who owns barstool sports

Barstool Sports is currently owned by PENN Entertainment, a U.S.-based casino and entertainment company that completed a full acquisition of the brand in 2023.

Who owns Barstool Sports now?

• PENN Entertainment acquired the remaining 64% of Barstool Sports it did not already own in early 2023, paying around 388 million dollars for that final stake.

• After this deal closed, Barstool Sports became fully owned by PENN Entertainment, meaning control shifted from founder Dave Portnoy and prior majority investor The Chernin Group to PENN.

How the ownership changed

• In 2020, PENN (then Penn National Gaming) first bought a 36% stake in Barstool Sports for roughly 163 million dollars, setting up an option to eventually take full control.

• Before PENN’s involvement, The Chernin Group held a majority stake after buying control from Dave Portnoy in 2016, though Portnoy remained the face and founder of the brand.

What Barstool is today

• Barstool Sports has grown from a free gambling newspaper started by Dave Portnoy in 2003 into a large digital media platform covering sports, pop culture, and lifestyle content, with hundreds of shows and personalities across social, podcasts, and video.

• Under PENN’s ownership, Barstool functions as a media arm that helps drive audience and customer acquisition for PENN’s broader interactive and betting businesses.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.