist? So mega galleries tend to influence artists' careers in a huge way. We look at what institutions own an individual artist. So the more institutional support an artist has, we like to think the more sustainable that that artist market or their artist career is. Then we also look at who else is collecting that artist. So are major influential collectors buying that artist? And those are the three things that are early signals that help understand

SPEAKER_66: where an artist career could go. What an amazing clip. Bottom line, you can diversify your portfolio by investing in an asset class that is not correlated with the stock market. And there are 25,000 people on the waitlist for masterworks.io. But if you use the promo code TWIST, T-W-I-S-T, boom, you get to skip the waitlist. So go ahead and visit masterworks.io and use the promo code TWIST. There's a bunch of disclaimers you need to read at masterworks.io slash disclaimer. If you want to check out the full episode, search for episode 1087. Scott Lynn, L-Y-N-N, on This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_15: And you have been exceptional at scouting talent, I guess, and keeping talent as well. That's the hard thing, I guess, if they break out. You had that little kerfluffle with Call Her Daddy. Two really talented hosts. They obviously are just super authentic and just crushing it. And then one of them's boyfriend decides they're going to roll you and they're going to hold a gun

SPEAKER_05: to your head. And you broke the backstabbers. I mean, this is the greatest story ever. I love this hardcore shit where they tried to roll you. They tried to stab you in the back and then you flipped one of them. Tell the story of the Call Her Daddy, like literally trying to like, they made it, they tried to kill the king. You come for the king, you got to kill him. You can't come in halfway,

SPEAKER_09: right? Yeah, that was, uh, that was an interesting thing. And, you know, if they stayed united,

SPEAKER_11: it would have been an ugly scene. Um, and it would have been a, he said, she said, in their crowd, which was gigantic, would not have believed anything I said, even though we did have some of the receipts, but it's, um, as you grow a common thing and I'm sure I'm not the first I've used the athlete analogy of a player. You know, if you sign a contract with the Red Sox, you can't just be like, Oh, I hit 50 home runs at all. So I break. I'm going to go play for the Yankees because they'll offer me more, but it's no different. You, a lot, I feel like what we dealt with, which is they were unknown talent that we found. We paid them more probably than anybody else in the world would have at that time. And they exploded more than I thought, more than they thought. And quickly it's like, wait a minute, if we weren't with these guys, we could be making a shit ton more. And they could have, they definitely could have, but that's what we want for every home run we have. There's 10 that don't. That's how a company like us work. It's very much, you always hear like band disputes, like, you know, someone hits it. It's like now they don't like their label suddenly, even though they're probably over the moon when they signed that contract. So it is not a new phenomenon, but, and ironically for me, I'm always in a weird spot because I'm, I'm negotiating as management, but I'm also kind of talent. So it's like, well, if we're going to pay you that, that puts me actually in a stronger position, but I generally go from the management side of it and there, and really the fair, like what, what I didn't

SPEAKER_54: get in the whole call or daddy, they went from nobody's to, they were each going to be multi, multi millionaires. If they just make it like a million dollars a year. And then one of them,

SPEAKER_15: Sophia, her boyfriend over at HBO is like, you're getting screwed, even though they're getting the bulk of the revenue and they're under contract and you were willing to up their deal. So you were

SPEAKER_05: being completely reasonable. You even gave them a path to owning the IP, which I thought was crazy.

SPEAKER_15: I would have never given that. I would have given like, Hey, we'll do a three-way split for the IP

SPEAKER_11: if you put in two more years, that's it. Yeah. And, and, and again, they kind of held us, they had, it was an interesting situation because it was COVID and they're big revenue drivers. And we're trying, you know, save every penny because it's tight. Advertising is disappearing, no fault of our own, but naturally everybody's feeling it. And we have two people basically holding out. And, and, and we also had a situation. We would have ended up in a protracted lawsuit. Fine. They were willing to do that though. They had people, whether it be, as I call them, Superman from HBO, laundry scumbags, they just schooled for a lot, but they were the, where they were going. I'm 99.9% positive, willing to incur the cost of the lawsuit. And again, the bigger thing is the color daddy audience at the time really didn't know who I was. And if they just split and said, Hey, we're getting screwed. And, and told their story, it would have been, like I said, he said, she said, now people who know me know over the course of two decades for better or for worse, I'm pretty honest. Um, but their crowd would have believed

SPEAKER_51: them. And still some I see believe. So Sophia's side of the story, which is insanity.

SPEAKER_15: But you, you went over the top. You were like super candid. You went to the RSS feed. You said, Hey, daddy's here. Yeah, pretty much. And here's, and you've just basically released a pot on their RSS feed. And you're like, Hey, listen, I offered them a half million a year. This is legit cash.

SPEAKER_05: Uh, and I offered them a path to owning it. So dumb. The call hard daddy brand is making millions

SPEAKER_15: of dollars a year for you. They try to screw you when they know you're weak. That's really not cool. Like they're supposed to be on your side. Your guys are running up the hill and you got friendly

SPEAKER_83: fire coming over your head from somebody who you gave the opportunity to no loyalty. Yeah,

SPEAKER_80: Sophia zero loyalty. It was infuriating. And then, you know, again, I, I, I take things personal,

SPEAKER_11: like I know it's very personal, a hundred percent. And then, but from their perspective, which I occasionally try to put, it's like, you know, let's call her daddy going to be relevant

SPEAKER_21: in two years. Um, and if Sophia is like, maybe it won't be, they're trying to hit it right now,

SPEAKER_11: right when they're hot. Now it's not right. It's not fair. We were overly fair with them. I think everyone who's heard this story has been like, Oh my God, what are these girls doing? Alex realized that it's like, this is, we have a great deal. How can we not take it? And then Sophia, um, refused to, so that, you know,

SPEAKER_60: so the deals are on the table simultaneously. One person takes it. One person doesn't. That gives

SPEAKER_15: you the ability because I'll be totally honest. I'm, I don't listen to every episode of it, but I've listened to a couple feel like Alex was carrying the show. I'll be honest. She felt like she was 60, 70% of it. And you know, Sophia was kind of chiming in, but I thought she was the

SPEAKER_11: true talent, but she just took the deal. Yeah. And I mean, they were definitely a team. I, the one thing that Sophia has said, it's like we found them through Alex. Like I didn't even know Sophia existed. And Alex, I mean, Sophia in the beginning was very like cool with that. She's like, yeah, I just came along with Alex. That is kind of the Alex's deal. I'm just here because Alex brought me. That's really how it was in the beginning. When it exploded, it became way more of a team and we, and they became like equal partners. So anything other than that is revisionist history. The only thing that makes sense on why Sophia didn't take the deal at the time is because her boyfriend, I don't know if they're still dating or what, was shopping them around. And it became like kind of mixing business and pleasure type thing.

