Barstool Sports CEO Erika Ayers Badan steps down, expresses gratefulness to founder Dave Portnoy

Erika Ayers Badan is transferring on to her subsequent problem after she says she “exceeded” her “wildest expectations” as CEO of Barstool Sports.

Ayers Badan introduced in an emotional publish on social media Tuesday morning that she’s stepping down from her role as the highest head of the extremely widespread sports activities and popular culture web site.

“I feel super sad about it,” Ayers Badan stated in a video posted to X, the previous Twitter platform. “I was just crying on Metro North which is one of the least attractive things imaginable. I wear too much eye makeup for that, but it’s been a wild run.”

“I am so grateful and feeling sentimental,” she continued. “I think back to 2016, and they went through 70 candidates and all that. I kind of think either nobody wanted the job and I did, or they were stupid enough to not see what it could be and I thought that I could make something of it.”

Swampscott native Dave Portnoy, who based the corporate in 2003 in Milton, employed Ayers Badan in 2016. At the time, Barstool had been within the midst of transferring its headquarters from Boston to New York City.

Shortly after Ayers Badan posted her resolution, Portnoy took to social media and refuted her declare that “nobody wanted the job.”

“Only correction is everybody wanted the job,” Portnoy stated. “We just didn’t like anybody except her. There is no doubt @erika_ was the perfect and probably only fit for us.  It’s been quite a run and we couldn’t have done it without her. She was everything I dreamed she’d be and more in a CEO.”

Ayers Badan highlighted how “the expectations or desire that Barstool would fail were really high” on the time she took over. But over the previous eight years, the corporate grew 5,000% in income, she stated.

In an electronic mail to staff, Ayers Badan, former chief advertising and marketing officer of AOL, rehashed moments of her tenure together with how the Barstool Fund donated $40 million to small enterprise house owners who had been reeling from the consequences of the pandemic.

After promoting Barstool to on line casino and on-line playing operator PENN for $550 million, Portnoy acquired the corporate again final 12 months for $1.

“I feel like the work I came here to do is done,” Ayers Badan stated. “I am so proud of it. Everything that I could have ever imagined and wanted to achieve, we did. I feel so good about Dave. I’m so grateful to Dave for giving me a chance in the first place. I trusted him and I still trust him. He’s the right person to make this a pirate ship.”

In an interview on Barstool Radio later Tuesday, Ayers Badan mirrored on how she got here to her resolution to step down.

“Does it still scare me? Is there a challenge that I haven’t done here? That’s where I really got to [be] like ‘God, I gave it all. I left it all on the field. I gave everything I have,’” she stated. “I want to go scare myself again, and I think I will.”

Employees shared their reactions to Ayers Badan stepping down on social media all through the day many reminiscing on how a lot she meant to their particular person careers and to the corporate as an entire.

“An emotional day and the end of an era,” wrote Maria Ciuffo, a podcast host who began as an intern in 2016. “ I was the only other girl in the office at the time and she answered every text of mine with patience and didn’t fire me for being an idiot and for that I’m forever thankful.”