In the business world, it’s often said that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This is certainly true for Dave Portnoy, founder of popular sports website Barstool Sports.
Portnoy has made no secret of his past mistakes, and he has shared some great insights on business and life in general with his readers. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of the best Dave Portnoy quotes out there.
Whether you’re a fan of Barstool Sports or not, you can learn a lot from this entrepreneur powerhouse. So without further ado, let’s get started!
1. “There are almost no other websites that have the type of readership we do.” – Dave Portnoy
2. “It’s strange: There are feminists who like Barstool and then feminists who hate Barstool.” – Dave Portnoy
3. “We’re a comedy site and have made fun of every single race, religion, creed, and gender. We’ve made fun of it equally.” – Dave Portnoy
4. “We’re a comedy brand that pokes fun at everybody.” – Dave Portnoy
5. “I make the decisions nobody else has the stomach to make.” – Dave Portnoy
6. “We don’t back down from controversy – we fan the fires. People think we go out of our way to create it, but we don’t.” – Dave Portnoy
7. “I feel like I see more and more Neapolitan style, that I call ‘fancy pizza’ – that’s not my cup of tea; I think it all tastes the same.” – Dave Portnoy
8. “We’re sick of other people saying what other people should laugh at.” – Dave Portnoy
9. “There is always a line that can’t be crossed. Anything that is said or written from a place of hate will never be acceptable behavior at Barstool.” – Dave Portnoy
10. “I like coal-fired. I’m definitely, generally, always a coal-fired guy. Crispy, don’t do a ton of sauce, but kind of a well-done, coal-fired pizza is my jam.” – Dave Portnoy
11. “Everything the NFL touches that maybe we should be involved in… we always get the message the NFL frowns upon working with Barstool Sports.” – Dave Portnoy
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12. “I’d go toe-to-toe with anybody in the Boston media over our group, 18-35-year-old guys.” – Dave Portnoy
13. “The people at Barstool Sports are a bunch of average Joes, who like most guys love sports, gambling, golfing and chasing short skirts.” – Dave Portnoy
14. “If you’re ordering chain, you’re a person with poor taste. Everyone lives near a pizza place that’s better than a chain. They can’t stand up to a local pizzeria.” – Dave Portnoy
15. “The easiest thing to say is, ‘I’m sorry.’ We don’t do that.” – Dave Portnoy
16. “I’d say we represent the silent majority.” – Dave Portnoy
17. “If we sell a T-shirt, that probably means we thought it was a huge event that resonated with our crowd.” – Dave Portnoy
18. “I want to make a boatload of money and I want to poof and maybe make it on the senior tour, live on islands, get a bigger Nantucket house.” – Dave Portnoy
19. “I love Boston, but it’s a smaller city for the personalities and video and the other stuff we want to incorporate.” – Dave Portnoy
20. “We make it very clear, we don’t want our fans to say over-the-line things. But if someone is saying, ‘I can’t wait for Dave Portnoy to go out of business,’ I don’t care if our fans say, ‘You’re the worst.” – Dave Portnoy
21. “I’m never going to be on ESPN, probably. I’ve burned too many bridges. That’s fine.” – Dave Portnoy
22. “I really don’t turn the other cheek. So when I feel like I’m being attacked, I don’t back down.” – Dave Portnoy
23. “People know I’m a Jake Paul guy. I respect people who take over the Internet, and this guy has got maybe more haters than I do, which I also love.” – Dave Portnoy
24. “We really want Barstool Sports to be a brand that means something. It doesn’t just have to be myself… you see the logo, that bar stool and the stars around it, and you know you’re getting a certain type of vibe, a certain type of brand.” – Dave Portnoy
25. “There’s so much PC police. There’s so much, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ We’re the exact opposite.” – Dave Portnoy
26. “It was always our belief that if we brought out good stuff our fans will like it and we’ll go.” – Dave Portnoy
27. “Ad revenue is important, but we want to be self-sustaining.” – Dave Portnoy
28. “Our readers get what we do, and I don’t think about what it’s going to look like to the outside world. I don’t really care.” – Dave Portnoy
29. “This is exactly why Barstool Sports has to exist. We’re one of the few places – maybe the only place – on the Internet where we don’t let agendas dictate what we do.” – Dave Portnoy
30. “Everybody is saying, ‘ESPN is not cool, no one is paying attention to ESPN, they’re all paying attention to the Barstools of the world.’ Why? Because we’re authentic.” – Dave Portnoy
31. “It’s like if you sign a guy you know is a punk and a jerk, you can’t complain like, ‘Hey, the punk jerk is acting like a punk jerk!” – Dave Portnoy
32. “I like seeing Roger Goodell squirm.” – Dave Portnoy
33. “We have a long history of our reputation speaking for itself.” – Dave Portnoy
34. “The fact that Manti Te’o thought for a long time that he was dating, like, a fake girl and then that she died and did the tribute and the girl never existed. I mean inherently that’s funny.” – Dave Portnoy
35. “We have this fanatical fan base that wants to see us succeed, and so they get it. They get that to get the free content and all of the things we’re doing – whether it be the blog, the podcasts, whatever – we need money. We need advertising. If you want us to go hire Michael Rapaport, well guess what, we need revenue to do that.” – Dave Portnoy
36. “I’ll speak to anybody, anytime, anyplace.” – Dave Portnoy
37. “All-Patriot fans despise Goodell.” – Dave Portnoy
38. “When have I ever said I don’t want to sell out? I’ve been the most honest, ‘I’m going to sell outright in your face’ when I get the chance.” – Dave Portnoy
39. “Everything related to the NFL, we’re banned from. Whether it be Media Day, whether it be even doing negotiations for TV shows, everybody’s afraid of the NFL in their relation to us because they know they don’t like us.” – Dave Portnoy
40. “We don’t take ourselves very seriously and view working at Barstool Sports as a way to avoid becoming slaves to cubicle life.” – Dave Portnoy
41. “The motto is, control our destiny, do new things, where we talk directly with our consumers and aren’t dependent on ad revenue.” – Dave Portnoy
42. “I don’t know how anyone lives in Miami. Because no one goes to sleep.” – Dave Portnoy
43. “You can’t put Barstool in a box however hard you try.” – Dave Portnoy
44. “The first time I used ‘Viva La Stool,’ I was just bragging about something. People grabbed it, and it went viral organically.” – Dave Portnoy
45. “Everybody hates Goodell. He unifies all Patriots fans, all New England, everybody hates him equally. He’s really a hated guy.” – Dave Portnoy
46. “I always wanted to find something that I could wake up and not hate doing. Hating your job was probably my nightmare scenario.” – Dave Portnoy
47. “We have no union at Barstool Sports. Nobody is trying to make a union at Barstool Sports.” – Dave Portnoy
48. “I figured I should have a website because that’s what everybody was doing.” – Dave Portnoy
49. “Unless you’re getting a dollar slice, there’s no real money difference between a chain and your local pizzeria.” – Dave Portnoy
50. “You judge a pizza place on their cheese slice.” – Dave Portnoy
Dave Portnoy is quoted as saying “I’d rather have a smaller, engaged audience who actually cares about my content than a large, disengaged one.” This is an important mindset to have when it comes to running any business, but especially online businesses.
It’s crucial to focus on engagement over numbers and this quote from Dave Portnoy drives that point home. We hope you’ve found these insights helpful in growing your own online business.
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