SPEAKER_05: I mean, this is basically tampering though. They're under contract with you. This guy's going out and trying to get a better deal from Wondery, then getting them to back the

SPEAKER_15: lawsuit or whatever, to try to get them free. This is like NBA players who are like, James Harden's like, I'm going to the club. I'm not showing up for practice. Like you're under contract.

SPEAKER_99: It was 100% tampering. And that's why I think it would have gotten really ugly because I think

SPEAKER_11: there would have been a lot of accusations and lies thrown around about what forced them to leave.

SPEAKER_05: That would have been wildly untrue. I mean, the other thing that's crazy is they know you're a crazy gambler. You're a principled person. Like, I mean, are they not paying attention to the fact

SPEAKER_66: that you would rather have the entire ship burned down than get screwed? Right? I mean, that's my

SPEAKER_11: perception of you. That is a great question. And I always said, once this started going down, it's like, I want to be in the room with this HBO guy suit, man. Like, does I got the impression that he was the most arrogant human of all time and maybe thought I was dumb or an idiot. And I don't want to say didn't know who he was dealing with necessarily. And I don't even mean that like I'm some super genius, but what you just said, you're dealing with a very, somebody who I think is very straightforward, very honest in business, but it feels he's been fucked over will be as vindictive and spiteful as anybody. That's just my nature. It's been that I've said that I have champagne bottles on my desk with people who I feel have crossed. You're also like a Boston guy, like

SPEAKER_05: growing up in Brooklyn, like we, we didn't care who we got in a fight with, but getting in a fight with a group of guys from Boston. I mean, that's just going to be chaos. I mean, these are guys who

SPEAKER_37: do not stop. You're right. And that's a fair description. And what you just said, I would much

SPEAKER_11: rather the entire ship burn and I drown with it. Then everybody gets off the ship and survives.

SPEAKER_109: Yes. I can't steal from you. You can't steal the ship ship's going down. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_05: A hundred percent. I'm watching this. I, I'm thinking to myself, if this is a made up controversy, Dave Portnoy is an even bigger genius than I think he is. But I was like, this can't possibly

SPEAKER_66: be, it's too fantastic. It's not a put on, right? This only shit just went down. It's not a PR strategy

SPEAKER_18: to create drama. I've heard that about a bunch of stuff. This being whatever, like that where it's

SPEAKER_11: a work, it's a W it isn't, we don't do that. You know, a lot of the controversies we end up in, I there, I have no idea that they're going to happen. They're not planned out. Um, but we always seem to be in the mud somehow one way or the other. Uh, and I think a lot of it is, I don't mind it. Like I don't get uncomfortable around controversy. I kind of embrace it. And a part of me enjoys it. Like my heart gets going. It's like, all right, this is, this is why I'm doing this stuff. So, um, no, there was, it was as authentic. I mean, how could it not be? You have Sophia

SPEAKER_51: is off on her own. We have Alex. So it, it, the results clearly show it was true.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah. And I'm sure like, then you came over the top. I love that. The first episode you do when you bring it back is Miley Cyrus. I mean, that was like a super flex dunk. I mean, yeah, we're bringing it back and we're bringing Miley Cyrus on to talk about

SPEAKER_119: hardcore, like, you know, sex stuff. And she's more than willing to talk about her sex life on

SPEAKER_11: the pod. Yeah. And Alex has been great. I mean, the, the pod is killing it. It's never been more popular. She's never selling more merch. Um, so, you know, she came out smelling like roses and it's

SPEAKER_123: been actually probably better for us. Did she get ownership of it down the road or you gave her

SPEAKER_11: some equity in it? We're, we're splitting it. So like if she leaves, um, which I, hopefully we can renew her contract. She's happy. Um, but if she does go down, we now are partners

SPEAKER_05: in it moving forward. That's fantastic. That's the, I mean, everybody wins in that. So you raised

SPEAKER_15: money at some point, uh, from, uh, who churning, right? Like churning group. Yep. Yeah. And churning's like a former media guy. He was Rupert Murdoch's guy. He made a fund. They gave you a low Paul offer,

SPEAKER_80: 12 million, $12 million. Yeah. Well, the original offer was seven and a half million. Then it went up to 12. They valued at 12 and a half. So this was 2016. Yeah. So, and you at the time have a

SPEAKER_42: couple of million in revenue, but you're throwing off a million in cash profits consistently. Yeah.

SPEAKER_11: At least I think it was making a million or 2 million profit. I mean, I, we ran a very tight ship. Like, you know, there was nothing extra. There was no extravagance in hindsight. Like I wasn't really outside of, we built the company. I wasn't a business school guy. I didn't ever really anticipate taking investment. So I didn't know how we get valued, but I didn't care about our revenue. I cared

SPEAKER_21: about our profit. So if I went back in time, knowing what I know now, I could, I could juiced our

SPEAKER_11: revenue a lot, but I just didn't because, you know, I was only concerned about the bottom line.

SPEAKER_15: That was my salary. Basically media is like the hardest business you could ever do. You got somebody to invest in it. And then I think the brilliance of what you've done is not only did you take the opportunity of the blogs, you took the opportunity of

SPEAKER_66: podcasting, but you actually saw pretty clearly that wagering gambling is going to become more normalized in the United States. It's going to become more like Australia or the UK, where you go

SPEAKER_135: into a bar, you can place a bet from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics. Squarespace is the all in one platform for you. Yes, you to build a beautiful online presence and run

SPEAKER_66: your business flawlessly. Obviously you can blog and publish content. You know that Squarespace been doing that forever, but you can promote your business and announce upcoming events or special projects. You can sell products and services free and secure hosting 24 seven award-winning support. And they even have domain names. You can register there. And we decided in the spring, I was like, you know what? I want to help startups who are struggling. I'm going to set up this remote demo day.com site. Boom. I told my team, I want it up tonight. We set up the Squarespace and that was the easiest part of it. It took us longer to write the copy and do the images than it did to set up the website. And so far, remote demo day.com has been a huge hit. We've invested in six of the companies and you know what a brand you can trust is Squarespace. And I've trusted them for I think a decade now, and they've been involved in this podcast for close to a decade, longest running partner of the podcast. And I love them for it. Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, please remember to use that offer code twist and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thanks again to Squarespace for supporting this week in startups and being our longest running supporter. You can, on your Twitter, just say, thanks, Squarespace. Thanks at Squarespace for supporting at TWI startups. Let's get back to this amazing

