Barstool Sports Plans to Lay Off a Quarter of Its Staff

Barstool Sports is planning to cut its staff by 25%, or about 100 employees, the New York Post reported.

Barstool's founder Dave Portnoy, who bought the media company back from Penn Entertainment on Aug. 8 for just $1, said in an appearance on Barstool Sports Radio on Wednesday that layoffs have already started.

“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,” he said. Portnoy said that although he generally doesn’t fire people because he “hate[s] it so much,” this time around it was a “no-brainer” to plug the company’s losses.

Barstool has around 430 employees, 300 of which it added since Penn first bought the company in 2020, according to the Post. Penn, a sports entertainment company, gained full control of Barstool in February for a total of $551 million.

Portnoy said he will never sell Barstool Sports again. “Ever. I’ll hold it till I die.”

In an “emergency press conference” when he repurchased the site, Portnoy blasted negative press coverage and regulations for stifling Barstool.

“We underestimated just how tough it is for myself and Barstool to operate in a regulated world where gambling regulators, The New York Times, Business Insider hit pieces f---ing with the stock price every time we did something,” he said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter. “It was one step forward, two steps back.”

Portnoy said Wednesday that now, “for the first time in forever, we don’t have to watch what we say, how we talk, what we do.”