How Barstool Sports’ ex-CEO cooks up attention

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

ERIKA AYERS BADAN: It’s hard to put words and your arms around Barstool Sports because you can get caught up in the controversy of it all. 

When I took the job, I had a lot of people in my network be like, ‘You just committed career suicide.’ And ‘How could you go work at that disgusting, terrible place?’ And you know what? Like, I loved that disgusting, terrible place. I found it to be the least sexist place I’ve ever worked. It was the least insidious place. I’ve worked at, you know, Microsoft. I worked at AOL. I worked at Yahoo. I’ve worked at a ton of ad agencies. All of those companies had way more issues that were way more hurtful that nobody ever talked about. 

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Erika Ayers Badan, the new CEO of lifestyle brand Food52, and former CEO of Barstool Sports. Erika helped scale Barstool from a janky frat-house media shop into a viral, cultural empire. So why make a dramatic career pivot, at the height of Barstool’s success? And how much might Food52 embrace the drama that defined Barstool? Erika shares that running Barstool was like a reality show, where every day felt like “a heart attack,” and the constant controversy and noise was an asset. She offers compelling insights on what it takes to build a community of fans right now, plus lessons on why “no” is often a better answer than “yes.” It’s a fun romp so let’s get into it. I’m Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response. 

SAFIAN: I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Erika Ayers, Badan, CEO of Food52, former CEO of Barstool Sports. Erika, thanks for coming on the show.

AYERS BADAN: Thank you for having me.

Copy LinkPivoting from Barstool Sports to Food52

SAFIAN: I have tried to think about how to ask you about your career, but this move from Barstool to Food52 is so different, like the vibes of the two brands and businesses are so different. Can you start just by describing for me, like, how you define what Barstool Sports is, was, was about, and then how you define that for Food52?

AYERS BADAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s weird. It’s weird, you don’t see people making this kind of transition very much, I don’t think. I would describe Barstool Sports as one of the most wild and free and creative and disruptive, no holds barred, us against the world, anything for a laugh mentality company and what was so staggering about Barstool Sports I joined in 2016 is, you know, it had an insanely rapid period of growth, but from 2016 to 2023 and—  

SAFIAN: Crazy growth, right? I mean, the revenue went from like 5 million to 300 million. I mean…

AYERS BADAN: Really crazy run. So in a lot of ways, it’s hard to put words and your arms around Barstool sports because you can get caught up in the controversy of it all, or the Dave Portnoy of it all, or the business of it.

SAFIAN: Dave Portnoy, the founder, yes? 

AYERS BADAN: Yes, but I really loved Barstool Sports and it was a really electric, wild, stressful, painful, exhilarating, terrible, you know, almost decade that I spent helping Dave grow that company.

And then I made the change to Food52, which is, you know, it’s a lifestyle brand. It was founded by two women. It is about home and table and food. There’s a lot more perfection. The bathrooms are, you know, insanely better, cleaner. The office is beautiful. There’s, you know, at Barstool, people were, like, sleeping on my couch and living in my extra bedroom and like, this has grownups. There’s grownups at Food52. But it’s a really neat company that is fundamentally and kind of foundationally not that different from Barstool, which is, you know, It’s a company that is centered on community. It is a company that is both commerce-driven and advertising-driven or content-driven. And what I was really looking for after the Barstool run, you know, we sold the company twice in 2023. We sold it twice. 

SAFIAN: Twice for some quite different valuations, right? 

AYERS BADAN: Crazy different amounts!

SAFIAN: Like the first deal was like 500-550 million, right? And the second deal was a dollar?

AYERS BADAN: Exactly. Which is pretty crazy. And, you know, I kind of woke up the morning after we bought the company back for Dave for a dollar and said, ‘I’m not going to have a ride where we do two exits in one year, one for 550 and the other for a dollar ever, ever again in my life.’ And there’s nothing that’s going to top this experience.

So I should go think about, you know, what is it I could do next? And where could I contribute next? And what do I want to learn next? And, which is really what drove me to Food52. I’ve been on the board of Food52 for a while. I’ve been an advisor to the company since, I think, 2019. And I really wanted to do something that was really different. I think people expected that I would go work in gambling, or I’d work at another sports company. And I was like, right?