SPEAKER_67: episode. When did you realize that that was going to be the path forward or was that just, they came

SPEAKER_37: to you and once, you know, turn and I think saw that more than I did before I, before I did,

SPEAKER_11: because that's always, and we kind of, he wanted Mike Kearns, who was the guy who was really the mastermind behind the original deal, was very gambling focused. I wasn't as much. I knew because it was illegal. Now, when the law changed, the second the law changed, I went to Erica, our CEO, and like, this is it. This is the moment for us. And we shifted 100% back into it. But I didn't know

SPEAKER_142: that law was going to change anytime soon. See, this is the interesting thing. It's an important

SPEAKER_66: lesson for, we got a lot of founders who listened to the pod. If you stay alive long enough, opportunities occur that you did not anticipate when you started the company. But if you're just hardworking, you run the business reasonably like you did for profit, you're not in debt, you control your destiny. Something like podcasting can change your destiny. Something like blogs. And then of course, this, you know, I don't know, the Supreme Court said in 2018, you could do wagering, what they call it, PASPA, whatever that act was. And it is amazing to me that the NBA, the league that was plagued by betting scandals

SPEAKER_15: from Michael Jordan, potentially having to retire because of that, I don't know if you think that's true or not, to Donahue, Tim Donahue, the crooked ref who was, he was doing the over-under, right? He wasn't fixing, he was fixing, not the winner of the game, but it was the over-unders.

SPEAKER_133: I forget. I just knew him as fixing games.

SPEAKER_15: He was fixing games. So they, all of a sudden, Adam Silver's like, we think wagering, in-game wagering is totally cool.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, he was at the forefront of that. And what you said, my dad, you saw always say that, but it's like his, which is, it's not his expression, but if your oars are in the water, at least you have a chance.

SPEAKER_26: What does it mean, your oars are in the water?

SPEAKER_147: Like, if your oars, it's what you just said.

SPEAKER_15: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, in terms of the business, right. Yeah, right. Yeah. No matter how bad the storm is, if you got your oars in the water, you got some control of this boat. That's a great line.

SPEAKER_11: And you don't know what's coming down the pike. You're there to take advantage, basically.

SPEAKER_44: What did your dad do? I'm curious.

SPEAKER_11: My attorney.

SPEAKER_44: He was an attorney. What kind of load did he practice? Corporate?

SPEAKER_99: No, he was like- Estate? Collection lawyer, basically. I don't know. He worked out of my basement.

SPEAKER_11: He wasn't some huge law firm, I'll say that.

SPEAKER_44: Yeah. And now, what's his take on your incredible success now?

SPEAKER_11: I just, you know, it took him a while to get accustomed to it, understand it, but, you know, he's proud, obviously. So, he's, people know him. He's a character in our world.

SPEAKER_24: Yeah. Maybe not intentionally, but he is.

SPEAKER_44: And then, he sees you go, like, have this incredible exit that's got to be mind-blowing for him. You see you take down nine figures. I mean, that's just, that's a big hit.

SPEAKER_11: It's stunning. All of it's stunning. You know, I've been lucky, right person, right place, whatever you may be, but it's been successful, I think, beyond my, beyond my parents, beyond

SPEAKER_156: anybody who kind of was there wildest dreams.

SPEAKER_15: And the humor, the irreverence, the sort of SNL plus sports coverage, or man show plus sports coverage, I don't know how you like to frame it, but I've heard you use the SNL analogy. Yep.

SPEAKER_66: That is the thing that people don't understand about Barstool, that sometimes gets you into hot water, is people think it's ESPN, when they really should be framing it as, hey,

SPEAKER_60: this is like a Comedy Central show covering sports. They're just framing you wrong, correct?

SPEAKER_51: Yes. So we've always said now for a long time, we consider ourselves comedy website, comedy

SPEAKER_11: company more than anything. And I think if you look at it under that light, a lot of the things or controversies we've been in would not be controversial at all, if you think of it from a comedy perspective. So, yes, there's a lot of examples.

SPEAKER_161: They keep trying to cancel you, and they can't cancel you.

SPEAKER_11: Well, and I've said that. The thing about Barstool, it's been around for so long. And yeah, I've always told this story, but I forget somebody, it was either New York Times or Wall Street Journal reporter was doing a story on us. And I don't think the guy liked us, to be honest. He didn't like me, but he has a, at least he came in not liking me. I think he had a perception of what I was and what we were. And there's an article or a quote, it's like a lot of my friends I consider

SPEAKER_21: highly educated, liberal Northeast people. And I asked, do you like Barstool? Do you like Dave? And they're like, yeah, we love it. And then he's like, how can you like this guy's like, well,

SPEAKER_11: we've been reading for 15 years and we know who he is. So again, a lot of the things are people who criticize us. I truly believe they really don't know anything about us. They see a quote, they see an article. And if I read some of the stuff that has been written about me, I'd be like, this guy's Hitler, but there's no context. Well, I mean, if you think about cancel culture,

SPEAKER_15: like it's, it's so selective that you could take something Howard Stern said, or you could take a

SPEAKER_05: bit from South Park, you take out the one sentence, you put it out there and there's no context. And there is no room in this world for any type of comedy. And if you look at, you know, brands that have existed for over 10 years, the Overton windows, it's shut so tight now that if you started 17 years ago, the stuff that you did is going to just

SPEAKER_15: be completely different than the absolute mental breakdown that people are having online

SPEAKER_60: at anybody making a joke that hasn't any way to do with gender or race or class or education or any of that. I mean, you can't make any jokes anymore. And then it's so weird how South Park

SPEAKER_15: is allowed to exist and be completely irreverent. But then something like Barstool makes a joke and we got to try to cancel Dave and shut the company down.

