Erika Nardini

Barstool's playbook: milk profit, then professionalize for a $450M sale

Shaan breaks down Barstool's arc: Dave Portnoy ran it as a cash cow which suppressed its valuation, selling 50% at just a $15M valuation. After Erika Nardini was hired to operationalize it, the company grew to ~$100M in sales and sold a portion for $450M to Penn National, whose market cap jumped from $2.8B to $3.6B.

“He's— I believe he sold 50% of it at only a $15 million valuation years ago. 4 years ago. 4 years ago. Then they hired Erica CEO. She operationalized it and professionalized it. And Dave still was able to be kind of crazy and wacky. When she joined, she said that they're doing $1.2 million a quarter in sales and they only had $2 million in cash. Not a lot. This past year they got— they scared $100 million in sales, sold for $450 million, right?”