Dave Portnoy is an American internet star, blogger. He is known to many as the founder of Barstool Sports. As of 2021, Dave Portnoy net worth is estimated to be $130 million.

Dave Portnoy Early Life

Portnoy was born on March 22, 1977, in Swampscott, Massachusetts to Michael and Linda Kaufman. He went to Swampscott High School and then the University of Michigan where he graduated with a degree in education in 1999.

Dave Portnoy Career

After graduating from college, he moved to Boston and began working at Yankee Group, an IT market research firm. After working there for four years, he decided to start his own business, Barstool Sports. Initially, it offered gambling advertisements and fantasy sports projections before moving into other topics.

The company’s blog which was launched in 2007 grew a massive hit. AOL began broadcasting their content on the site in 2014. On January 7, 2016, Portnoy announced that The Chernin Group had purchased a majority stake of Barstool and the headquarters would be moving to New York City. After that, he looked into the creative control over content management.

His company Barstool was valued at $100 million in 2018, with $25 million invested in it by Chernin. He then brought another major stakeholder, Penn National Gaming in 2018. The Gaming Company bought a 36% stake for $163 million. His company is now worth more than $450 million.

In addition to Barstool Sports, he also created an internet show “One Bite With Davey Pageviews”. The show shows him reviewing Pizza. He opened the show with the goal of reviewing every pizza place in Manhattan in 2017. He has also collaborated with a tech company to launch the One Bite app where the user can find the best pizza place near them.

Portnoy is no short of controversies. In 2015, he was arrested by New York City police after he and three Barstool employees handcuffed one another on the floor of NFL headquarters. He was also detained in a Mercedes-Benz Stadium holding cell for a portion of Super Bowl LII. In 2019, the National Labor Relations Board started an investigation into Portnoy on charges that he illegally threatened to fire his workers if they unionize. He later settled with the National Labor Relations Board.

Dave Portnoy Net Worth Skyrockets with Penn National Acquisition

In January 2020, Penn National Gaming paid $450 million for a 36% stake in Barstool Sports. In the beginning, the total amount of cash transacted will be $163 million. Penn National has the ability to pay an additional $62 million over the next three years to increase its stake to 50%. Following the initial transaction, The Chernin Group’s 60 percent stake was reduced to 36 percent, matching Penn National’s stake. Portnoy and a few key executives, including CEO Erika Nardini, still own the remaining 28 percent.

In the days following the announcement, the stock reached an all-time high of $38. Unfortunately, Penn’s stock plummeted in the aftermath of the global Coronavirus outbreak. By the 17th of March, the stock had fallen to $7 per share. This represents an 81 percent decrease from the peak.

Dave Portnoy Involvement with New ETF in the Stock Market

The VanEck Vectors Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ), which is backed by Dave Portnoy, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

According to the fund’s prospectus, the ETF seeks to track the performance of 75 large cap U.S. stocks “with the highest degree of positive investor sentiment and bullish perception based on content aggregated from online sources including social media, news articles, blog posts, and other alternative datasets.”

Dave Portnoy’s involvment with this new ETF will contribute greatly to his net worth. It is still unclear how much of the management fees and/or other compensation he received from VanEck he received. One thing is clear — he doesn’t work for free.

Dave Portnoy Net Worth

As of 2021, Dave Portnoy net worth is estimated to be $130 million. Barstool Sports is his biggest income source. He recently revealed that his net worth of $100 million has been bought down due to Covid-19. He wrote “I think my net worth was around $100 million. Literally cut in half, maybe more now”. There is no doubt his net worth will reach that monumental figure once again.