SPEAKER_09: Yeah, it's crazy how that is. I bought another thing. It's like, I feel like sometimes the people don't like me. It's like they act. It's like, if you go to a comedy club, you hear a joke,

SPEAKER_11: you run out to the street, you didn't buy a ticket for the show. You don't like the comedian. You're running to the street, you know, be like, you'll never believe what this guy said, but you don't mention that it was in a comedy show and or any of it. You just say, look what this guy said. So yeah, like the South Park example, I don't, for example, a lot of people hate me, love The Office, the TV show. Michael Scott, obviously the main character of Steve Carell is like, we wouldn't be able to do it now. People would go bananas over it. It is interesting. And I noticed that a lot, how the people don't like me, but then, you know, like Larry David, I once wrote a blog, I'm, I'm, I'm bringing back the word like I, that was a long time ago that I wrote that blog, but there's an entire episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm about that exact, it was after that's funny. But when I wrote it, even though it was meant to be funny, it's like, oh, look at this guy. So

SPEAKER_44: it's just, you know, what are you going to do? It's so weird. It's like, if you go to London, you'll hear the word 50 times, you know, a night when you're out, uh, being said by women, men,

SPEAKER_05: the bartender, everybody. And we're in this very weird moment where people are hurt by words. And they are, I mean, I don't know how much of this has to do with just Twitter,

SPEAKER_15: but you're pretty active on Twitter. My God, people are just so sensitive to anything you say, you get somehow invited to go interview the president, who also is a bit irreverent. And I think part of the reason he got in office, I don't know if you agree, is people kind of looked at him as like the anti-politically correct. Stop telling us we're idiots. We're going to show you liberals. Hey, we, we can be irreverent and not give a shit. Um, how did you wind up the, did like Jared Kushner or Ivanka just text you? How do you wind up

SPEAKER_166: interviewing the president? So I was in Nantucket, it was a Wednesday around probably one,

SPEAKER_21: one o'clock. And one, a guy who works here is like, uh, the president Trump wants you to come interview him in the Rose garden tomorrow. And I actually didn't think it was going to happen. I was like, first of all, I was like, what are you talking about? I don't interview people. Um, what are you talking about? But then a couple of hours went by and they confirmed it like, yeah, they wanted to do it. And he, you know, he was obviously trying to get different demos at that time. So next thing you know, I'm there doing it, even though I've never conducted an interview in my

SPEAKER_15: life. And you did a solid job and you got a suit on, you suited up. Yeah. Did you have the suit already in the closet or did you have to just make like a run to men's warehouse?

SPEAKER_171: Somebody went into my apartment in New York and brought it. So they met me in DC.

SPEAKER_15: And is he a fan of yours? I mean, he's obviously addicted to Twitter. He's, he must be on Twitter five hours a day and golfing for four.

SPEAKER_21: I don't know that he was a fan. Junior is Donald Trump Jr. is definitely a fan. I had talked with

SPEAKER_178: him in the past. I don't know that Donald was. Yeah. I found that incredible. Now you start trading

SPEAKER_05: stocks, sports betting stops. And it's very interesting. I invested in a company, Robinhood, which had just, you know, um, their, their idea was to get millennials to invest and they spend whatever, three or four years working on this slowly millennials, young people are starting to invest. That was kind of the premise of the entire company is someday millennials and, uh, will get off their parents' Netflix account. They'll get an apartment and then they'll want to buy stocks. Sure. We have this crazy pandemic. And then one day I wake up and I see you day trading and I'm like, oh my God, that's genius. He's actually like talking about his trades. He's saying what his bank

SPEAKER_185: roll is three milli. He's going up and down 500 that I see on CBC and I'm like, oh, this is so brilliant.

SPEAKER_60: You probably inspire low millions of people. I would say a couple of million people to join Robinhood

SPEAKER_05: and other services. What, why did you, what even gave you that inclination that, Hey, fuck it. I can't bet on sports. I should just pick some stocks. Yeah. So, I mean, I was, I,

SPEAKER_189: again, I'm a gambler by nature. Sports went away. I thought it would be interesting to try it.

SPEAKER_21: What we're good at is identifying, I think something that resonates quickly. So I never dreamed it would turn into what it did, but almost like when I used to do pizza reviews starting, it's like, okay, instantly there's something here. Like I can tell it's resonating. I can tell I'm a tracking audience. I can tell people are interested. And then when we do it, we do it full. So it became an everyday thing. I mean, I got the logo up here. It, there's a lot of aspects, the barstool that if you told me this was going to happen like a year ago, Dave, you're going to become the most talked about guy on wall street. I mean, what are you talking about? Like, I've never traded his thought in your life. I don't know much about it. Uh, and, and again, we're good at, I, I have a, or we barstool a sense of, okay, how, how do we play this? Because like the Warren Buffett, when I said he was old and you know, I'm the new captain now, that was a joke on the stream. Like I was right about airlines. So the, the genesis of that I decided to go all in on airlines and they, they were getting murdered. Um, and after I did this whole speech about doing it, like 10 minutes later, Warren Buffett is like, I'm out on the airlines. I mean, the timing was impeccable. I said to go all in, he said, I'm out. So it was so obvious, like, uh, to see what happened in the second it happened. Airlines skyrocketed and he looked like an idiot in that regard. I look smart, but I was just kind of, you know, I know Warren Buffett is a legend of the game, but I ran rave on these DDT streams, but it's towards our audience, but like business insider and all these other publications took the quote and they're tweeting it out and they're running with it. And that's why he's got raw

SPEAKER_168: meat in front of me. It's like, okay, I'm going to start having fun with this. And bang, it just

SPEAKER_05: exploded. And people still don't get that you're having fun and that it's, there's some amount of comedy here. I'm watching thing. I'm becoming addicted to watching you trade because I just

SPEAKER_197: thought it was hilarious. And you're like, oh, there's a deer outside my thing. I'm going to buy John Deere. It's just like, if anybody needed any indication that you're not giving them stock advice, it's that you just bought John Deere because there's a deer outside your room.

SPEAKER_201: Literally, I mean, I'm going flipping coin yet. There's people, you'll look at these investment

SPEAKER_11: people and they're losing their minds on these shows about me. And what's really probably killing

SPEAKER_21: them is I've been a hundred percent right. So I've been doing it because I just keep saying stocks go up and they have literally have gone up since I've been doing this while they've been sitting on the sidelines saying gloom and doom for since March. I mean, it's been a long time now.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah. It's amazing how tweaked they got that you were just saying stocks go up when the entire concept of wall street is if you hold stocks long enough, they go up. Correct. I mean, it's literally the premise of all financial money management. You have some equities and that equities go up 7% every year on average and just don't sell when they're down and you're having fun with it. I looked at it and said, this is fucking fantastic. Young people who have no financial literacy are going to open up a trading account and they're going to figure out what options are and puts are and just what stocks are. So you're basically doing the financial education that parents didn't do with their kids. A couple million people get onto Robin

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SPEAKER_15: I mean, this would be like the, I mean, you have the DDTG brand, but I mean, this feels like a category

SPEAKER_60: that you could keep going all into. And there are so many endemic advertisers and it's never going to end. The number of public companies because of SPACs are going through the roof. I mean,

SPEAKER_211: this could be like a whole second chapter of the, of the, of the empire here.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah. So it's definitely something that we've given a lot of thought about. And I think we will be

SPEAKER_213: involved in, in the coming months. You'll have to, I mean, if you just think about the Barstool,

SPEAKER_15: yeah, you got sports finance and sex. Yep. I mean, think about what people like. I mean, the only thing you got to add is like, you could add, I mean, vice was kind of drugs and then there's food. There's really only two things left that would build out the empire. Yeah. And I mean,

SPEAKER_218: I'm heavily involved in food. Oh, you can say drugs.

