Mr. WEO

for obvious reasons, this guy seems untouchable.....

Barstool operates it gaming arm as Barstool Bets. It's therefore also a gaming company. It sure "made sense" to Penn at the time to try to scoop up all those viewers as bettors and sweeten their deal with ESPN Bets. Penn bought BS to bring its readers in as potential bettors to offer ESPN in Penn's collab to form ESPN Bets. ESPN didn't want the toxic association (state licensing refusals were only part of their problem with BS). So, Penn dumps BS, partners with ESPN anyway and has access to far more bettors.

in October, Barstool had 5.4 million unique visits. ESPN.com had 632 million. ad revenue was about 250 million vs 4.4 billion for ESPN

Penn, a huge gaming/casino company, wanted Barstool for Barstool Bets to partner with ESPN in their online gaming venture. ESPN didn't want to be associated with Barstool in the creation of ESPN Bet. Without this partnership, Barstool was of zero value for Penn (which had 6.5 billion in revenue in 2022) as . They instead partnered with ESPN without BS. If Barstool was printing money, it stands to reason that they would keep BS as a profitable asset, rather than taking a writedown. Similarly, if they thought BS had significant market value, they wouldn't have sold it back to Portnoy (let alone for a dollar). Obviously not all (or, perhaps, any) revenue is profit. Last reports I see online are losses of 16 million Q1 and 12 million in Q2 for 2023. Can you link to the more recent public info re: current financials? Barstool Bets is an insignificant online betting player---Penn thought BS would funnel tons of it's broke ass readers to "ESPN Bets" for them. unfortunately their 18-34 viewers were the wrong betting demographic. Portnoy's politics aren't an issue for me (it's worth familiarizing yourself with this guy's history though), but they were for others--he was the reason that Penn could not get licensed to operate gambling online in certain states.

why doesn't Beane satisfy his penchant for re-signing aging former Bills throwaways and offer the 1 year special to...Marquise Goodwin?? He was fast!!

I think Gruden is a good watch. Always liked how he would interview QB draft prospects----grilling them on film and having them diagram plays for him. I bet the Colts wish Gruden had vetted Richardson like that. Interview would have been over in minutes, lol. Could have avoided their disastrous pick. Barstool is the Starter jacket of sports sites....

Brings me back to my original post---who's still watching this stuff? Bros stuck in 2014.....

It loses money. As you point out, it was only sold to ESPN because the latter wanted to use it as a conduit to gambling. ESPN, in the end, wanted no affiliation with Portnoy and Barstool, So Penn sold it back and realized a tax benefit. BArstool was a cutting edge thing for bro-sports info, etc, when it sold at it's peak. Since then, it isn't unique in any way and there are countless youtube imitators for it to off anything novel for advertisers.

Diggs is gone, so.....

The company bought it sold it back to him for $1 (2023---after Barstool lost 16 million in the first Q). It's estimated Penn lost 800 million overall on this deal. Penn, a gambling company, wanted to join ESPN and form ESPN Bet--using Barstool as the conduit. Turn out the Barstool viewers were felt to be too young and broke to maintain a gambling hybrid sports content venture, so they sold it back to Portnoy for nothing to cut their losses.

yeah--it's essentially Deadspin (which lost relevance years ago) for shlubs. It's a bunch of jabronies writing "articles" from twitters posts as well as meatheads sitting around and commenting on what everyone else comments on everywhere else. Plus the boss reviews pizza. lol, come on.

Yes great HC/QB combos are hard to beat. Several HOF combos come to mind. BB was a great coordinator/coach for the Giants. Brady was not a sure thing, and how many future HOFers were on that roster over that 20 year run? They have had no long term feature back, they had one great (or even very good) WR briefly. A couple of very good long term Defensive players. That's it. yet they went on a run that will not be repeated--2 decades, 7 SB's, 6 Lombardies. Once Brady left, no HC was going anywhere with that team.

how is Barstool Sports still a viable business at this point?

HOF Qb and HC aren't common. There have been a handful of dynastic NFL teams over 60 years...so, still rare. We just happen to see 2 back to back. New normal? Yes, it's a QB driven league, but half the starting QBs are mediocre to awful. Too many coming out of college without enough experience---or, worse, are basically option QBs who have no significant passing game, can't read Defenses, can't go through progressions. It's one look, take off, get injured. Or guys like Herbert--big arm, great passer, decent rosters, can't win a post season game. Similar for Ravens. MVP QB+great HC=playoff futility. Recency bias clouds your post. Dynasties are as rare as we have seen.

well, his HC just said he didn't know exactly what was preventing the guy from playing or "what the next step" is needed to get him in a game. So it's unlikely that McD would be unaware of a "pretty damn significant injury". Also, the cast he is wearing is not consistent with an plaster cast for fracture. It appears quite small and hardly immobilizes his wrist. Looks like a boxer's tape up. My guess is the owner asked McD what he is paying Cooper for this week and encouraged him to convince Cooper to play.

gotcha I think the Bills_Chiefs history, on its own, is far more relevant to the question you ask in your title. It answers the question.

I guess then OP would have to change the title--it currently posits about the Bills_chiefs game sunday ("this matchup") and the likelihood they meet again in the playoffs. Specific to these two teams, plenty of "history says" Bills can beat them in the season, not the post season---regardless of how decades old three peats attempts resulted.

NFL is favoring one of their more embarrassingly poorly run teams over one of the best teams in the NFL (that won by 10)? I don't get that conclusion. Who cares about a fine---Josh pantsed this bum with a perfect stiff arm soon after. Being humiliated on consecutive plays for all to see should suffice.

that encapsulates it all...

yeah, this thread could have simply been that sentence...

Or maybe they will just send their mediocre punter out there..

stick to the radio. he looks awesome in that platform

I was just referring to the OPs premise re: clinching the division (the worst in the league). No other team has 4 wins.

Those D linemen were running wild on the other O-linemen and lighting up the all the Browns crappy QBs. From 2008-2017, that team won 38 games. Other than one season at 24th, their Offense ranked 27th to 32nd in scoring. In facgt, in his rookie year, they were ranked 8th in points scored. For the rest of Thomas's career, they went straight to the basement on Offense. He did not have a positive impact on their outcomes. Drafting AP probably would have been far more important as far as impact, as he was a dominant RB for years and the Browns had a bunch of bums/flashes in the pan. AP certainly would have helped that Offense a far more than any single O-line HOFer. This is intuitively true....

we’ve been waiting for that “next week” for 5 years…