I enjoy reading those comments just as much. But it was usually just those top 2 out of ~50 with the other 48 being racist, sexist, bigoted garbage.

I don’t think the reason Dave is getting rid of comments is to make Barstool a more welcoming place for black/asian people and women.

He is acting like Erica, Chernin and all his ‘business’ people told him to keep the comment section. That Barstool will lose a lot of clicks/views if it closes and they won’t be able to charge as much for ads. Which partly is true.

My conspiracy theory is that it went down the completely opposite way. Erica/Chernin and the biz people actually pressured Dave to close it.

There’s absolutely no way the amount of clicks they will lose as a result will have any significant impact on their advertising rates. It will be minimal at most.

However, the amount of potential ad deals they could have closed is astronomically higher. But when these companies legal/quality control/whatever examine Barstool to see if its safe to advertise their brand with Barstool, the instant they see the N word in a comment, they immediately black list Barstool.

I can only imagine how many companies have expressed interest in advertising but pulled a 180 after seeing the comment section knowing full well in this PC world that batshit crazy websites like Deadspin will write an article calling out the brand for supporting a site that “tolerates” racism”.