SPEAKER_12: No, I mean, the pizza reviews are hilarious. I mean, I think that actually is the number one thing people know me by, to be totally honest. You've done like a thousand of them now or 700

SPEAKER_11: or something. And it's like, oh, you know, I never know who's going to come up to me and say, hello. And why? That's the best part.

SPEAKER_156: Come up to me. Like, are they like, oh, you're the guy at South Barstool. They respect the entrepreneur. Are they Robin Hood guy? Are they a sports guy, Patriots? Or are they like, now I guess,

SPEAKER_214: a TikTok guy. Are they pizza? It's just, I never know. Nothing too crazy has happened.

SPEAKER_05: I saw the episode where the guy had the truck that was like three times bigger and you were goofing on him and breaking his chops. Oh yeah. That was fantastic. But you basically, do you do like

SPEAKER_227: five of those in a row? I'm just curious of the mechanics of how you actually get these in.

SPEAKER_21: Yeah. It varies. Like the longer it's going on, the more we will stack multiple in a day because we have to travel so far to find places. I've done everything around me. But it used to be literally one a day, but there was a lot more, but I've done so many in my general vicinity that, and I've been in Philly a lot. So if I'm on the road, I stack them. If I'm in the office, like today I did one,

SPEAKER_156: there's a new place that opened. So I just did one, but it really varies.

SPEAKER_230: And you're dabbling in cheesesteaks now. For Philly, yup. For Philly. Cheesesteaks are overrated.

SPEAKER_12: They're heavy. They're great, but you can't eat it. Like pizza, I'll never get sick of. I feel okay after I have a slice. A cheesesteak is heavy. I mean, there's going to be eight hours of pain

SPEAKER_11: and suffering after a cheesesteak. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's, it takes a lot to be eating. And I, you know, the cheesesteak people love the food reviews. I know they kill. We're in

SPEAKER_21: Philadelphia for the gambling app. It generates a tremendous amount of buzz. When I go to popular

SPEAKER_237: places, everyone wants to see it. Everyone likes to talk about their favorite food. So it makes sense.

SPEAKER_239: Another great moment in El Presidente history. You told everybody like the unions can go themselves,

SPEAKER_15: whatever. And all these media companies, my friend, Jeff Bankoff's company who bought my company, Weblogs Inc., the blog company at AOL. Then he went out and took the Engadget team and started

SPEAKER_05: Vox. He got unionized. And then they had to lay everybody off and the union had no recourse. They were just like, yeah, they didn't even consult with us. They just laid everybody off. The idea of starting a union in a media company when the media industry is circling the drain and being just hemorrhaging jobs and their advertising is completely getting screwed and going to

SPEAKER_09: Facebook and Google is insane. Yeah. So I got in a lot of trouble for that

SPEAKER_21: on something that was clearly, and I mean, clearly a joke. There is truth to it. But then like the people here who we treat very well, we haven't had layoffs. They were like trying to troll the union people by like sending fake emails to be like, Hey, how can you help us? Yeah, we were all in on it. But that is like a huge story. Like we were getting federal agencies sending us like letters. And I think the end of this thing was I had to like send an email to the company being like, I was just joking. Like that was the literally you have to explain the joke now. You're right for real. And of course, you know, there, there's some politicians tried to use it as a way to garner like publicity for signals. It's great. Basically my analogy on it, it would be like if, uh, you know, well they do, but you don't, if you're talented in our business, if I don't pay you what you want, you should theoretically be able to go get a job somewhere else because you're talented, you need it. If they won't pay you what you want and I won't pay you what you want, you're probably getting paid what you deserve. We're not talking about putting, you know, bolts in a car where you can, you know, get a monkey to do it and you can pay the monkey. No, we're talking about talent business. It's pretty straightforward in how you get paid.

SPEAKER_60: It's a free market and you have massive competition as the caller daddy kerfuffle showed. Exactly. They're, I mean, the idea that you're going to unionize a bunch of people who are making a massive amount of money, if they are talented, making hundreds of thousands of dollars. What is

SPEAKER_109: the union going to even do for those people? Right. Those people have agents, managers.

SPEAKER_21: Exactly. And they do. And what was lost on this, there was never any talk about unionizing here. It was like a joke. It actually was because Gawker unionized. I hate dead spin. And it's like they were struggling and going down the drain. And it was like the two things in my head is like the company that nobody's reading and can't get advertising and doesn't have talented people is unionizing when the company that's actually very successful and has talented people and are paying people as talented people. We're not talking about it and we're successful because we're paying the talented people. So like that dynamic is kind of what I was making fun of.

SPEAKER_03: And it's a scary, insane dynamic right now. You have a group of young people who actually believe

SPEAKER_66: socialism and being given free stuff is better than having a free market and being able to have unlimited upside. I mean, you feel like you're a Gen Xer to me. I don't know how old you are, but

SPEAKER_166: yeah, yeah. I'm 43. But that, okay. That element always fundamentally, like I didn't get here by

SPEAKER_21: accent. I worked my ass off. I didn't take a vacation day for 10 years, like every day. And there was no guarantee. And I worked, I didn't have any money. Like I literally did nothing forever. I couldn't afford a hamburger and we pay pretty well. And now you're going to like, tell me how I got to like,

SPEAKER_229: treat my employees. It was like, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_175: Yeah. There's a very weird, I think a lot of this has to do, I don't know if you agree, but our generation, I don't know if you went, did you go to college? I did. Where'd you go?

SPEAKER_268: Michigan. Michigan.

SPEAKER_175: Okay. Did you go like horribly into debt?

SPEAKER_99: No, I was lucky. I was lucky enough. My parents helped me with the education.

