After greater than seven years on the helm of Barstool Sports, Erika Ayers Badan is stepping down as CEO.
In an emotional message to Barstool Sports staff, Ayers Badan wrote: “My time at Barstool will for all time encourage me. I gave you my all. Thank you for giving me a lot greater.”
The 48-12 months–vintage worked hand in hand with debatable founder Dave Portnoy in the course of her tenure with the organization.
Ayers Badan wrote that she become trying “to seize the whole lot we’ve finished together”, however she doesn’t “have the proper phrases for it.”
Last summer, Portnoy repurchased Barstool Sports from Penn Entertainment for $1.
That got here after Penn Entertainment paid $550m to collect 100% manipulate of Barstool, however then determined to component methods with the enterprise and ink a $2bn cope with ESPN to set up ESPN Bet.
“The closing years become all Penn all of the time,” Ayers Badan wrote in her email.
“It become a balancing act and type of an workout in futility — looking to generate bets on the identical time as shielding a pirate deliver at the same time as additionally subtly contorting it to be some thing greater predictable, pacifiable and projectable to in shape with a on line casino organization.
“In the closing 12 months we bought the organization twice. First to Penn for $550m after which to Dave for $1. It appears insane and it become.”
Now New York-primarily based totally Barstool Sports “is returned because it have to be,” Ayers Badan wrote. “A pirate deliver with Dave on the helm.”
Ayers Badan joined Barstool in 2016. She formerly served as CMO at AOL.
In a publish on X, Portnoy said that Ayers Badan become “the correct and possibly best fit” for the organization.
“It’s been pretty a run, and we couldn’t have finished it with out her. She become the whole lot I dreamed she’d be and greater in a CEO,” he brought.
In her note, Ayers Badan stated that “At the coronary heart of it, I got here right here to paintings with Dave. I preferred Dave right away and I depended on him.
“Barstool has usually been and usually might be what you placed into it. There isn’t anyt any one higher to make certain Barstool lasts a long way into the destiny withinside the manner it become meant than Dave,” she brought.
When she joined the organization, “the task become to be authentic, unapologetic and to develop 24/7.”
She brought that “expectancies had been low, assumptions of failure had been possibly high.”
“I did what I got here right here to do and greater than I should have ever imagined,” Ayers Badan stated.
She claims Barstool blew beyond its five-12 months desires in 20 months and that as of today, sales has grown 5000% considering that she joined in July 2016.