Bauer Hockey becomes the latest brand to enable Barstool's culture of harassment

With this partnership, Bauer Hockey is practicing the worst kind of corporate hypocrisy.

When the best female hockey players in North America decided to boycott professional leagues in their bid to create a more sustainable and equitable future for the women’s game, Bauer Hockey, a premier hockey equipment provider, stood by their side.

Mary-Kay Messier, the company’s Vice President of Marketing, said at the time the company truly believed that a boycott was the only “sustainable, viable option” for creating a new league.  It was a nice show of solidarity from a major corporation backing not just some of the athletes they support, but the entire women’s game.

A little over a month ago, Bauer Hockey announced during the 2020 All-Star Game that the company was making a long-term investment in girls’ and women’s hockey in the St. Louis area through the All-Star Legacy project.  At the public announcement of the initiative, Messier spoke about the company’s commitment to empowering the women’s game.

“At Bauer, we recognize the importance of providing more opportunity for girls to play hockey,” Messier said. “That’s why we create programming and content that attracts and retains girls, which enhances our game and helps to ensure the future of our sport. Toward these goals, we have developed female-specific learn-to-play programs and women-specific marketing campaigns that help to inspire young girls with role models. ”

It’s clear from just these two recent examples that Bauer Hockey presents itself as a forward thinking corporation that cares, if not about women specifically, then certainly about the company’s ability to monetize the women’s game.

That’s what makes its recently announced apparel partnership with Barstool Sports, a website that has trafficked in misogyny and bullying, all the more baffling. Announced earlier this week, Bauer Hockey is collaborating with the popular Barstool hockey podcast Spittin’ Chiclets to offer a line of merchandise that features the Spittin’ Chiclets logo, the Barstool logo, and Bauer Hockey branding.

Bauer’s decision may seem like an innocuous attempt at partnering with a hockey podcast, but to think that would be to ignore Barstool’s long history of unacceptable behavior, especially towards women.

Frankly, there are too many incidents to list, as new ones continue to crop up. For a brief overview, there’s the time founder Portnoy referred to former ESPN anchor Sam Ponder as a “bible thumping freak” whose job was to “make men hard.”  There’s also the targeted sexual harassment of former Deadspin reporter Laura Wagner,  and the cyberbullying of comedian Miel Bredouw who had the temerity to ask Barstool to stop stealing her jokes.

Barstool has proven to be a  toxic space where misogyny is allowed to flourish while its staffers and fans defend such discourse as “satire” and humor.

Despite Barstool’s long history of vile behavior, corporations like Bauer Hockey, either through ignorance or apathy, continue to legitimize its existence with the hope of generating revenue (we reached out to Bauer and a spokesman said that the company “declines to comment at this time.”)  By collaborating with Barstool, Bauer has compromised its message of supporting women’s equality and empowerment for whatever revenue it can eke out of an apparel partnership.

Spittin’ Chiclets may not feature Barstool founder Dave Portnoy specifically, but it is a part of the Barstool ecosystem, and uses the same playbook of targeted harassment.  Just a few weeks ago, Spittin’ Chiclets host and former NHL player Paul Bissonnette called out his former teammate and mental health advocate Daniel Carcillo for allegedly calling him the n-word while they were players.  Barstool personalities have a cult-like following among fans, who have proven themselves willing to go to extremes in defending the site and its hosts.  In the ensuing online spat, readers made such serious threats that Carcillo that he reached out for police protection.

On the same day that the Barstool and Bauer Hockey apparel line was announced The Daily Beast also reported on Portnoy and his fans harassing a NASCAR reporter for daring to criticize the site with a single sentence.  NASCAR, another official partner of Barstool, has remained notably silent about the incident.

Barstool and its minions thrive on the social media firestorm, taking every opportunity to meme, harass and scare critics into shutting up. This has become part of the fun for them, a never-ending series of battles they must wage to keep readers entertained. The brands who chose to partner with this company, which include NASCAR and the Boston Bruins, help uphold that system. Regardless of all the other things that Bauer Hockey does, like support women’s hockey and fund programs in underserved neighborhoods, profiting off of a partnership like this upholds an insidious culture of hate and misogyny.

At the St.Louis event where Bauer proudly stood up and declared its support for supporting women, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman trotted out the league’s favorite talking point when it comes to marketing the game to an underserved audience.

“Young women and girls across the St. Louis area will now have an even greater opportunity to learn hockey and experience all the benefits that come with being involved with our game,” he said. “Our core belief is that ‘Hockey is For Everyone.’

The league’s Hockey is for Everyone slogan, backed up by its equipment partner Bauer, has been a constant, albeit simplistic, refrain that has been a huge part of the NHL’s messaging over the past few years. The league has leaned into it to push back against the idea that the the sport’s target demographic is mainly white men.

This message, with or without the NHL’s approval, also appears on a new line of Barstool t-shirts.  Barstool, again, uses the c-word, and  posts consistently about objectifying women’s bodies.

It’s clear that Barstool is a cesspool yet Penn National Gaming recently purchased a $163 million stake in the brand, elevating Barstool’s overall value to about $450 million. The site has a large audience and a sizable reach, all of which makes corporations like Bauer Hockey blind to Barstool’s moral repugnance.

With this partnership, Bauer Hockey is practicing the worst kind of corporate hypocrisy. It is trying to burnish its reputation as an advocate for women’s sports while upholding, with explicit support of Barstool, an environment that is extremely hostile towards women. For a little bit of revenue and market exposure gained from a handful of t-shirts sales, Bauer Hockey is cosigning away everything that it otherwise hoped to achieve in making the game of hockey a welcoming and empowering space, not just for women, but for everyone.

There are not two sides to this issue. It’s clear what Barstool represents. Bauer Hockey needs to decide on which side it wants to stand.