SPEAKER_66: See, I think this next generation, they all thought you go to college, you get a hundred thousand dollar a year job. So, fuck it. I'll take out a hundred thousand in loans or 200,000 in loans. Now they got some liberal arts degree. They can't get a job where they get a job for 40 grand. And they're like, okay, the system's rigged. Everything needs to be free. Capitalism is broken.

SPEAKER_113: When in fact, capitalism has never been more vibrant.

SPEAKER_156: Right. And the union thing, and I always said, it's like, I'm not fundamentally opposed to unions. I think there are some industries that 100% need unions. I don't think we're one of them. So,

SPEAKER_21: you know, I'd have union people getting very mad at me in jobs and industries. Like if you're a fucking coal miner, yeah, you probably need like unions and things like that. And there's some that do. We don't. We're a talent business. The talent rises and gets paid and they hold us hostage if anything.

SPEAKER_15: What is the secret you think to finding emerging talent and why you've been so good at it?

SPEAKER_278: Well, is it the nurturing? Is it the identifying, you know?

SPEAKER_168: Yeah, it's a combo. We had a big advantage in the beginning because I would hire anybody. I

SPEAKER_156: don't care what your degree was. I don't care if you went to college. I didn't care anything.

SPEAKER_21: Like our people did not have, you know, network or comedy backgrounds, but nobody would hire you if you didn't, I would. So I had people that nobody that I'm like, Oh, this guy is super funny, but it didn't, no one else would give him a shot. I would. And then I always said, when turning to the deal, I'm like, my goal is that every college graduate who thinks they're very funny or not even a college graduate, but everyone who used to apply to Saturday Night Live

SPEAKER_156: or maybe like, um, in the old days, I'm Toronto. Yeah. What's the, yeah. What was that? Uh,

SPEAKER_175: Harvard magazine, national lampoon, national lampoon. Yeah. So, and now mad magazine,

SPEAKER_168: that kind of genre. Correct. Like now we get the resumes and we do. So we have an immense

SPEAKER_21: pool of talent to pick from. And, you know, we're kind of like the first. We're like, I, a lot of times to say we're like the oldest digital media company. Like we started almost 20 years ago. We're just different than the established people, but we're big enough where we have this reputation and we can get, we just have a lot of people who want to work for us. And we're pretty good at, you know, giving people shots and some work, some don't. Um, and we let people just do what they want. Like call her daddy. I saw it. I was like, this could work, may not work. Here we go. Run with it. See what happens. And that's kind of how we work there. You, this is as entrepreneurial company within it as you'll find. Yeah. And the secret is based on

SPEAKER_05: your being open to new talent and giving them some amount of freedom to pursue their vision. That's the combination, which means you can make some crummy content. You can make stuff that sucks,

David Friedberg: right? Yep. But you only need to have one thing become a winner out of 10.

SPEAKER_21: And like, I'm not, not everything I think is great or bad works or doesn't work. The beauty of what we're in is kind of the internet. Like the results speak for themselves. We're a big enough platform. We have a big enough hose and anything new will market. If people like it, it works. It takes off.

SPEAKER_288: People give it the chance. And so the market tells us whether it works or not.

SPEAKER_290: Uh, Penn stock has gone through the roof. I think it, maybe it's gone five or six X into you guys

SPEAKER_07: merged. Is that about right? Yeah. So, I mean, today was a huge day for it. Actually, it was up

SPEAKER_156: 9%. So it's at 78, 85 right now. Oh my Lord. Yeah. It was at 26 when we did the deal. Then when COVID hit,

SPEAKER_21: it went all the way down to five. Oh my God. That's a gut check, huh? So you, you got a hundred,

SPEAKER_293: a hundred million in paper and it goes down 80% on half like that. So I did get cash, half equity,

SPEAKER_21: half cash. Um, but yeah, I mean, at first I got check. Yeah. It's one of those things it sucked, but I I'm able to compartmentalize. It's like COVID hit. It's like what, I mean, there's nothing. I get much more frustrated when I feel like I had control or I screwed something up. Um,

SPEAKER_168: but the, the, the company that just bought me a casino company, their casinos got shut down. It's like what it threw no fault of anybody. So it's a bad deal. Yeah. You just got your money in good.

SPEAKER_299: Right. And, uh, you, you flopped yourself and somebody hit on a runner. Exactly. You take that situation every day. Exactly. And I can, that's fine with me that, that now my,

SPEAKER_21: my biggest regret, and I didn't know the deal was really new. Like when that stock was tanking,

SPEAKER_156: like, I didn't know. It's like, could Penn go out of business? I really had no idea. And it's not like they're telling me, I wish I bought a ton of stock at five. Obviously I didn't. I think

SPEAKER_66: everybody probably does, but well, I mean, here's the thing when you're so concentrated, it does fuck up your bankroll strategy. Right. I had the same thing with Uber. I had so much Uber that it became 95% of my net worth. You had so much barstool becomes 95% of your net worth, I'm assuming or something like that. Yep. At some point, you got to take some chips off the table

SPEAKER_239: and buy a house and, you know, Nantucket or something and not, and be able to sleep at night, not, you know, going through these whipsaws, but concentration is also how you can generate

SPEAKER_290: wealth. And man, watching Uber go down to $15 a share was, I mean, I felt like I was going to puke.

SPEAKER_156: That was, I mean, I think a big question people had when we did and why other companies may not have done the deal, which Penn did is they didn't know how wall street would react to us. I was confident because like generally finance likes barstool. They're like similar type people, whatever, of course. But once we did that deal, wall street reacted very positively. It went from 26 to 40 quickly and then COVID hit and everything went, you know, to hell in a handbag, but obviously it has

SPEAKER_308: rebounded and rebounded in a kind of astounding manner so far. What do you, what's your best take

SPEAKER_239: on, I mean, it's pretty obvious that I don't know if you saw Biden said today, first hundred days, a million vaccines a day, uh, is what are, is going to be deployed. That's a hundred million, a hundred million people already have it. That puts us at 200 out of 300 plus a million Americans are basically going to be there something like April 1st. This thing's basically getting done and be in the review mirror. Anybody who dies from will be somebody who didn't get the vaccine, whereas incredibly old and incredibly unlucky or something. Yep. So you, do you believe in some sort of this permanent reset and the great reset, or do you believe roaring twenties, you think people are going to go fucking crazy YOLO and EDC and Coachella and burning man are

SPEAKER_310: going to have twice as many people aren't people going to lose their shit and go crazy or go crazy.