SAFIAN: Because gambling was sort of the impetus behind the big $550 million deal, right? That Barstool was gonna become a gambling sports betting company, which didn’t quite pan out.

AYERS BADAN: Exactly. But it became something much bigger. And I really felt like I did it. I learned a lot. I think I contributed good things. It was exhilarating. It brought me to places I never thought I would go, both good and bad, and I was eager, you know, I think one of the things I wrote a book called Nobody Cares About Your Career, I was eager to try and learn something new to put myself in a place where I would have to learn a whole bunch of new skills or a new industry or a new way of doing business while still bringing what I had brought with me. And so that really is what drove me here.

Copy LinkApplying Barstool community-building lessons to Food52

SAFIAN: You mentioned community as being like the common thread between the two of them, like Barstool was incredible at building community, but it did it in a very specific way. Do you apply that to Food52? ‘Cause it’s a very different community.

AYERS BADAN: Yes, crazy different. The average age of a person at Barstool Sports was probably 22, 23 years old. The number one place we recruited people from was a college network we created. Food52. is, you know, there are people who are pedigreed, right? Chefs. And, you know, there’s a lot of people who’ve worked in industry for a long time.

SAFIAN: A lot of grownups.

AYERS BADAN: A lot of grownups, which is both good and bad, to be honest with you. You know, I think Barstool was so on the edge. And so fearless that we tried and experimented and created things all day long. You know, I would always describe Barstool Sports as a company where every day everyone showed up and it was a blank page.

You know, when we started to monetize on TikTok, TikTok was just starting, they didn’t have an ad product. When our creators came to work every day, they had to make people laugh, and they had to start over every single day to make people laugh. Some of that will apply to Food52 and some will not. You know, when you’re developing a recipe or you’re making a cooking show, you can wing some of it, but you can’t wing all of it. And you can’t, you know, it’s not driven off of headlines. And so it’s not viral in the same way. But I do, you know, I really think that community is built around personality and I’m eager to add more personalities to Food52 so that we can build, you know, who is our big cat, you know, will there be a Dave Portnoy? Probably not. There’s only one Dave Portnoy on the planet, but we need to find people who have opinion and perspective and charisma around home and design and lighting and furniture and food and, you know, I’m eager to bring that here.

Copy LinkInjecting personality into Food52’s content

SAFIAN: So, like, some more edge is needed to sort of get and maintain attention in the attention economy and to build the emotional connection that you have with the community?

AYERS BADAN: It’s not necessarily edge, but I’ll give you an example. We have an intern here named Annie, and we have a lot of chefs in a test kitchen. 

Annie posted a video two days ago that was mixing fluff and coke, like Coca Cola and fluff, and it makes something and people went crazy for it. She had 830 comments. We put a video about how to make a Basque cheesecake and it gets six comments on it. So what I’m trying to figure out now is what is the balance of the Annie of it all and the cheesecake of it all? And how do we put those two things together? At Barstool, it was, you know, reacting to a sports headline or a news story or something. Insanely stupid that someone did in the public sphere. This is a place where we’ll do it a little bit differently, but it’s not necessarily edge. It’s how we’re talking to people and how we’re eliciting reactions.

I have a lot of respect for the food section of the New York Times. I don’t really care about the recipes, but I love the comments. And so one of the things that’s really interesting is people have a lot of opinions on the internet. The internet is a wild, crazy, weird place. And how do we invite that in to have a reaction, to be inspired by, to be contrary to what people here think. And that’s a new skill set for Food52.

Copy LinkThe challenge behind growing stars today

SAFIAN: I mean, Barstool, a lot of it too, was around humor. And the example you give is something that had more humor to it, but I don’t know, food brands haven’t historically defined themselves by that kind of personality.

