New chief executive is spinning on Barstool
Barstool Sports, the satirical and irreverent sports, news and men’s lifestyle blog, had its coming out party at the Super Bowl earlier this month.
Recently appointed Chief Executive Erika Nardini said she is focused on introducing Barstool to a wider audience.
“We’re such an ambitious company,” Nardini said. “When I joined Barstool Sports, Dave and I had a lot of conversations about where we wanted to take this thing,” she said, referring to founder Dave Portnoy.
In the week leading up to Super Bowl LI, Barstool joined with Viacom’s Comedy Central to air its “The Barstool Rundown” live from the game site in Houston.
Comedy Central said the show was the No. 1 series during its four-night run among one of its key target demographics: 18- to 24-year-old men. “The Barstool Rundown” had an average audience of 40,000 viewers in that category.
It was a validating experience for Barstool, Nardini said.
“It is a massive step to just how big this thing can be, and it shows the speed and just how fast we’re coming,” Nardini said.
According to the Web site, Barstool attracts more than 200 million global monthly page views and more than 6.7 million global monthly unique visitors.
Barstool also boasts more than 6 million followers across its social media platforms, a key area of engagement for any company, but especially one born of a socially driven audience like Barstool.
By comparison, Univision Communications-owned sports and humor Website Deadspin says it has 25.7 million monthly viewers just in the US and 889,000 followers across Twitter and Facebook. And Time Warner’s Bleacher Report receives more than 60 million unique visitors a month.
But it isn’t necessarily just about Barstool’s potential scale, said BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield.
“Content is fragmenting. It used to be you had to go through the gatekeeper — legacy media — and now there are so many ways to reach consumers,” Greenfield said.