SPEAKER_156: They're already going crazy. I mean, I've been in Miami, I go to Miami in the weekends. Um, and you know, you may not know that COVID is even around. They're just YOLO. Fuck it. No mass. I mean,

SPEAKER_168: there's restrictions. So the, they're limited capacity, but you know, I've had COVID and I must

SPEAKER_21: assume at this point that the antibodies are still inside of me. Of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_156: Like I'm not getting it again. And you're in crowds. I mean, you are in crowds there.

SPEAKER_317: What was it like? Did you, was it a hard COVID or you just wrote it out? No, for me? Well,

SPEAKER_156: I believe I've had it twice. I only officially got diagnosed once I had it March and well,

SPEAKER_21: I thought I did because I'd never been sick in the manner I was, which was gassed. Like I couldn't get out of bed, sweaty and I was achy, but I didn't lose sense of smell. I wasn't like stopped upwards. Like I can't breathe. And then I got it again in August, same exact symptoms. This time I got tested and I did have it. Um, but it, it just felt like almost, I've never had mono, but I feel like that's how tired you are with mono. Um, and I get wiped out at night, but I was never nervous, so to speak, like, Oh, I can't breathe. Yeah. I mean,

SPEAKER_320: when we do the post-mortem on this thing, we're going to see young people got it in Matt,

SPEAKER_239: got a mess. There were a massive number of cases, small amount of deaths, and then

SPEAKER_21: just turn 65 die from it. Yeah. I look at sports, which, you know, they didn't want to do and they're,

SPEAKER_156: they're forcing it to do it. But the college football, college basketball, NFL, lots of people are getting it. Nobody, you don't hear anybody being like seriously ill because they're young, healthy

SPEAKER_21: people. And for the most part, you can say whatever you want. There's rare examples in everything. It doesn't matter if it's the flu, like something can, you know, uniquely affect somebody, but if you're

SPEAKER_156: young and healthy, it's a cold, like that really seems to be what it is. I believe that. Um, I, I am firmly against restaurants being shut down. I think, you know, livelihoods are going to be lost. They're talking about shutting them down for good. I think indoor, not good, but indoor again,

SPEAKER_21: in New York. It's like, there is no comeback. You have to let small businesses, restaurants control their own fate. And if you are worried about COVID or you're old and immunity impaired,

SPEAKER_82: stay inside for the next six months, get the, get the shot.

SPEAKER_141: I think it's going to be three months. I gotta be honest. I mean, they're doing 40 million shots this month, 50 million next month, 60 million in February.

SPEAKER_328: You're not going to catch it in your house if you don't go outside.

SPEAKER_239: Yeah, it's impossible. What, what, what's the story? You got like a couple of years left. You're obviously deep in this, uh, pen gaming stock. So there's a good, they got, they, they got a good reason to keep you around because you're tied to it. You got a lot of equity, but I assume at some point this deal runs out. Do you, do you thinking about, cause you're, you're young, you're 43. People tend to do their best work in their late forties, early fifties. That seems to be when entrepreneurs are dialed in the most. Do you have an, another thing you want to do in your life?

SPEAKER_310: You want to make movies, you want to retire to Nantucket. What do you want to do?

SPEAKER_331: I'm so focused on pen. So the pen deals is going to be about a year in January.

SPEAKER_156: I signed a five year deal. Um, and you know, I said this on a different podcast, one of ours earlier, when, when you pay, what I feel is like a good price and you, you do a partnership with me and you get me, like, I don't have a house that you're going to get everything I got full speed. And Penn did that. Penn, we named our price. Penn said, yes. And it really is all I think about all the time. I'm so far from, you know, what it'll look like when that contract is done. I'm just like, how do I basically destroy everybody? That is my mindset right now is just, how do I destroy everybody?

SPEAKER_290: You're wartime CEO right now. Who's on the shit list right now? You, I mean, you look at ESPN and say, you got to beat them. Or, I mean, you obviously dominated Deadspin.

SPEAKER_148: Yeah, they're dead. Deadspin's out.

SPEAKER_335: But that's kind of like beating like the JV team. It's not.

SPEAKER_336: Yes. It's not that. It's very clear for the first time in my career, very clear competitors.

SPEAKER_21: They're the other gambling companies and there's lots of them, you know, the Fandals,

SPEAKER_156: the Draft Kings. I don't hate them. Like I hated Deadspin because they haven't made it personal, but I hate them as, you know, an athlete hates the Red Sox, Yankees. It's like, we have to be,

SPEAKER_320: they make a run at you. They try to buy you or not.

SPEAKER_156: We met with everybody and they both passed.

SPEAKER_320: Really? You using a bank or using Allen and company or somebody?

SPEAKER_340: Uh, we were using a banker, Molas.

SPEAKER_66: So the banker takes you around and they're just like,

SPEAKER_331: with the exception, the banker, the one company they didn't introduce us to was actually Penn.

SPEAKER_280: Huh? Yeah.

SPEAKER_197: Great, great job. They are near 3%. These guys are a couple million bucks. And you, and you brought the buyer to the table, but those guys just didn't want

SPEAKER_280: the Presidente bull in the China shop. They just don't want your level of personality,

SPEAKER_21: the brand. I don't think that was it. What I believe it was, is we work with like FanDuel DraftKings forever. I know them very well.

SPEAKER_346: I know they spent a lot of money with you, right?

SPEAKER_21: They did over the years. And maybe the effects started to wane because we, we were working with like five, six, seven different gambling companies by the end of it. So it's like our energy wasn't focused. How it was like, once Penn came in, it's like for the first time, everybody in the company was focused. All right, we're now Penn and that's it. It's a very different vibe, a different, different type of like pitch. I'd never endorsed anything like that. So I think they underestimated, decimated what would happen when we had skin in the game, basically.

SPEAKER_349: What, what's your favorite thing to bet on? Is it sports? Is it blackjack, poker?

SPEAKER_21: I love horses and football.

SPEAKER_351: Horses and football and no table games. You go to Vegas, you know,

SPEAKER_21: I like table games, but not nearly like the others. Like I can get up blackjack,

SPEAKER_172: I can take it or leave it. I mean, I enjoy it, but nothing like the others.

SPEAKER_290: What's, what's the, uh, what's the better rush? Just running the table and, and winning a bunch or coming back from being stuck?

SPEAKER_355: Coming back from being stuck.

