This year has been kind to Barstool Sports. According to Erika Nardini, the company’s revenue is set to grow by 33% this year.
In an interview with Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, the Barstool CEO says she expects the company to top $200 million in revenue by year’s end. That is double the $100 million the company had generated by January 2020, when Penn National gave the company a $450 million evaluation.
“Whether it’s finance, sports, lifestyle, entertainment, military, parenting. We’ve really disrupted so many great categories. We create content that is funnier, smarter, sharper, shorter, more dynamic than most anybody else out there,” Nardini explained. “That’s the reason our brand and our company are growing so quickly. That’s the reason we perform so well for our advertising partners.”
She detailed some of the company’s upcoming projects at last night’s Upfront presentation for the advertising industry. They are diverse to say the least.
Barstool will enter the virtual kitchen arena with Barstool Bites menus distributed to restaurants nationwide and available to diners exclusively via delivery services. The One Bite frozen pizza line will also hit Wal-Mart stores later this month, being made available in 3,600 stories nationwide. Barstool also plans to open up branded bars later this year in Chicago and Philadelphia, and the company has already signed thousands of college athletes to Name Image and Likeness deals.
Additionally, the company will make its second entry into live sports with the arrival of The Barstool Hockey Cup. Barstool plans to put women’s hockey on display by pitting women’s hockey teams from Canada, the U.S. and Europe against one another for a weeklong tournament. Barstool will run the tournament without any outside help.
These moves follow recent announcements such as the company landing the rights to the Arizona Bowl and launching the Barstool Sportsbook in nine states. The company is now live in New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, and Colorado.
“Barstool is bigger than ever, I would say it’s hotter than ever and there isn’t really a category that we haven’t disrupted, except for live,” Nardini told Adweek.
The business world is no longer scared off by Barstool. In fact, they’re looking for more ways to work with the popular sports brand due to its ability to deliver a large audience, especially harder to reach younger male and female fans.
“The world is opening up for us,” Nardini told McCarthy. “We’ve gotten to a big enough scale where someone like Walmart says, ‘Hey, we want to sell more pizza. We want 22-year olds to come into Walmart.’ So what’s the best brand to work with if you want a 22-year old to come into Walmart? I think that’s us.”
