Barstool Sports is set to undergo significant changes following Dave Portnoy regaining sole ownership.
Portnoy announced having bought the platform back from Penn Entertainment a few weeks ago, vowing never to sell it again. But he’s found that the company is a lot harder to maintain now that they’re gone.
Barstool made massive strides after Penn bought a majority share for over $100 million in 2020, adding new shows, podcasts, writers, and various other content creators. The moves took their staff count past 400.
With Dave getting the platform back for a reported $1, he’s going to have to make some changes. The 46-year-old laid into employees shortly after the takeover, referring to staffers “braindead in a video after he went to the office to find it mostly empty.
Now, the New York Post is reporting that he is about to lay off around 25 percent of the workforce at Barstool, which means around 100 people will be losing their jobs.
“I’ve been very clear. Anybody that’s paid attention, we are going to have layoffs and cuts, and they’ve started and it sucks,” Portnoy said on Barstool Sports Radio this week. “And people who know me from the beginning I hate firing people. You can be incompetent, not work and I generally don’t fire because I hate it so much. It’s the worst thing to F-ing do.”
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Portnoy also admitted that the website is losing money.
“Having said that, we’re in a position it’s a no-brainer,” he continued. “It’s not like I have that moral — well you can’t do it because nobody will have jobs. We’ll all not have jobs. So we have to get back to a break-even thing. We’re losing a lot and it sucks.”
Whether the layoffs will mostly affect content creators or staffers in the backroom remains unclear.
