The story begins on a rainy Thursday night in New York where David Jones and I are talking about ways we can create some fresh content for our brand. These types of calls happen a couple times a week and typically lead down a path of normalcy where we add a feature to our site or post something on social media, but this wasn’t your normal quarantine night.
After an hour of spitballing ideas, the subject of unboxing comes up. For those who don’t know, unboxing is an event David Portnoy the founder of Barstool Sports has been partaking in for about a week. It’s a nightly show he hosts out of his apartment on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. David Portnoy, aka El Presidente, aka the founder of the most powerful sports media agency in the world has gone viral so many times prior but this is an event like no other. While others are trying to figure out ways to stay engaged with their community and grow their brand Barstool Sports does it effortlessly and natural. Unboxing is an event full of surprises because Dave literally has no script and is simply opening boxes from all his die hard fans and some random haters. The gifts flow in by the hundreds and range from evil clowns, alcohol, swag from brands, and every weapon you can possibly imagine.
Once David and I committed to the idea of sending Dave a box, the crazy ideas started flowing in. We agreed we couldn’t send something corny, something he already received, and not just some random swag without a story. We had some good ideas and one of my favorites was to send him “Wilson” the volleyball from castaway so he had a friend during quarantine but it didn’t make the cut, we needed something better.
I knew I didn’t want to fall in the played out crowd of “Hey lets just send Dave random swag that doesn’t fit him or some wild weaponry”. Thats not my style at all, the whole time I been on quarantine I been trying to think of ways to help people. I been pitching my horse charity to the NBA for over month and it finally happened, I have had calls into NBC to try to get a at home charitable contest for the NFL and NBA which I’m still waiting on, and now I have my chance to present something charitable to Barstool. My wife has traveled to Africa in the past and lived in the bush with Rangers under the watch of Damien Mander ( Badass man right here, look him up if you want to see the mindset of another type of leader ). She spent 3 weeks protecting animals from poachers and learned how to train like the rangers do. So I woke her up and had her find me the best organizations where I could make a charitable donation in Dave’s name. So after hours of searching different organizations with the help of my wife we landed on SaveTheChildren.org and sponsored a child which oddly enough had the same name of my wife.
Now its 4am and I’m going through the process of packaging. I went the extra mile of getting creative by gift wrapping the box to make ours stand out and figured it would be more visible in the room full of 300 boxes. I used a diaper box as well thinking it would connect the dots some more but as we will see later that was a mistake.
So I woke up the next morning and got suited up with a mask and gloves to head to UPS. Mind you this is the first time I got in my car in over a month. We cancelled my daughters doctors appointment, only had food delivered from the supermarket, and have been on about 5 walks total. Did my wife think I was crazy for denying any of us to leave the house for a month and now I’m leaving the house to ship another man a gift, YES but she believes in me so she gave me a pass and just laughed at me.
Now it was a waiting game and by waiting game I meant it was me watching the tracking update every hour until 24 hours later it got updated to Delivered! Did we have the right address? Has the package arrived at Dave’s apartment? we had no clue on either but our investigative due diligence felt right. So we huddled up next to our computers on Saturday night and began watching hour, after hour, after hour waiting to see our package. After 3 hours into the show and a bloody finger we finally see our package being opened. We made it, Dave comments about the gift wrapping saying it’s a nice touch which made me smile. Then boom he sees the diaper box and says “what the F*ck is this? Was this even meant for me? and literally throws the box to the side in the garbage pile. What a crushing blow, to make it to the live stage after days of planning, hours of watching, only to get booed off the stage. David Jones and I paced our houses for hours trying to understand what the hell just happened to us. We were praying he would pick back up the box and bring it back to life and we get the unveiling we planned on but the story was over, the show ended, and our project completely failed.
We were exhausted, frustrated, and went to sleep feeling like failures but we agreed we had to regroup and try again. Of course with no damn diaper box! We simply got too cute. The worst part about the whole delay was the fact it was now Easter Sunday and no mail was being delivered again til Monday which meant we had to remain patient til Tuesday. So off I went back to UPS on Monday morning with the simplest of boxes lightly sealed with some swag and our big present. We fixed our mistake, had our address right, and now all we had to do was wait another 24 hours.
