In this conversation Sam Parr recounts a viral Barstool Sports marketing experiment that turned a cameraman, Dana, into the founder of a pop‑up brand called Zillion Beers. After a joking tweet about drinking "a zillion beers," Dana challenged his boss, Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, to sell merch. Portnoy offered escalating cash bets (e.g., $10k for $30k sales, $100k for $1 M sales). Using only Twitter, Dana grew his follower count from ~1,000 to ~150,000 in ten days, spun multiple real‑time storylines (dating drama, rival confrontations), and leveraged community participation via Venmo tips. The campaign generated roughly $1.6 million in merchandise revenue, demonstrated the power of personality‑driven, bet‑based incentives, and served as a live “clinic” on rapid, viral marketing tactics.
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and in 10 days sold $1.6 million in merch.
That's this zillion beers thing. What happened? What is this?
Okay, so Barstool just put a clinic on marketing, on how to do marketing right.
Okay, so tell me the story.
I don't know what—
I don't get what happened.
Barstool Sports— we'll, we'll dumb it down— Barstool Sports, um, media company like ESPN or Bleacher Report but personality-driven and more ESPN after 3 beers, basically. Yeah, it's just like comedy. It's more— it's like SNL. It's more comedy and fiction than it is, uh, whatever.
Uh, it's not journalism.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes it is. Some— I mean, every once in a while they'll have something amazing, but yeah, no, it's, it's just a bunch of like— it's for the average man by the average man is their tagline. Okay, um, they have a guy, he's a camera guy, and Henry's a big fan, so he knows too. They have a guy, a camera guy named Dana. Dana was getting made fun of one day, like 10 days ago, for drinking too many beers. And he said a line like he tweeted out and he said some line like, I'm just a guy who drinks a zillion beers. And he starts like talking about zillion beers over the course of a day. And his boss, Dave Portnoy, was like, dude, you're a cameraman. You're not a content guy. Quit the zillion beer stuff.
Yeah. Stop trying to make it a thing.
Stop trying to make it a thing. And Dana goes, Dave, I bet you I can sell like $30,000 worth of Zillion Dollar Beer merch. And Dave goes, if you do that, I'll give you $10 grand or something like that. And they blew past it. Then after a few days of this going back and forth, it gets to the point of if you sell $1 million worth of merch in the next 5 days, I'll give you $100 grand.
Right.
He has— he hit it.
He crossed that.
He got $1.5 million. And how long do you think that lasted?
So he created a brand essentially on the fly.
So he created a brand called Zillion Beers and in 10 days sold $1.6 $6 million in merch. And throughout this process, pretty much the, the way in which they sold merch was pretty much all Twitter. And so I was watching, like, as a marketing person, I was looking at— Dana went from having 1,000 followers on Twitter to whatever he has now, maybe 150,000 followers on Twitter in 10 days. And he would get into, like, like, fights. Like, so for example, he met this girl on Twitter and she flew out and they started, like, talking about how they're dating now even though they just met. And then the ex-boyfriend starts tweeting at him and he's like, all right, me and you, we're going to get in a fight at Rough 'n Rowdy. I put $100 grand on the line. And so that, that became a storyline. There's like a dozen different storylines all just happening like a weekend, basically. Yeah. And everyone was following it in real time. I didn't go out on Valentine's Day because I was just refreshing Twitter and just like reading about all of this. It was amazing.
Yeah, that is amazing. I saw it happening. I didn't understand the full backstory.
Yeah, I saw it happening. I, I don't even drink beer and I bought $150 worth of Zillion Beer merch.
Yeah, just out of respect for, for what was going on.
I thought it was great to support the cause.
It's like a, it's like a rowdy Kickstarter that he did. I love it.
Yeah. And so I think the takeaway here is like they, Barstool, put on a clinic of like how fast you can do stuff. Yeah.
And people want to be a part of something. And so it's one thing to just sell merch. It's another thing to be a part of something, which is like, oh my God, once it gets the momentum of we're going for a million, holy shit, we're going to do it. My boss bet against me. Help me beat the man. I think it like it just caught this wave of— it wasn't about the merch, obviously. Like none of it was about the merch.
It was about putting it into Dave's face and being like, oh, you doubted him. We're all going to get behind him. And this guy, Dana, the guy behind it, he's like a total bro, but he seems like a really good person. And it was fun watching him, like, be excited, watching him win. Yeah. And people, He put his Venmo out there and I Venmoed him like $50. People Venmoed him money collectively. He got like $3,000 and he went and blew it all out a fancy restaurant. And it was funny seeing like a redneck eat at a steak restaurant in Manhattan.