SPEAKER_05: I see. I 100% agree. And I, people, you, this is how I know if somebody is a true degenerate gambler and they love it because when you're stuck 50 dimes or 25 dimes and you got to crawl your way back and you're stuck only two, or you're stuck, you're stuck 50 and you get back to stuck five where you're plus two, that's the best feeling in the world. It's better than just

SPEAKER_158: running the table being up 50. No different than sports. You remember your losses a lot more than your wins. It's like losing is harder. Yeah. Yeah. What's the worst beat you ever got?

SPEAKER_05: Well, you stared at the ceiling, couldn't sleep, grind your teeth. I mean, how the did I do this?

SPEAKER_156: Wow. I'm never going to gamble again. Yeah. I mean, there's two recent, there was the Packers Eagles, the Hail Mary to end the game. And then they went for two for the Eagles to cover. And then, uh, the, the bills Cardinals, the Hail Mary to end that one. I had the bills, uh, money line. I had the bills everywhere. So two, I mean, I lost in two Hail Marys already this year. And what is that?

SPEAKER_290: Like you're doing 20, a hundred grand swings, a hundred grand swing. So that that'll keep you up

SPEAKER_239: for a night or two. Yeah. As somebody who went through, uh, getting a couple of life changing,

SPEAKER_66: uh, you know, deposits in their bank account, have you modulated and given yourself some limits as to gambling? Cause your net worth goes up and then you, we both know, once you start betting at

SPEAKER_350: that level, you can't go back down. Correct. Right. You got to get the rush. And if the amount money doesn't matter, the rush, you don't get the rush. What's the point? So what are you doing in

SPEAKER_290: terms of like bankroll management? You, you, you, you got some limits for yourself or do you think

SPEAKER_156: you have the risk of ruin? Yeah, no, I've always been enough where it's like, okay, I can't, I gotta take a break because I won't be comfortable losing anymore. It's more feel, but I've always

SPEAKER_290: been okay with that. Right. Yeah. You, you can not chase it. Correct. I mean, I chase it and then to

SPEAKER_168: the point like, okay, enough, like, uh, you know what I, I lost what I can lose. I'm uncomfortable and

SPEAKER_99: miserable about it, but it's not going to change my life on a scale of one to uncut gems. Where do

SPEAKER_375: you put yourself in degeneracy? I mean, uncut gems would be like, uh, I got three, a three.

SPEAKER_377: Okay. So you're nowhere near. No. Well, he killed himself. I know. I mean, was this the greatest

SPEAKER_21: movie ever? The only thing about it. And we've had the producers or whoever on it. Nobody bets a three team parlay for that amount of money on the tip of a basketball game. No, of course not.

SPEAKER_383: That drove me not for like, what's supposed to be realistic. Like nobody does that.

SPEAKER_299: No, I mean, much simpler if he was just betting, you know, straight. Correct. Yes.

SPEAKER_05: But I mean, he, he played the degeneracy. So I thought Adam Sandler is got two great

SPEAKER_175: performances, a career that one. And I hate all his other stupid movies when he plays like knuckleheads, but I don't know. You ever see funny people?

SPEAKER_66: No, actually I haven't. You have to see funny people. It's basically him playing himself in the loneliness. What's that? Is Selma Gomez in that?

SPEAKER_175: No. Uh, funny people is like that whole, uh, who's that guy who produces all those movies?

SPEAKER_05: Judd Apatow. It's one of those Judd Apatow movies. Oh, Apatow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but it is when he got, when he, when, when he's serious, he, Adam Sandler is funny. Like in,

SPEAKER_389: in both of these roles, he killed it. Listen, I mean, I like,

SPEAKER_306: it was all the most, I like like happy Madison. And I like, um, what was the other one? Those

SPEAKER_156: are the ones I can't pop with. They're just like, Oh, happy Madison's funny. I like happy Madison. It's a classic. And I like the, um, when he goes back to, uh, yeah, he's got to go to

SPEAKER_303: the school. He's going to like graduate happy Gilmore. Excuse me. Well, it's happy Madison,

SPEAKER_390: happy Gilmore. And then there's one more that I can't remember. He's a cool cat.

SPEAKER_310: I met, um, we, our kids were in the same, when I lived in LA, our daughter, our daughters, or whatever in the same gymnastics class. And he just walked over me at one point. And he says, Hey, I look at them, they're doing good. And I was like, yeah, they're doing great. How are you doing? We're just like completely normal, cool person. You're a famous. Now you,

SPEAKER_394: you got a bunch of upgraded new famous friends, or are you still just with your squad?

SPEAKER_21: I'm pretty much still with man. I, I'm still in my squad, but I've, I definitely have been like, like I said, I was in Miami. I've become friends with, you know, people who? Pit bull a rod. No, not pit bull much more like the nightlife guys. So I went from like

SPEAKER_156: having to spend a shit ton of money to get like a table at a club to like just calling up and being a walk in and sit down and not have to pay for it and shit like that. That's nice. When you don't

SPEAKER_303: have to drop 5k on it, on the table. Yes. And 5k in Miami is getting you like in the coat room.

SPEAKER_60: So it's very nice. Oh, really? Yeah. That's not, yeah. It's crazy how bottle service happened. I remember in New York when it tipped over New York, it used to be in the nineties. You got into

SPEAKER_05: places cause you were cool. Limelight, palladium, tunnel, whatever. And then I remember marquee and bungalow eight started doing bottle service and you get to the door and they like, how many bottles

SPEAKER_402: do you want? I'm like, well, I don't know. I just drink a glass of champagne. You give me a bottle of champagne. All of a sudden you got 600 bucks. Then it went $6,000. Yeah, it's crazy. That's stuff.

SPEAKER_301: I mean, you're not getting out of there for a good table for like 15, 20 grand a night, Miami.

SPEAKER_66: Really? Yeah, really. That is dumb. It's crazy. Are you going to go down there and live there and get out of the New York tax craziness or? No, I can't. I got to work here.

SPEAKER_398: I don't know that I would ever want to live in Miami. If I could live somewhere taxes, regardless, I'd just live in Nantucket in the summers. That's so great. Nantucket's the best.

SPEAKER_239: All right. Listen, I appreciate you coming on the pod. Continued success. I love watching. I love everything you do. I think it's hilarious. Everybody knows the rule. One slice, one bite, but then you take four bites. I appreciate it. That's my favorite part of it. I just entrepreneur to entrepreneur. It's been great to see somebody win after being at it for 17 years. Congratulations on that and keep making great content and breaking people's chops.

SPEAKER_414: It's hilarious. Thank you. I appreciate it.