AYERS BADAN: Exactly. And that’s why I think there’s a lot of opportunity. You know, you look at the food industry and it’s like fashion a little bit. It’s so much about perfection. It’s so much about authority and what the top person has to say and I think that’s kind of bullshit now. Like I had a chef in here yesterday, a 24-year old guy who started cooking over COVID and is self-taught and now he’s developing a recipe book. He’s got a huge following. I think the internet has changed this notion of authority and it has for good or bad, and you can argue it either way. it has ushered in this era of personality and, you know, personality existed in food. You look at Julia Child, like she, Julia Child was, is a legend, not just because of her cooking, but mostly because of her personality. And I actually think we’re in an era right now where there’s so much fragmentation, anyone can be a chef, anyone can be an influencer, anyone can be a personality, and it’s so fragmented that there’s actually a very large business opportunity in the home and lifestyle space around that.

SAFIAN: And so you need to be a personality, although maybe not quite the personality that Dave Portnoy is. I mean, you had to deal with a lot of controversy.

AYERS BADAN: There was a lot of personality at Barstool Sports. You know, the internet has changed so much since Dave created Barstool Sports. Dave created Barstool Sports in 2003 or 2004, and he used to be able to sit on a story or a video for a  month and then post it, and you flash forward to 2024-2025. You can’t sit on something for more than a second because somebody else has got it. So it’s very hard to grow stars. If you look at the music industry and you look at the biggest names in music, they’re not new people. It’s Taylor Swift who came around. It’s, you know, Justin Bieber. It’s very hard to break out anymore because there’s so much attention fragmentation and there’s so much proliferation of content. And so what we’ll do at Food52 is certainly build more personality, certainly diversify the personalities we have, certainly add humor, it’ll be interesting to see if it works.

Copy LinkInside a decade of leading Barstool

SAFIAN: I noticed that Dave was just rescued from his boat by the coast guard. Like that’s not your problem anymore, but I don’t know. Is it hard to be away from that kind of drama? Because it’s also very relevant. 

AYERS BADAN: Yeah, it’s hard to describe what a decade of Barstool, it was so intense. It was 24/7. It was every weekend. It was every weeknight. Something went wrong, always and ever. Um, and it’s a little bit of—

SAFIAN: Yeah. You’ve described it as a heart attack every day.

AYERS BADAN: A heart attack every day. And I say that in jest. I loved it. But there is something very addictive to that, certainly. And I was a little bit worried about that for myself, quite honestly. It was a constant adrenaline rush. Dave and I used to always describe Barstool as a shortcut. And the reason it was a shortcut is because it was dog years, like one year at Barstool sports was 20 years somewhere else because we had to go through so much controversy or so much adversity, or we were trying to figure things out or, you know, X, Y, Z happened at any moment.

And I think part of it, you know, Dave is the best at this, which is, you know, Dave’s looking scraggly and furry on the beach and, you know, the Coast Guard has to rescue him. And then Miss Peaches, his dog, is going to an auction, charity benefit, and then he’s on stage with Zach Bryan in a Patriots jersey. And all of it’s documented and you see it all the time. And I think the magic of Barstool is that the camera is always on.

SAFIAN: I mean, you ran Barstool in a way that few CEOs have ever led a company with cameras and mics everywhere and audiences with a front row seat to your office every day, seeing the decisions you were making, it was almost like a reality show. Is that a model that you, that you liked, that you’d like to learn from? That’s got to impact the way you lead the company too?

AYERS BADAN: Yeah, it’s funny. I never intended to be public. So I think I can remember the announcement video when I joined Barstool and I think I had like 5,000 followers on Twitter, and the announcement video went out and then all of a sudden I had 50,000 followers overnight. It was a little bit like getting a mutant chip put in you from being at Barstool where you’re getting comfortable being that exposed, is highly, highly uncomfortable. And it does change you, it makes you recognize how to talk to people. It teaches you a lot of good things. And then also I think makes you very guarded. 

SAFIAN: So you get a thicker skin, but you also get more wary about what, how you are? 

Definitely, you get a ticker skin, but then you also, you know, if I hadn’t worked at Barstool Sports, I never would have written a book. I think, you know, while I do think there’s some negatives about it, like I’m a harder kind of tweaked person from having been through that, I do also think it changed my life in really extraordinary in good ways. 

SAFIAN: When I hear Erika talk about cameras capturing the everyday drama at Barstool, I can’t decide whether it’s a brilliant idea for leadership or the worst idea. On the one hand, it’s the ultimate form of accountability, but there’s also the risk that every decision you make becomes performative. After the break, Erika shares more of her battle scars from Barstool, leading in the face of constant controversy and online scrutiny. Plus lessons she learned from a recent guest of ours, Steve Ballmer, and more. Stay with us. 

[AD BREAK]

SAFIAN: Before the break, CEO of Food52 and former CEO of Barstool Sports, Erika Ayers Badan shared her hard-earned lessons for building community around a brand. Now she explains how she dealt with charges of “toxic masculinity” at Barstool, which aspects of the Barstool culture she hopes to inject into Food52, and why media is what she calls an “insufferable” business. Let’s dive back in.

Copy LinkDealing with the offensive nature of Barstool

I have to ask you about some of the controversy, like the charges of toxic masculinity. One report described Barstool as misogyny and racism dressed as humor, like, what did you do when there were things you didn’t agree with that the company was doing or saying or like, how did you feel about all those kinds of conversations going on around you? 

AYERS BADAN: It was very noisy. 

SAFIAN: Very noisy? 

AYERS BADAN: It was noisy for, you know, nine years, eight, nine years. 

SAFIAN: Yeah. 

AYERS BADAN: When I joined Barstool, you know, I had never been a CEO. The chairing group and Dave took a chance on me. I walked in there. There was no P&L, they didn’t really have a running company.

Dave texted people and they knew to blog every 30 minutes. So there was a lot to build. But one of the things when I took the job, I was fired from two boards that I sat on. And I had a lot of people in my network be like, you just committed career suicide and it’s over, and how could you go work at that disgusting, terrible place? And you know what? Like, I loved that disgusting, terrible place. I found it to be the least sexist place I’ve ever worked. It was the least insidious place. I’ve worked at, you know, Microsoft. I worked at AOL. I worked at Yahoo. I’ve worked at a ton of ad agencies. I helped take a company public and all of those companies had way more issues that were way more hurtful that nobody ever talked about. So I really saw it differently from the inside. And I think one of the things that’s happening, you know, right now we’re kind of in a culture where it’s like condemnation by headline, where you don’t actually take the time to figure out what the real story is. It’s just your judgment and opinion is the headline and that’s that.

I really realized that I could not change people’s minds. You know, I remember being on Fox or something and I just basically was like, Barstool has offended everyone. Like it’s actually indiscriminate. They’ve offended everyone. So I could, I had the choice of like, I can either go apologize and try to make it right with everyone, only knowing that they were going to offend you the next day. Or I could try to build a professional environment, build a compelling business, build a durable system, which is ultimately what I did.

Copy LinkBuilding products for women

SAFIAN: And Food52, like, the feeling, the culture on it. I don’t want to say it’s more feminine ‘cause that’s probably oversimplifying, but like, was that part of the appeal to go to someplace that felt different? I mean, there are a lot more women on the executive team. There are more women leading there.

AYERS BADAN: Yeah, I think, you know, we had an all-female executive team for the majority of the time I was at Barstool, which, I think very few people recognize, I did want to go someplace more feminine.

I don’t know that it’s feminine though because of the people that work here or because our customers are women, which was the other thing I was really looking for.

You know, if you were to ask me, how do I market something or build a product for an 18 to 25 year old male, like, I could talk your ear off about that. And what I’m actually interested in is, I want to build products for women like me, or women who are younger than me, or women who are older than me. So that for me was a good next challenge and was something I was looking for.

Copy LinkErika Ayers Badan on her book, Nobody Cares About Your Career

SAFIAN: You mentioned your book, Nobody Cares About Your Career. Are there things that women in business especially could take from your book?

AYERS BADAN: Oh, I hope so. I mean, I think anyone, it’s not a book for women. 

I wrote the book because I was getting a lot of career questions. I get probably about 500 DMs a week across all the platforms of, ‘Hey, my boss is an idiot and what do I do about this?’ Or, you know, ‘How do I get promoted?’ Or ‘I just had a baby and I feel like I’m being discriminated against at work.’ Like whatever. But I really do think it comes down to the same things for everybody, which is your ego and your insecurity, and how do you get over both of those things to be better at work? I think a lot of times women at work tend to second guess themselves and tend to overanalyze themselves and hold themselves back. But I also, in fairness, think men do that a lot, too. So, the book really is designed to talk to everybody.

