Cuts are coming to Barstool Sports, and they’re expected to hit the company hard.
New York Post media reporter Andrew Marchand reported on Wednesday that Barstool is expected to fire around 25% of its workforce, which will result in about 100 people losing their jobs.
The cuts are the result of the company being sold back to founder Dave Portnoy and no longer having the financial backing of billion-dollar gambling company Penn Entertainment.
Barstool Sports was acquired by Penn in 2020. Penn thought that Barstool would help them add many new customers for its sports betting app and physical sportsbook locations, so they invested heavily in Barstool, viewing the company as a marketing and branding expense.
While owned by Penn, Barstool expanded from around 130 employees to 430 employees. The media company was reportedly losing millions of dollars and not working out as a partner as Penn had hoped.
Now that the company is privately owned once again, Portnoy is charged with having to cut the staff or personally lose millions of dollars to meet payroll obligations. This is the unfortunate result of going big by selling to a public company and then going back private again.
Portnoy has been clear to his employees and the public that layoffs were looming. He has not been looking forward to it.
“It sucks,” Portnoy said on Wednesday. “Laying off people is truly, truly, truly the worst thing.”
