Portnoy, who had stayed on with Barstool after its acquisition, welcomed the new arrangement for restoring editorial freedom he felt he’d lost because of the highly regulated nature of the gambling industry. To make way for the new ESPN partnership, Penn will sell Barstool back to Portnoy for just $1 and 50% of any proceeds from a future sale, according to the The Hollywood Reporter. Penn’s sportsbooks had previously been branded with Barstool Sports, the sports media company founded by Dave Portnoy, and which Penn fully acquired in February. “It was somewhat inevitable that at some point, ESPN was going to jump into this industry.” “ESPN has been out there as a sort of white whale for a long time,” says Oklahoma State University management professor John Holden, who studies the sports media and gambling industries, tells Fortune.