Copy LinkThe state of the media industry in 2024

SAFIAN: Both Food52 and Barstool sports are media businesses. I work in the media business. I’ve worked my whole career in the media business and it’s really a hard business. Like it’s a, in some ways it’s a terrible and kind of grueling business because you have to recreate your product over and over again and the market, where do you feel like the media business is now? And why are you drawn to being in this messy, relentless business? 

AYERS BADAN: Insufferable business – I love the media business. I feel so lucky, like, there’s not going to be people who come after us who work in the media business the way we work in the media business. Mostly because the media business is so screwed up and it’s so challenged, it’s not going to, it’s not sustainable the way it works now, but I find there is something infinitely challenging and kind of fulfilling about that blank page every day. And you’ve got to make something, you got to make something, you got to distribute it, you got to program it, you got to figure out if it works, if it doesn’t. And I like it.

SAFIAN: But it’s the same thing in the business model too, though, right? Like, you’ve got to keep coming up with what the new business model is too all the time.

AYERS BADAN: All the time. And I think, you know, I think the world has changed so much. The media business for so long has been, it’s been disintermediated, right?

You had the news stand and then a media consumer bought it or not, or in cable, or broadcast television, and the internet has just made it constant, and it’s death by a thousand cuts, or it’s an opportunity with a thousand swords.

SAFIAN: Yeah, right. You can reach everybody in a perfect way, except then you got to create everything for every platform and every person.

AYERS BADAN: Which is exhausting. Like, it’s so funny at Barstool, you know, we were lucky at Barstool because we were early-early on podcasting, and I think that’s a big thing in the media business at this point is you got to jump on to the next thing just as it’s starting and when it doesn’t look like it’s going to make you any money. And that was a big part of our success at Barstool. But anyways, at Barstool, everyone’s like, I want a podcast. I want a podcast. Give me a podcast. I want a podcast. And I used to be like, be careful what you ask for because the worst thing about having a podcast is having a podcast because you got to do it every week. You got to promote it every day. You got to do the clips and it really separates—

SAFIAN: You are holding up a mirror for me.

AYERS BADAN: It’s hard! It’s a pain in the ass. But it’s, that’s what it takes at this point. 

Copy LinkInside the success of Call Her Daddy

SAFIAN: Some of your podcasts, like they move beyond Barstool, right? Like Call Her Daddy went on to Spotify and that was right. And, and that was good. That was required. It’s like, you gotta keep moving.

AYERS BADAN: You gotta keep moving. I mean, I think that’s a huge success. I think it’s a huge compliment to Barstool. I think it’s a huge testament to Alex Cooper, who’s a phenomenal talent. You know, she had a contract at Barstool. It’s kind of like playing sports. Like you have your contract, you play. If you’re great. The GM rips it up and gives you a new one. And she was like, ‘Hey, I got an 80 million, you know, offer from the other team.’ And you’re like, I don’t have 80 million. So, but I, it’s the natural progression of it. And I think Alex worked hard to build that brand and to evolve it, and that’s also what’s so exciting about media right now is that it’s personality, it’s people. 

Copy LinkWhy Erika Ayers Badan is creating her own video series

SAFIAN: The video that Food52 posted when you joined as CEO, you wandering through the kitchen and, you know, messing up everybody’s prep work in the kitchen. 

AYERS BADAN: Yeah, it’s funny. I’m going to create a series called ‘Erika learns how to cook,’ which is like a disaster. It’s like the Super Grover where like Super Grover somehow figures it out, but you know messes everything up in the process, so we’ll see if people like that.

SAFIAN: But you put yourself back out there again as a personality for the brand.

AYERS BADAN: It’s funny, I filmed a pilot for this episode yesterday, and to me it’s like, it’s okay, fine, I made shrimp dumplings with a really talented person, but I came out of it, and I was like, oh my god, our video production, like, the lighting is off, and the camera’s off angle, and so, for me, it’s, I think there’s two reasons I’m interested in it.

