The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Saturday Special - Colin talks with Barstool Sports C.E.O. Erika Nardini

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

In this exclusive podcast Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini joins Colin to talk about the changing world of sports media and where its headed as one of its strongest leaders. They also discuss handling controversial personalities and the difficulties being a woman in a male dominated business. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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My next guest is somebody I've been communicating with for a while. And I'm truly excited to talk to her because I think she's kind of the future of my business. My business is a lot of things. It's TV. It's digital. It's podcasting. It's radio. You know, it's multi-platform.

I've said this before. When I started in the business, I used to get one piece of paper. Here's your AM radio ratings. Now I get 13. Facebook, Twitter. You know, I'm not on Twitch. Maybe that'll be part of it. But Erica Nardini is the CEO of Bart's Stool Sports.

Now, this is a really compelling story. So she joins them four years ago as the company's first CEO. Okay, it was a regional blog. It started with a talented guy. You've probably seen him Dave Portnoy, the pizza app, the pizza stuff. very outspoken. Now you see them all over Jim Kramer and, you know, CNBC. So it's a regional blog. It's got a dozen employees. It's now a national multimedia force, 180 employees. Valuation, somewhere between $100 million and $500 million and growing. And Erica Nardini has been

called one of the most powerful women in sports by AdWeek and Forbes. She also has a podcast. She does every day called the Token CEO. Please listen. First of all, it's a real pleasure. I think I reached out to you a while back. It is, you are a strong woman at a company, which is very tribal and can be very male and can be very, I would say, tough. Has it been, Erica, harder, easier, or about what you expected? Hey, Colin. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this.

It's great to connect. I honestly, Colin, when I joined four years ago, almost five years ago at this point, I didn't know what to expect. And what Barstle was in 2016 is pretty different than what it is now in terms of just our size and our scale and how many people there are and how many things we're doing every day. So, you know, definitely there's a lot of chaos. It's a tough crew. We've got a lot of personalities. We're on a lot of different platforms like you mentioned. But I've loved it.

So, you know, there were things I felt I could expect and I certainly brought to the table from my. experience. There's a ton that I've learned. We've made, you know, a ton of mistakes. We've had a lot of wins. And it's been an awesome ride. So it starts with Dave Portnoy, Dave Portnoy, who is a very talented. He's a digital rock star. So he starts with this little thing called Barstool in Boston. It's a sheet. He works his ass off for years. Got a little chip on his shoulder like all Boston guys. He's sort of the Dana White of his industry. He wants to prove everybody wrong. Kind of a legendary story in my business. Bill Simmons ignored him one time. He's used that chip on his shoulder. And he's a smart guy and he's super hyper aggressive. And I noticed him about four or five years ago. Never met him.

I don't think I've even been in the same room. But I kind of noticed that he was creating this tribal following and he is a big personality. So that's what you inherit. And there's there's goods and there's bans to that. Chip on the shoulder is, you know, Dave has a work ethic. Dave has a drive that is very unique. But what were the issues with Dave initially because you had to harness some of that and manage some of that? Could you get through to him initially to say, listen, you're talented, but to take it to the next level, we've got to do check, check, check. Yeah, you know, I met Dave. So, you know, the Chernan group, so Peter Chironin, who came out of Fox, obviously, had put a, you know, had put a investment in Barstall sports.

I had heard about the opportunity. I was in a different startup at the time. And I was jealous when I heard about it. I was in Boston when Dave started the paper. I was a fan of basketball sports. I had a ton of the, you know, I loved Tom Brady. I was all about deflategate. I had a ton of the T-shirt.

But I met Dave through a mutual friend unrelated to, you know, at the time they were looking for a CEO. And I met him in a coffee shop in the West Village. And to be honest with you, Colin, like, I didn't know. know what I was going to get. I'm like, I saw this guy run for mayor. I've read, you know, I've read every headline about him. Like, am I walking into a meeting with a terrorist or I just didn't know what to expect? And to be honest with you, I loved him. He was smart and had a ton of vision. He was proud of what he built. He was very honest. Like, the thing about Dave, whether you love Dave or hate Dave, like Dave, like Dave sees it. And he has a, he has a conviction to him.

that I think is unmatched. And that, when you couple that with a good sense of marketing and an incredible, an incredible consistency and the work ethic that you mentioned, it's very interesting. And what I felt, you know, really from the first time we connected was he wanted Barstle to go places that it hadn't been before. Barstle was still in New York at that point in time. Dave, it was Dave and maybe two other guys in New York City. There wasn't an office.

There wasn't a P&L. They didn't have email. They didn't really talk to one another. They just blogged every 30 minutes. Right. They were just consistent and worked hard and had a lot of opinions. So what I really felt like was that I could bring where I had been, which is also was in the Internet. I also loved to work.

I also believed in consistency. And we really connected around the merch business in particular and then podcasting and video. And it just kind of clicked, to be honest with you. And then we just started and set about building it. And we had to learn a lot of it and go through a lot of it together. You know, I think one of the things that's hard is most founders don't want to bring in another person. Like most founders and creatives are like, I got this. I got the business side of it.

I got the content side of it. I got the promotion side of it. And what was really different about Dave was Dave wasn't like, I got this. Dave was like, I'm the face of it. I've gotten it this far. I have zero interest in the things you're going to do here. Or he cared. He had a vested interest. But he didn't want to, he didn't pretend that he had those things, wanted to do those things, or knew those things. And so it created almost enough room for me to set about building a business. And I've talked about this before, but, you know, I basically bubblewrapped all the personalities and went, went about building a

business because I didn't want the business to change who they were. Yeah. And I saw from Yahoo and I saw from Microsoft and I'd worked at all these big companies that when the business people start running, the creative people, like, good things usually don't happen. That's right. So that's kind of how we said about doing it. And, you know, we've had some success with it. Yeah, more than success. Erica Nardini, CEO of Barstall Sports, named the most controversial woman in sports with a New York Post. I don't see her that way. New York Post apparently does. But I think what I was struck with you, and when I reached out to you initially, it was that you defended your personalities even through controversial times.

And I work for massive corporations. And historically, they either don't support you, bail on you, or they feel marginalized. and it gets very defensive. You, from the very beginning, have defended your people. And so I kind of look at Barstool as a talent-based business, Dan Katz, Big Cat, a PFT commentator, commenter. So my question, though, is this. How do you incubate talent?

Like, let's talk Dan Katz. So obviously, the more powerful podcasts you have, the better the business. It drives revenue. You know, Bill Simmons can have a million podcasters, but in my opinion, know about three over there. You have two or three and now with a golf show, maybe four rock stars. How was Dan Katz found? What are you looking for as a CEO? Is balance overrated? Is it just somebody that's a little unhinged? What in your space now are you seeking as a personality?

That's a great question. So, you know, Dan Katz, I think, is one of the biggest superstars in sports right now. Like, he is an exceptional talent and personality. And we are fortunate in that we have a lot of great personalities. You mentioned, you know, PFT is an incredible personality. Riggs, Paul Bissonette, Ryan Whitney, Alex Cooper. Like, we've got really phenomenally talented people. I would say a couple things make these people. One, and I love working with these kinds of people.

Like, I think there's something so exciting and rewarding and unprepared. predictable about great talent and harnessing talent isn't easy. I mean, you know what it's like to work in a talent business. You are talent. Like, it's a pain in the ass. But really great things, if you stick with it and you stick with them, really great things can come of it. You know, from our vantage point, Dan, you know, Dan came to Barclos. I think he used to call in to Dave's Power Hour show. And, you know, one of the, one of the biggest differences I always saw with Dave and Simmons was that Dave wanted other person, big, big, big, stars around him always. He always had a cast of characters around him, all of whom are still

here today. So when you look at, you know, he had an intern who, you know, Hank, handsome Hank, the intern, Hank is now the producer of the single biggest sports podcast in the world. He's a phenomenal talent in his own right. He's been with Dave for eight plus years. So Dave has a very good eye for talent and was comfortable in having other egos and talent and personality around him, which I think is important. I think the second thing is right now, you know, when Barstall started or, you know, when you started, there was so much less fragmentation. Like, you could have a story, own a story, talk about a story until the cows came home,

and no one else would really infringe on that story. No one else, you just had so much more space for your own content. And that was true when Barstall started, which is Dave could find a weird story on the internet on YouTube and he could sit on it for a month because nobody else was going to find that weird story. Now there's so much fragmentation. There's so much competition. You know, everything is in a single post or a single tweet or a single stream. Like there's just so much content that to find talent now, one, I think it's important that people are able to use their own platforms to break through so that they, you know, they have something to say. They've got a way

getting people's attention and they have the work ethic and drive to keep at that thing, even when they think nobody's listening. And very few of them break through. But when you see them break through, you know that that talent or that personality can be massively, massively bigger, if that makes sense. So, you know, I look for talent on TikTok. I look for talent out of Twitter. We look for talent out of, you know, Instagram.

But what you're finding right now is, like, It's almost a golden age of being of individual media companies, individual media forces, these people who can harness their voice, their iPhone, the platform that gives them space to broadcast. And if you can find people there and, you know, give them enough creative freedom, give them the right amount of resources, not too much, but the right amount of resource, and then give them the lift to build a business. Like, that's to me what the future is going to look like. Be sure to catch live editions of the herd weekdays in noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific on Fox Sports Radio,

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This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from Hypocrite as part of the Mike Coultera podcast network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, now the challenge, Eric Bernardini joining us, CEO Barstool Sports, the challenge is, and oblige me for 90 seconds, I'll tell this story. When I left ESPN, I thought it had become too big, a bit of an aircraft carrier. and I went up and I met with one of the executives John Wildhack. And as I walked into his office, I was about, it was their last pitch to keep me. And there was a picture on the wall of he and his son and his wife on a little powerboat. And as I sat down and we were talking about my future there, it was the very end.

I said, John, and I pointed up to that boat as he was sitting in his, you know, oak, his big desk. And I'm here just an employee. And I said, you see that boat? I said, you know why you have fun with that boat with your son and your wife? Because of your turning radius. You can stop on a dime. It's sporty. I said, this company's become an aircraft carrier.

It takes me six weeks to get an answer on an email. The challenge for you now, Erica, you go from a small, nimble company. You are growing into now a massive company. Are you concerned the turning radius will be harder as the company exponentially grows? Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, so it's funny, I've been in those boardrooms at ESPN, and whenever one of, somebody from Barcelona is in there, it just makes people itch. But they get like hives. I remember we had a meeting before we did Van Talk and we had a bunch of people from ESPN into our office.

And I swear to God, they thought they were going to get fired just by like literally being in the building. And you could just sit with discomfort was palatable. But, yes, of course I worry about it. You know, we're getting to be much bigger. We have grown, you know, from a revenue base in our company of like, let's say under $5 million to, you know, now we have a valuation of $450 million. Like we have grown so rapidly. This has happened in the course of four years. Like managing that kind of growth is challenging.

And it also presents, you know, there's kind of new problems at every stage. Like the problems I had in 2016 were like payroll call. And I was like, how am I going to make payroll? Like, how am I going to convince enough advertisers to come on to this platform and give us a chance? Or how am I going to convince Facebook to let us run on Facebook? Or, you know, the problems I had then were problems of getting access and a chance and the first, you know, just getting someone to make a small bet with us. Now the problems that I have are the challenges and the things that I think about is, you know, how do we keep. the edge. How do we stay on top of everything that's new? How do we continue to find and win

talent? How do we make, you know, how do we build and sustain a very big business that is sitting alongside that's something that should always be chaotic? And, you know, what, the luxury that I had and the thing that I've loved about my varsal experience is that I got to build a company in 2016 because, you know, Dave had a company, but it wasn't really a formal media company. So I got the chance to build a company with Dave the way I thought a company should look in 2016. And we don't have any legacy. There's not any hangover from television. There's no, you know, group that used to be empowered, that isn't in power any longer. And so we got to build something that was built for an era that's all about social and all about more. And, you know,

multiple formats of content and multiple types of personalities and multiple types of revenue models. But now I have to keep innovating on that and keep breaking it and reshaping it because we're changing a lot. The space is changing a lot. And we're becoming, you know, the turning radius, I have to keep it as sharp as it can possibly be because that's ultimately what makes Barstool work. You know, it is interesting to take Netflix. So Netflix is the same. subscription model, which, you know, I grew up as a kid. HBO was the subscription model. Yeah, that's right. Showtime.

Then it's Netflix. Well, now it's, as you pointed out, it's fragmented. There's, you know, it's Amazon Prime. I've got Paramount. I watch Yellowstone. Netflix. So markets eventually get crowded. So you guys are, you open up, you get big on the podcasting. Now I'm watching podcasting get fragmented.

So, you, you. I think it's actually good for the talent because I think there's going to be a handful of talent over the next 10 years, you know, that will, you know, PFT commenter, Big Cap, Portnoy, I'm sure will be, you know, part of that revolution, right? So I should say you were part of a revolution. Then the revolution becomes mainstream. And so 10 years from now, Erica, if I said to you in a paragraph, explain in 10 years from now, what podcasting became, what will it be as it gets? The revolution's over.

It's now a business. It's going to be a billion dollar business this year, a $5 billion business in five years. What's it going to look like 10 years from now? I'll give you what my take is on it, Colin, and I could be wrong. So we're in an era of like massive fragmentation, right? The points of access to make content have just exploded. They've opened up. When you started in your career and you grew up through the system, you had to get somebody to take a chance on you, give you a half hour, an hour, two hours of a very finite schedule, right?

Like every time I meet with people from television media or traditional media, they think in finite linear blocks. They say, I have 24 hours to play with. I can break that into 30 seconds, you know, 30 minutes slots or one hour slots. Like, that's how the media world has been thought about. And then the social web, you know, the portals and the internet came along and then social kind of blew the lid off of everything. But when you look at it, you know, there's 800,000 podcasts in the world right now. Like nobody's listening to 800,000 podcasts.

So it's extremely long tail. What you're going to see, in my opinion, is podcasting in 10 years' time and probably before that will become the single biggest source. of other types of media. So movies will be born out of podcast. Books are going, you know, books used to be the originator for podcasts. Now books are going to come out of podcast. Feature-length films are going to come out of podcast. The way you thought about touring, the way everyone's thought about touring, touring is going to not be collections necessarily of music artists, although those will always, you know, music will always be so prominent and prevalent. But you're going to see collections,

of personality. So if you look at, frankly, the way YouTube has grown and the idea of YouTube stars, the same is going to be true in podcast. Podcasting, what I think is different is podcasting is far more, to your point, controlled by the talent or the creator, so a Barstool sports or a Big Cat, let's say. And the problem for YouTube, for all the stars that grew up on YouTube, they were completely tied to monetization on YouTube and to distribution on YouTube. It was hard to get those stars to travel to other platforms or places or other forms of making money. Podcasting will be much easier to do that because it's a much freer medium and it's a medium that is not beholden to any one technology platform. You can have a podcast on Apple,

on Stitcher, on Tune in, on Spotify. You see obviously Spotify is trying to pull a lot of people to Spotify exclusively. But what you're going to see in the future for podcasting is, I think, two things. One is a lot of the biggest stars and quote-unquote media in the world will come out of podcasts. Two is I think you're going to see like a pretty massive convergence where you're going to see, you're going to see things like, imagine when Amazon gets NFL right. And Amazon is going to take a live football game coupled with Dan Katz and TFT commenter from pardon my take in a second screen.

And that can be an audio stream. It can be a chat stream. It can be a video stream. Like all these things are going to come together into one place. And so I think the, you know, the tail is going to tuck back into the head. and that's going to be how content is consumed and engaged with and monetized. That makes sense. Are you still here, Colin?

Yeah, no, this is fascinating to me. I could sit and listen to this for hours. My producer, John Goulet, is looking at me and like, this is Collins heaven. I'm like, get her to shut up. No, this is my heaven. Listening to a really smart CEO, her podcast is Token CEO. It's Erica Nardini. You know, it's interesting.

So as a broadcaster to big corporations, I always saw myself strangely, perhaps, as the judge. The consumer is the jury. They'll weigh in. The topics are the defense attorney or the prosecuting attorney. And I'm the judge. I listened to all the information and then I render a verdict. I think balance for me is important. I'm an independent voter. I'm socially liberal. I'm fiscally conservative. But I look at it and I think to myself, am I Jurassic? Am I outdated? Hannity Wright. Matt Al left. Do you think, balance matters or is it really be tribal go all in on what you care for as a broadcaster you know maybe i'm old school i i look at it like i'll render a verdict on all the information and then the

jury will weigh in and not they like it or they don't like my opinion your take on how i see myself as a broadcaster and i'm not offended in the least is that outdated is it better just go all right all left all crazy all tribal uh your thoughts All right. My thoughts is this, are this, is that one, your opinion matters. And for you, you would be inauthentic if you were going to go throw yourself with the right or you're going to go throw yourself with the left. Like in your heart, you're in the middle, right? And you speak from the middle and your opinions generally range. And I don't mean that you're middle of the road, but they come from the place that is true to how you feel.

how you think, how you feel, and how you act. I think where people get in trouble is in two places and where they start not to matter, not to matter, isn't something related to that. So one is, my opinion is that if you purport to be something that you are not, your audience becomes the jury and they will, what's the word when the jury convicts you? Like the audience will not fall.

The audience right now has gotten so, smart, where if you are inauthentic, they can see through it. Yeah. That's one thing. I think the second thing is, I think opinion is what's going to matter more than anything. If you look at Joe Rogan, right, Joe Rogan is poised with this move to Spotify for them to put a lot of backing around him and his opinion. And I think that's what ultimately is going to be prevalent.

I think the third piece that becomes difficult for folks is when you say that you're something, but hypocrisy, like I think what you're seeing right now playing out, at least on the Internet, and that's mostly what I spend my time looking at, is hypocrisy is a problem. When media is exposed for hypocrisy, that's when people get really riled up. That's when you lose fan bases. That's when people turn off. And then the last thing is, like, I don't think, in your opinion, you are professing to be perfect. And I think, you know, I think you lose fans and you become irrelevant.

I don't think you have to artificially cast to one side or the other. You know, what I like about bar stools, we've got a mix of everything. We have people who are on the right. We have people who are on the left. We have people who hate each other. We have different people who hate each other the next day. there's all sorts of fighting, there's all sorts of topics, there's all sorts of drama. It makes us like live sports because you never really know what's going to happen.

And on one day you could love Kevin Clancy, who's one of our big stars, or on the next day you could agree with Dave Portnoy, and then you flip-flop. But the problem right now in media, in my opinion anyways, is that traditional media wants everything nice and tidy. They've made very big studios. They've made very big spaces. It should be Perfect. And nobody gives a shit about, sorry, I don't know if I can swear on. No, you can say anything you want. No, no. I've never watched a single TV show because I like the set. I don't even remember what Bill O'Reilly dominated for 20 years on Fox. I couldn't tell you what a set looked like. I have no idea. Right. Right. So people don't care about the trappings anymore. And the majority of institutionalized media is about the trapping. So, you know, you asked me about the turning radius of bars. school in our ship. And, you know, take quarantine. You know, we basically decided on a Thursday afternoon that the office was shutting. We had to send everybody home. We could not, we could no longer keep our office in New York City open because of the pandemic. Now, if we were a normal company and we ran

ourselves like big institutionalized media companies, that would be a massive problem because how do you make a show when there's no producer? How do you make a show when there's no studio and no cameras and no lighting and no makeup and no scripts and all this kind of stuff. What we did is we sent everybody home with everything we gave them in the first place. A computer, a microphone, and a camera and their phone, camera slash their phone. And we said, go crazy. Like, go cover the internet. Go make content.

In that time, we launched 32 new shows. Dave became, you know, arguably one of the biggest forces in finance right now. Dan Katz is the single biggest streamer on Twitch playing an NCAA football game from 14, from 2014. So I think that, you know, if you are who you are and you use the resources in front of you and you can create intimacy with your audience and you can create a conversation with them that resonates and makes them think and that they disagree with and agree with simultaneously or alternatively, And that's the conversation of it all, the progress of it all, the reality of it all, I think is what makes the time so exciting.

Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays in noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. Last night, a blown call changed the game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear.

The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlic on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people.

I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill,

waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so. Thank you finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the Fourth. And on my podcast, The Cliverts Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What? Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, Wreck, my mama want you to weigh better.

What? Hey, Ms. Parker. Listen to the Clippers show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The story I've told myself about love or relationships can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast deeply well with Debbie Brown and explore the journey of healing, self-discovery, and returning to yourself. We explore higher consciousness, emotional well-being, and the practices that help you find

clarity, peace, and self-mastery in a world that can feel overwhelming. The world is becoming lonelier. We're not becoming more social and connected. We're becoming more individualized, but we actually meet people in. connection. If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to deeply well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So you're a strong, independent, smart female CEO in a business, sports media that has

historically been a lot of dudes. Now people don't have the choice, but to hear you, listen to you, and respect you. Your first year on the job, did you get more pushback than you thought? You were, obviously you've been a perfect fit there, but go back to your first year at Barstall. Yeah. Do you remember it fondly? Yes, I loved the Barstle guys at the time. I was the only woman there.

they were always very good to me. And honestly, Colin, like, I just don't think about my gender at work. I have the luxury of not thinking about it. I just, it also is just, you know, I'm so comfortable with these people because we've grown this thing together. And when you have a team, you know, I grew up playing sports, like a team is a team as a team. You're just a team. These are your teammates. But, you know, when I joined varsal,

I was, I lost a lot of friends because I had decided to join Barstle and I was, I lost some stature. I was removed from two board seats that I had. People, the decision to come to Barstall sports was not met universally, was not well met universally or kindly. That was good for me personally because I felt it, it made me realize that I had, I had only one way out, which was to make this a success and that I could not ever go back. Like I was crossing a bridge to do something and that was it. The bridge, I would not be able to turn around off the bridge. And personally, that was good for me.

I do notice it in sports media. Like, you know, we've hired a lot of women at Barstle. You know, Casey Smith, Liz Gonzalez, Ellie Schmidt, you know, Alex Cooper, Ria and Fran, who are the stars of chicks in the office. we've brought a lot of women into our fold and given them the same opportunities any man here. But I notice it for me personally is when I go to other companies in sports, in sports betting, in media, I'm usually the only woman in the room. In banking and finance, like, I'm usually the only woman in the room.

And that sucks. Like, that's annoying. Now, do I give a shit? I don't really care because I spend, you know, most of my time with guys anyways at this point, but there is a large lack of representation, especially at the highest levels in this industry. And, you know, there needs to be a better pipeline. There has to be better opportunity. Women need to be given a chance. You know, I remember meeting with Peter Charnan before I took the job, and he was basically like, why the fuck do you think you're

qualified for this job? And I, like, pitched my heart out, Colin. Like, I pitched my heart out, because all I needed was for him to give me a chance. And he didn't know if I would be successful or not. Chances are I probably wouldn't be. But he gave me the chance. And I think that's what anybody needs is a chance. Yeah. Erica Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports,

this has just been so great for me. You know, it's just, it's, I, what's funny about our business, you know, there are certain businesses. Retails obviously had this revolution with Amazon, but there are certain businesses that just move very quickly. Tech, obviously. If you left the earth, came back five years, tech looks different. Media, similarly, I mean, it's just a different platform every week.

TikTok's a prime example. I'm not on it. My daughter is. I would find it hard to monetize. Do you embrace every new platform or do you look at some and think, you know, if you can't make money off it, what's the point? Or do you believe you have to be on the platform just to be visible on the platform, regardless of monetization?

I don't think about monetization first. We always think about brand and content first. We don't like platforms that are closed for, you know, what I would describe as distracting, right? Like, so when you look at a lot of digital media companies, for example, you know, when Verizon launched Go 90, which was like an epic failure of a video platform, you had all these companies kind of passed their lot with Go 90. and they decided to make shows for only for Go 90. You know, Quibi comes around and everyone's like, Quibi has money. I'm going to make shows for Quibi.

We don't do things like that because I think that that's distracting from your true purpose. What we do do is, you know, TikTok, you know, TikTok launches. We watch it for about 15 minutes. And the great thing about Barstle is we have such a free creative space that it's not like we gave a mandate that said go get on TikTok. We looked on TikTok and our people were already on there. And I think that's another part of what makes Barstool really different is there's not a top-down mandate on much.

And we have creators and personalities and talent who themselves are interested in spending their nights and their weekends figuring out these platforms. So for me, I like that because it, you know, one of the things that was hard when I came to Barstool is, you know, I'll give you an example. And you can shut me up if I'm being too long-winded, but we were very late to YouTube. Barstle wasn't on YouTube. Like when everybody else was on YouTube in the mid-2000s, like Barstle wasn't there, same with Facebook. We missed Facebook. And it's been very, once a social platform is established, it's just like you're just like describing ESPN, it's very hard to grow.

on that platform. When a social media platform is new, Colin, you can grow, it exponentially favors the early adopters. You can grow very, very fast. And that happened when Facebook launched, that happened when YouTube launched, that happened with Instagram and it's now happening with, it's happening with TikTok and it's happening with Twitch. So I like us being there because we will get a disproportionate advantage in how big our brand can come. We're the single biggest publisher. on TikTok right now. Now, I think that's probably because everybody else is like, how the hell do you make money on this thing? And I'm like, we'll just figure it out later. But it's also because we got there early and we started focusing on it early. Great advice. All right, Erica, you're busy. I'm not as

busy. I just blab for a couple hours and go home and play tennis. No, this has been incredible for me. I just, I'm very happy for your success. I think it's... Thank you so much. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and I love our friendship and being touched. Yeah. So congrats to Dave and Dan and PFT commenter. I called him PFT commentator. So that will probably become in itself a podcast ripping me today. And I'm here for it. I'm all here for it. Do you know that we have an impersonator of you? Yes. I forget Joey something. Yes. He's very funny. He's great. He's great. Yeah. Very, very fun. That's a mistake. I should have hired the guy. I would have hired him and buried him. But instead, I find it actually, my kids think it's hysterical. So I'm like,

he's quite good at it. Oh, God, he did a Nick Saban the other day that was so funny. He's just congrats to you. Erica, great talking. Thank you, Colin. We'll talk to you later. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. And every episode, We're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Slicalife 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. on Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at a podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 is big to me

I'm Sam Jay And I'm Alex English Each episode We pick a year unpack what went down And try to make sense of how we survived it With our friends

Fellow comedians And favorite authors Like Mark Lamont Hill On the 80s It was a wild year I don't think There's a more important year for black people

Listen to look back at it On the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcasts Hey what's good y'all You're listening

And learn the hard way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to.

Listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.