ESPN and Barstool have had a contentious relationship since the show “Barstool Van Talk” got canceled after one episode due to the controversy surrounding the Barstool brand.
The relationship is only going to worsen after the Sports Business Journal reported on Monday that ESPN and the NCAA helped to kill a deal for Barstool to sponsor a college football bowl game.
Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini told SI.com, however, that the NCAA was on board with Barstool sponsoring a bowl game, but due to pressure by ESPN, the NCAA decided not to partner with Barstool.
Our understanding was that the NCAA was fine with it, that this was good to go. To be fair, we flagged this during the process with them. Are you sure ESPN is gonna want to broadcast this? You should check on that. This is not something we were surprised by. We flagged it. We were obviously hopeful this could work, but we had anticipated this would perhaps be a bigger issue.”
Nardini claims t that the talks with Mobile, Ala. bowl people were pretty far along before the deal fell through. However, ESPN’ s contract with the bowl game states that another media company can’t be the sponsor, so the deal seemingly never be completed in the first place.
This is a win-win for Barstool by negotiating to sponsor the bowl game they were either going to be successful and have ESPN have to promote Barstool across their airwaves, or they were going to get rejected, like what ultimately has happened and they can make themselves out to be the victims, who were stopped from sponsoring a bowl game by ESPN.
Barstool President Dave Portnoy has already taken the victimization approach in an attempt to martyr Barstool Sports and rally their fanbase against ESPN, calling them scared of Barstool.
Flip the page to see Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy respond to the report of ESPN blocking Barstool from sponsoring a bowl game.