A Lot Of Things Happened With "E-Gaming" At Barstool Sports This Year - Good, Bad, And Ugly
The good? There's a lot. The bad? Not so much. The ugly? We'll just leave that with ROTC Dave. But it's been a long, grateful year for various reason. Before we look forward, we look back: On January 15th of this year, our Lord and Savior David Portnoy said that "We should have 'E-Games' at Barstool - We don't". You can read the synopsis here:
Now that we are at the end of 2020, I will be the first to admit I still don't know what the fuck "E-Games" are, and neither does reality, but at the time Barstool Gametime might have been a lost soul wandering the world of gaming still not exactly sure what we were doing. Sure, we worked with the likes of Ninja, Rockstar, Hector Rodriguez, Ubisoft, Nadeshot, Activision and countless other HUGE people and companies in that young buckin’ “E-Games” world. Gametime even garnered a few views here and there:
From Jan 15th blog:
– 75K followers on Twitch who follow original gaming who have garnered over 8.5 million views, all of which blow the balls off of ESPN, B/R, and other competitive “Sports Entertainment” companies– 80K on Twitter, 365K+ on IG, 70K+ Subs on YT, 300K+ on TikTok (and 10K+ for GeneralSmitty1v1 on the Tok, be sure to follow him)
Well, soldiers, I'm happy to say that 2020 was Gametime's greatest year yet. And that is thanks to all the hard work from everyone who has helped, even for a little, behind the scenes (Devlin, Logan, TJ, Bren, Blaise, Kareem, Unfiltered, Aaron, Riley, Ben, all the moderators on Twitch and anyone who has clipped/submitted highlights) to people at Barstool who have stepped up and helped with the streams throughout the pandemic and beyond (Honk, Balls, Big Cat, WSD, Big T, the Among Us crew, and more). I've streamed on twitch.tv/barstoolsports this year for, wait for it, 1,431 hours. That's 59.5 DAYS and basically two full months of my 2020 existence being live on Twitch. Not setting up, dealing with tech crap, blogging, being on radio, or doing literally anything else. Just being LIVE. It's a grind, especially going through this pandemic with a wedding getting moved around and a baby on the way. But I'm deeply thankful and comforted by the fact so many people are committed into making this a success.
Since that blog on Jan 15th, we're now up to 116K followers on Twitch which have accumulated an astounding 22+ MILLION views, Twitter is at 115K, IG grew to 479K and there are more than 1.6 MILLION followers on TikTok. The growth this year has been insane. And these numbers don't even come close to reflecting what Honk/Big Cat/Duggs are pulling in on Twitch.tv/PardonMyTake, what Grinelli is doing on twitch.tv/spittenchiclets, and what Frankie and Trent are doing on youtube.com/foreplay with the Barstool Golf Society. Not to mention the countless guests we've had on the platform across the board. It's all amazing gravy. Oh, and a very own official Esports team/brand known as the Barstool HooliganZ.
Not to mention developing a gaming tournament that, although the winning team was dripped in controversy, was a resounding success and will be featured on the Barstool platform for hopefully years to come. Long Live The Mop.
There's a billion other moments I'm missing out on and I'm sure there's more I need to thank, but we sincerely appreciate you for joining us for this ride that started way back when in 2016. We'll see you in 2021. Till then, we leave you with some other great times we've had in 2020:
Top Ten Barstool Gaming Moments Of 2020:
PS - And my personal favorite video of all-time, The Ballad Of The Balls:
