Sunday Reflections: Dave Portnoy, the Real MVP of 2020, my Person of the Year
I almost swore off Twitter a month or so ago.
The site was toxic, loud, lots of yelling in all caps and big, bolded letters, from one extreme side of the spectrum to the next. When I scrolled, I’d inevitably leave the site in a worse mood than when I had hopped on. Rare was the time I learned or gleaned something of value.
I’m glad I didn’t.
Had I eliminated the site entirely – I simply trimmed the number of accounts I follow to a blissful 12 – I’d have missed the best thing that I’ve seen in 2020.
I’d have missed the Real MVP of 2020.
I’d have missed Dave Portnoy.
Portnoy is the founder of Barstool Sports, a site that was initially dedicated to gambling and fantasy sports and featured whimsical one-bite pizza reviews, which remain a wildly popular and regular piece of content.
It really isn’t all that different from the day I began reading it, when I was at the University of Maryland. The site, if I were to sum it up in a quick sentence, is media for the boys, by the boys. To be honest, I don’t read it all that much anymore, but I loved it when I was in college, and millions upon millions read it or watch it or listen to something on it every day.
Those millions of readers, listeners, viewers – Stoolies, as they’re known in the internet lexicon – have given Portnoy a massive platform, with 1.8 million followers on Twitter and another 3.1 million on his personal page on Instagram, which is a fraction of the reach of Barstool’s other accounts.
Those platforms have made him far richer than he likely ever could have imagined when he launched the publication in 2003. Earlier this year, Penn National Gaming purchased a 36% stake in Barstool for $163 million.
Dave Portnoy was a rich man. Dave Portnoy good. Dave Portnoy was set.
It was only the beginning, an auspicious start to what would be a hell of a 2020 for Barstool Sports. Dave Portnoy was just getting started.
This year, I followed Barstool a little closer than I normally would. A little more than a year ago, Portnoy hired one of my good friends, Brandon Walker, who hired me at the Northwest Florida Daily News in 2014. When I moved to California in 2015, Brandon had taken a job in Mississippi, then another in Georgia, one in Virginia (I think), then back, I think, to Mississippi, where he worked for a gambling site called My Bookie. That’s where Barstool discovered Brandon Walker, and how Walker came to Barstool is one of my favorite stories I’ve ever heard. If you want to see the full story, just watch the video below and enjoy.
After talking to Brandon about Barstool, and seeing the ensuing laugh-till-you-cry video, I was a fan of Dave Portnoy. Whether or not I enjoyed all of Barstool’s content didn’t really matter. I dug the guy’s style. Dave was gonna be Dave and if you liked him, great, and if you didn’t, that was fine. When New York City went into full lockdown, and small business were shuttered, Portnoy lashed out on Twitter and Instagram. He called out politicians for hypocritical double-standards. He stood up for American rights and businesses in a time where few chose to do so, and the few who did choose to do so were vilified. Portnoy didn’t care.
“Whenever I go on a Corona rant,” he said in a video on May 13, “half the people hate me, half the people love me. Let’s see how this one goes.”
Wherever it went, he kept at it. Portnoy was featured on Tucker Carlson, among other shows, mostly on Fox and CNBC, and landed an interview with President Donald Trump.
“The only thing we know for certain is if you continue the lockdown, tons of people are going to lose their livelihood,” he said on Tucker Carlson.
Thousands did.
Now, Portnoy is doing something about it. While the U.S. government is putting together 5,000-plus page “stimulus packages,” packed with billions of dollars for pork and foreign countries such as Egypt and Cambodia, Portnoy is providing a bona fide stimulus with a project he launched on December 17 called the Barstool Fund.
“I’ve been ranting and raving a lot lately,” he said. “New York City just shut down their dining, how do we expect these people to survive? How do we expect restaurants to survive? They’re already on their last legs and you’re pulling the plug on them, and nobody seems to care in the government, or at least they’re not doing anything acting like they care. No plan, no relief, no bailout.
“So I was ranting and raving about it, and somebody said ‘Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?”
So he did. Portnoy donated half a million dollars to the Barstool Fund, a crowd-funded stimulus by an American business owner, for the American business owners. To qualify, businesses have to still be paying their employees, explain what they needed the money for and how Barstool could help. If they wanted to use money to make food that would, say, feed the homeless, awesome. Not a requirement, but it’s nice bonus.
If Barstool selects your business, you’ll get a check from Barstool for as long as you needed it, “because what good does it do to help you for two months and disappear? It doesn’t.”
Portnoy took to Twitter, the very site I once tried to eliminate, and shook down every rich friend and associate he knew – and he knows many. UFC owner Dana White cut $100,000. Someone Portnoy doesn’t even know dropped a quarter million. The Winklevoss Twins threw in another $200,000. A girl threw in $100 of her college savings.
When I wrote the first draft of this blog, on Christmas Eve, the fund had eclipsed $4 million (if you want to donate, click here).
When I returned from a camping trip yesterday, the fund had ballooned to more than $17 million.
People at their finest.
Social media at its finest.
Capitalism at its finest.
Portnoy has taken the money raised from the fund and donated to everything from nail salons in California to pizza places in New York to Mexican joints in Chicago to a dairy restaurant in Wisconsin and every possible type of business in between.
Altruism has been a common theme from Portnoy and Barstool. In 2017, the Barstool podcast, Pardon My Take, raised more than $50,000 for the Justin J. Watt Foundation. It donated $150,000 to the family of a police officer who was killed on duty in July of 2018.
Another $20,000 was given to a Dance Marathon that raises money for pediatric cancer research.
His biggest contribution was reserved for the year that needed one most.
Dave Portnoy, the 2020 Man of the Year.