So after another day of patiently waiting and watching tracking updates I got the confirmation update that the box was delivered. I told David the good news and shortly after Dave gave us a video preview of the boxes lined up in his apartment and we spotted our box. We were alive, we were in the building!
Once again David and I locked in to the event, which now has reached UnboxingX (10th episode) and we sat like little kids waiting to open their Christmas presents. Only this time we were the ones waiting for our Barstool commander to open our package. After another 3 hours of waiting our package arrived to the chopping block. Such a simple Amazon box lightly taped for easy opening what could go wrong? For the past week now David and I were waiting for his reaction for our wild present. What would Portnoy do when he saw the gift, would he laugh? would he be like why the hell did you get me this? I guess the closest comparison would be asking a girl on date in the 7th grade. We had the courage to think out of the box to send him this gesture, which we thought was the best idea but who knows how the man would react. Nobody else had an idea similar to ours. It was creative, one of a kind, and provided a positive message to the stoolies of the world who were watching.
So he opens the box, reads the letter I typed up for him and he seemed shocked, surprised, and confused as hell again.
The letter read
El Presidente,
Congratulations! You are now the proud sponsor of a little girl. Her name is Priscilla.
Welcome to the club. #GirlDad
Be Safe,
Jason Mezrahi : Win Daily Family
We thought we made the message clear but he never got to page two and which showed the picture of Priscilla and the Soccer Ball I purchased through the organization as well . To be honest after 10 days of unboxing, and another 3 hour day, I probably would have been confused as well.
But luckily for David and I he looked past the confusing message and saw my Win Daily book, a hoody, and the hat. He says “Win Daily I kinda like that hat, I lose daily… this is a cool hat I will wear that, cool sweatshirt thanks” and he rocks the Win Daily hat for the next 15 minutes. Unfortunately the paper showing him Priscilla’s information was left in the box or dropped on the floor, I truly can’t tell by the video.
David and I are now the shocked ones. It’s an obvious win, the most influential man in the sports media world is rocking your branded hat while 70,000 people are watching, but he once again missed the real present. “What the hell” we say, we both tell each other the ultimate goal was to get him to rock our swag right? Yea so I guess we won Dave Portnoy rocked our hat while thousands of people were watching.
People now are randomly texting me, then we post the video on our social media pages, and the messages keep rolling in. It was a victory but still a part of me wants him to know what we really got him. But on we went celebrating the victory to the best of my ability. We tell the rest of our team and they are laughing at how we got on Barstool. David and I go to sleep hoping he either finds the paper he missed or he wakes up with the hat on and rocks it during his next Day Trading session in the morning.
Yes the man is a genius, he not only has a captive audience on his unboxing show, he also runs a show day trading the stock market from 9am-4pm everyday. Some people hate on him for various reasons, I never met him personally, but I 100% respect the hustle, innovation, and leader he is. The dude is a game changer and built an empire off of pure hustle, hard work, and dedication to his vision.
So we wake up to another quarantined day excited to see if he is rocking our hat. The hat makes perfect sense, he has been losing daily in the stock market so why not switch up the juju and wear the Win Daily hat? As an oddsmaker myself, I told David I give us about a 5% shot of him wearing the hat during day trading. Unfortunately we woke up to him wearing his newly gifted Jeff Bagwell jersey (which is straight fire) and his goldfish chain which was hysterical (most creative gift after ours of course) . On a positive note our scenes with the Win Daily hat made the highlight reel so we got more cool shots all thanks to the legend Dave Portnoy.
Thats the end of the story and how it all happened. El Presidente rocked a Win Daily Hat! The question still remains will Dave Portnoy ever know what I truly gifted him? Well maybe when the info package from Save the Children arrives at his apartment in 10-14 days he may remember the name Priscilla and be that son of bitch from Win Daily actually sponsored a child to me.