One is I think a lot of times at work, people don’t walk the walk. Like they don’t try to figure something out firsthand. And so therefore they can’t really ever figure it out for business. And for me, understanding. first person, how we were doing video shoots. Like I’ll give you an example at Barstool, the camera is never off. And as a result, you never miss anything because the things that are actually interesting are the things no one intended to say. Here, so we shot the pilot, and they shut the camera off between. You know, when there’s a pause in the conversation or a break in the cooking, 

And I was like, why would you ever turn the camera off?

SAFIAN: Right. Those loose moments are sometimes the best. 

AYERS BADAN: That’s the whole show is like me not being able to figure it out or the other guy screwing up or saying something really stupid. But I wouldn’t have known something as small as they turn the camera off.

Then the other thing is that, you know, in really kind of injecting some, like, freshness and new perspective, I am not a professional in the food and home industry. So, I think it’s also like, ‘Hey, we can be loose. We can try new things. We can get new types of people here.’ So I’m really, at Microsoft, we used to call it “dog-fooding,” which I think is, you know, kind of a well known tech term, but you gotta eat your own dog food. And one of the things I’ve learned from Barstool is like, you have to do it yourself because if you don’t, you don’t understand how it’s done.

Copy LinkLessons from Steve Ballmer & Microsoft

SAFIAN: Was dog-fooding — a Steve Ballmer-ism? I just talked to Steve yesterday. 

AYERS BADAN: Ballmerism, doesn’t it? Isn’t he so funny? He’s so loud. 

SAFIAN: Not shy, not shy. Are there things you learn from working with him? Like to be more like him, to be less like him? 

AYERS BADAN: I’m not like Steve Ballmer. I don’t think at all. I mean, Steve Ballmer is, you know, one of the greatest executives of all time. He used to, when we were at Microsoft, he used to go sit in his car at lunch and listen to sports radio, which was like always the best thing ever.

Like you’d be peering out the window at, you know, Microsoft and he’s like walking out to his car to listen to the radio.

He has so much charisma, so much energy. Microsoft was, you know, a fascinating company. I always say that I learned how to say no at Microsoft. 

SAFIAN: Because they ask too much?

AYERS BADAN: There’s just so many people who have so many different agendas and they want so many different things done that you, if you don’t know how to say no at Microsoft, like you’re utterly screwed. 

Copy LinkThe power of saying ‘no’

SAFIAN: Well, and learning how to say no as a CEO, I mean, that’s mostly your job, right? Saying no to ideas and every now and then saying yes.

AYERS BADAN: I think so. You know, people are so reticent to give the answer no or to be like, I got told no, but no is really the second best answer to yes. And sometimes a better answer than yes. Most times a better answer than yes. Microsoft really taught me to be decisive and quick in that because the longer things languished and hung between yes and no, the more like anxiety and angst and inertia was created. So, you know, I like a fast no.

SAFIAN: And yeah, and why is no a better answer than yes?

AYERS BADAN: Because I think no, if you say yes to everything, you’re really doing nothing, and it’s quite easy to say yes, and I think a lot of times people say yes for the wrong reasons. They want to please other people, or they don’t want to offend someone. But when you say no, I think it indicates that you are much more clear on who you are, and what you want, and what you’re trying to achieve, and you’re far more protective of it. 

SAFIAN: It’s discipline, right? It enforces discipline on you and on everyone around you. And, and often no means you just have to go back and do more work before you get to say yes.

AYERS BADAN: Exactly. Like it’s not ready. It’s not where we need it to be. It’s not what we want it to look like. And I think a firm no is a really great thing. I think if more people said no, and you know, more swiftly and clearly, people would be in a much better place.

SAFIAN: Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

AYERS BADAN:  Awesome, thank you for having me.

SAFIAN: What sticks with me, listening to Erika, is how practical she is about the changing nature of the marketplace. There are risks she took at Barstool, and risks she’s prepared to take at Food52, because NOT taking those risks puts the company at a disadvantage.

As much as I lament the downsides of media as a business, I also think it’s a great model for our fast-changing times: we can’t hold onto old practices just because they “used” to work. We have to keep moving, keep creating, keep changing ourselves. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.