SBJ Media: Barstool Making Big Plans For 2020

#Natitude.

BARSTOOL LOOKS TOWARD 2020 WITH UPFRONT PRESENTATION

Nardini addressed potential advertisers during Barstool's upfront last night

• Barstool Sports last night hosted its annual upfront for advertisers, media buyers and prospective partners at a pop-up event in Greenwich Village. Roughly 240 people heard from Founder Dave Portnoy, CEO Erika Nardini and CRO Deidre Lester about why they should allocate some of their marketing spend across the brand’s platforms and franchises. “We want to show our ad partners and future partners why what we do is different and how it can be a platform for them to break through,” Nardini told SBJ's Mark J. Burns prior to hitting the stage. “What we do is so radically different than everybody else because we’re about a relationship between people.”
  
  
• The setup included a staged bar with six audio stations where attendees could sample some of Barstool’s featured content offerings like "Pardon My Take," "Spittin’ Chiclets," "KFC Radio" and "Chicks in the Office," among others. Inside a dimly-lit venue, local artist Samuel P. Frackleton could be seen painting a new mural for company HQ. Barstool’s 30-minute sales pitch centered on highlighting how it has previously integrated blue-chip brands like Buffalo Wild Wings, Pepsi, Dunkin’, Bud Light and FanDuel, among others, into its content to create immersive experiences for its partners. “There’s no one, and I mean no one, that connects with an 18-34-year-old audience the way we do,” Nardini told the audience. “We want to do it in video. We want to do it in social. We want to do it in person. We want to do it in audio. And we want to do it in writing.”
  
  
• Nearing the two-year anniversary of the Barstool-ESPN TV show being canceled after one episode, Nardini briefly addressed whether the brand has any future on linear TV: “No. I don’t know why I ever would. The economics aren’t good enough. The efficiency of the production isn’t good enough. ... Television doesn’t bring us eyeballs. We’re getting bigger than that.”
  
  
• What to expect from Barstool in 2020? The debut of four new shows focused around fishing, celebrity dating history, a reality show extension of the company’s Rough N Rowdy amateur boxing tournament and hosts from the Barstool military podcast redesigning and renovating older veteran buildings. Meanwhile, "KFC Radio" will take its podcast on a national six-city road show tour. The brand will have a pond hockey tournament and also bring back -- and expand -- an amateur golf tournament. The company is also building out a full-blown gambling cave at its HQ. Nardini said of 2020: “Sports betting will be a massive focus for us.”

A local artist was working on a new mural for Barstool HQ at the upfront

ABC ADJUSTS PROGRAMMING FOR MORE LIVE SPORTS

• ABC increasingly is opening more windows to sports programming, a change in a decade-long strategy that funneled most weekend afternoon sports programming to ESPN -- traditional broadcast windows. The latest example: ABC will carry five college basketball games on weekend afternoons this season, marking the first time since 2014 that the broadcast network has carried regular season college hoops. The games are high-quality matchups that should do well ratings wise -- Texas A&M-Texas, UCLA-Notre Dame, South Carolina-Virginia, Kansas-Stanford and Oklahoma State-Oklahoma.
  
  
• The news, which was buried in a press release last week about ESPN’s basketball schedule, is the latest example of ABC diving into sports. ABC will carry XFL games next year, in addition to college football and NBA schedules. This is an important move for ESPN as it enters a period where rights for several major properties are up, including MLB, NHL and, of course, the NFL. Getting more sports programming on ABC is certain to help give ESPN leverage, especially considering the fact that the cable business continues to lose subscribers. ESPN is in 83.5 million homes, according to the most recent Nielsen report. That’s down from 85.6 million homes at the beginning of the year. 

ESPN, FOX AT ODDS OVER RATINGS REPORTS

• We all love a good Twitter beef. This time, it’s Fox Sports vs. ESPN in a tiff over ratings. Nielsen recently changed the way overnights are measured, leading networks like ESPN, NBC and Turner Sports to stop reporting the metered market numbers. Fox and CBS have stayed the course, reporting overnights despite the change.
  
  
• On Monday, Fox exec Mike Mulvihill tweeted out that “Yankees ALCS Game 1 win beat three high-quality primetime CFB matchups by >50%.” But come Tuesday, when national viewership figures became available, that narrative was no longer true, with ESPN topping Fox at night. That led ESPN PR to reply directly to Mulvihill’s original tweet with this: “Incomplete data provides inaccurate information: With full data in, Florida-LSU led the way on Saturday night as the most-watched sporting event.”
  
  

SPEED READS

• Media investor Eric Jackson sings Sinclair’s praises in his latest newsletter: "I own Sinclair shares as I think the value of the equity has a chance to triple over the next three years, once the Dish dispute gets resolved and investors turn their attention back to the value of the new RSNs.”
  
  
• The Packers’ win over the Lions on “MNF” again brought issues with NFL officiating to the forefront. Several pundits put the league’s struggles on the loss of Mike Pereira, Dean Blandino and John Parry to TV careers. NBC Sports’ Peter King: “Big factor. 3 of the best refs left the field early for TV.” The Big Lead’s Ryan Glasspiegel: “The solution to NFL officiating is have Mike Pereira in a control center deciding on the spot what the calls are on review. He's earned the public's trust.” Fox’s Colin Cowherd: “NFL needs to call Dean Blandino, write him a big check, and get him back. Officials loved him & league needs him.”
  
  
• The Football Association of Thailand hired Octagon as its media rights consultant, marking the first time that the U.S.-based agency will handle media rights in the region. Octagon is in the market looking for eight-year deals.
  
  
• The WTA has partnered with SAP on a new analytics feature that will enable coaches to identify player patterns as their matches unfold. Details on how the feature will be used on TV broadcasts are TBD, but WTA President Micky Lawler said a graphics package with Perform is already in the works. That package will also be featured on the tour’s relaunched website at the end of the year. Lawler told SBJ’s Thomas Leary the feature is part of the tour's commitment to bring insights to the modern tennis fan in the years to come.
  
  
• Last week marked the end of an era at NBC Sports Group when Kevin Monaghan left the company after 38 years. He started in 1981 in the PR department before moving over to a business development role, eventually becoming senior VP and managing director of digital media. In an email to colleagues last week, Monaghan wrote: “Eyebrows are generally raised whenever you read so and so ‘is departing to pursue new opportunities.’ But in my case, that happens to be true. Intend to master Marcella Hazan's 'Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking'; eagerly follow widening Trump impeachment inquiry and fine-tune my New England style IPA exploration.”

In 2009, Rick Cordella (far right) and Monaghan (middle) went to West Virginia to sign Mike Florio as PFT joined NBC Sports

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