Pardon My Cheesesteak? Barstool Sports Trademarks For New Restaurant: Here Are The Details

A sports media company has filed a trademark for a restaurant brand. Here’s the latest.

What Happened: Sports fans familiar with Barstool Sports and its founder Dave Portnoy have grown accustomed to getting reviews of pizzas with his popular “One Bite” reviews. Barstool Sports could soon be expanding its food reach from pizza to cheesesteak.

Trademark attorney Josh Gerben of Gerben Law shared a trademark filing from Barstool Sports Inc on Twitter Inc TWTR. On April 12, Barstool Sports applied for a trademark for “Pardon My Cheesesteak.” The trademark says the company intends to open a take-out restaurant under the name.

Barstool Sports hosts a podcast called “Pardon My Take” featuring Big Cat and PFT Commenter.

Related Link: Dave Portnoy Explains The History Of One Bite And His Favorite Pizza Joints 

Why It’s Important: Barstool Sports, which is partially owned by Penn National Gaming, Inc. PENN, has built a loyal following of sports fans around the world.

The company partnered with Happi Foodi in 2021 to launch ready-to-heat frozen pizzas nationwide including in thousands of Walmart Inc WMT stores. Portnoy encouraged followers to “fight back against cancel culture” and buy One Bite pizzas when he faced various allegations from a Business Insider story.

One Bite pizzas saw record sales on the weekend of Portnoy’s push with revenue up 50%, according to the Barstool Sports founder.

“It was our biggest weekend ever. We sold 50k pizzas in two days,” Portnoy said at the time.

Barstool Sports continues to push its brand into new segments, which included the launch of the Barstool Sportsbook sports betting app. Penn National has big plans to continue growth for Barstool Sports moving forward.

In the most recent earnings report, Penn said Barstool Sports had a record year for financials and audience metrics in fiscal 2021. The social media reach of Barstool Sports passed 144 million in 2021, up 25% year-over-year.

Penn National CEO Jay Snowden said that Barstool Sports expanded its reach with frozen pizza, men’s grooming and sports bars. Penn plans on acquiring the remainder of Barstool Sports in early 2023.

“We look towards acquiring the remainder of Barstool Sports Inc, which will highly complement theScore’s strong media presence, sports brand and loyal audience, accelerating our transformation into a major media and entertainment company,” Snowden said.

PENN Price Action: Penn National shares are trading down 0.87% at $36.94 on Monday versus a 52-week range of $35.90 to $104.91.

Photo: James via Flickr Creative Commons