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Fox Sports and Barstool Strike TV Deal in Latest Example of Legacy and New Media Cross-Pollination
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There was some reporting on this Wednesday, confirmed by Dave Portnoy now:
Andrew Marchand at The Athletic (now with ads) wrote earlier that Portnoy would become a regular on Big Noon Kickoff, while “On weekdays, Portnoy and top personalities, like Portnoy and Dan (Big Cat) Katz, would be part of a Barstool-produced daily show on FS1 that is expected to compete directly with ESPN’s “Get Up,” hosted by Mike Greenberg, and Stephen A. Smith’s ‘First Take.‘”
Yeah, why not? Barstool is popular. Portnoy is popular. Big Cat is arguably one of the bigger sports personalities across all media these days. You see legacy outlets trending into new media now, whether it’s ESPN bringing on Pat McAfee, or MLB working with Jomboy, bloggers in press boxes and all of that. Fox just got rid of Joy Taylor, Emmanuel Acho, and Craig Carton, and is entirely revamping the morning approach, so this is something different for them, something they hope can compete with the big shows their competitor is producing.
One of the guys in our Slack channel made a good point. Fox owns Outkick. They have an in-house new media brand, couldn’t they have gone down that road, pull in Clay Travis or someone else for Big Noon Kickoff? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s interesting to consider. Regardless, Barstool is huge, and Fox is huge, so now they’re gonna work together a bit and we’ll see how it goes.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com