Inspiration Highlight: Is Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Buyback the Best Enterprise Deal of the Decade?

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Dave Portnoy as soon as once more owns Barstool Sports activities, the corporate he based 20 years in the past.

On Aug. 8, Penn Nationwide entered right into a 10-year, $2 billion sports activities betting cope with Disney’s ESPN to launch ESPN BET, a branded sportsbook within the U.S. In consequence, Penn has to divest Barstool Sports activities.

Backstory: In January 2020, Penn Leisure, then generally known as Penn Nationwide Gaming, paid $163 million for a 36% stake in Barstool, with Chernin Group left with the identical proportion stake. This previous February, Penn accomplished the beforehand introduced acquisition of Barstool, paying $388 million for the 64% stake in Barstool didn’t already personal.

Barstool Sports activities and its founder Dave Portnoy are lightning rods within the sports activities and leisure business, loathed and liked for its embrace of no-filter, uncensored podcasts and articles. The model has an enormous following, however their penchant for creating controversy was presumably an excessive amount of for Penn and Disney to deal with.

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Takeaway: Portnoy now owns 100% of the corporate he based for the primary time in 10 years. The divestiture comes with sure non-compete clauses.

Andrew Pompliano places it fairly succinctly:

You’ll be able to love or hate @stoolpresidente, however the man offered his firm for ~ $500 million after which simply bought 100% of it again for $0.

Most likely one of many best enterprise offers of the previous couple of many years.

Wild.

— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) August 8, 2023