To quote legendary wrestler Chris Jericho..."Things will never...everrrrrrrr...be the same agaaaain!"
Early Friday morning, Barstool Sports announced that Pardon My Take's Big Cat, PFT Commenter, and Handsome Hank, via Twitter, Blog, and podcast, that Barstool Sports had partnered with ESPN for Barstool Van Talk, a new show at 1 AM on Tuesday to air on ESPN 2. The announcement and its contents represent a massive shift in the sports media landscape. Let's take a look at the two major elements.
The Announcement
Emergency Press Conference - Barstool Van Talk is coming to ESPN pic.twitter.com/ZTScxp8Cv1
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) October 13, 2017
The announcement of the new program came at 6 AM on Twitter. Everything about that previous sentence bucks years of PR trends. The announcement coincided with the release of Friday's Pardon My Take podcast across a variety of podcast platforms, which makes perfect sense - the information release was completely controlled by Barstool. With a 6 AM release, Barstool also positioned the information as part of a 24 hour, social media based news cycle rather than a traditional timeframe - fitting with their key demographic of heavy social media user ages 25-34. The announcement time and format meant that the majority of quick reaction was in 140 (or 280) characters on Twitter, rather than long blogs like this one. In a social media world, Barstool has figured out how to control the messaging across multiple accounts, and the rest of the world woke up to the news.
What This Means
Barstool's dynamic content creation over the last couple years, particularly since relocating their office to New York City, has grown tremendously, yet has not yet been fully featured on "mainstream" media outlets like ESPN or Fox Sports. Barstool's fans include a number of high profile athletes and personalities, including many who work for the major sports networks, but so far Barstool's personalities and content had only appeared sporadically.
Today's announcement completely changes that.
ESPN's struggle with ratings, politics notwithstanding (stick to sports) has been well documented, as has the rise of Barstool's popularity. With today's announcement and the deal made between the two, ESPN has shown its hand - if they can't create content that attracts viewers, they are willing to go out and get it, even if it means partnering with an organization that has been incredibly critical of their programming. It remains to be seen if ESPN will pick up more Barstool content, or how the two will coexist - especially with the past tension between the two organizations, as well as the style and tone of Barstool's content. A primary concern of Barstool viewers and listeners has been changes to the content, and this deal will likely magnify those concerns. But on the whole, this deal represents a massive shift in the world of sports programming - and will bear watching from episode 1.
Viva.
