Clay Travis Dishes on the Success of Outkick, Selling the Company to Fox, and Co-Hosting Limbaugh’s Radio Slot

Clay Travis spoke out about how his sports and politics website grew into an expansive brand that started a bidding war when it came time to sell the company.

On this week’s episode of Mediaite podcast The Interview, editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin spoke with Travis about his rise to success. Travis, who started his career as a lawyer but quit soon after to write about SEC football, founded Outkick in 2011. He dedicated his life to developing the website, working relentlessly to build its audience.

“If I had gotten obsessed with the metrics of how many people were consuming my content, I would have gotten discouraged long before I did,” Travis said. “I think you have to be out there every single day grinding, putting forth the effort. It’s a job, and I think a lot of people don’t value the job aspect of it. I mean, I worked 15, 16 hours a day for over a decade.”

Outkick has embraced sports and politics coverage with almost equal vigor, and a lean into politics secured Travis regular appearances on Fox News — where he is now a contributor — as well as a coveted gig co-hosting Rush Limbaugh’s old radio time slot.

Despite his turn into controversial political coverage, Travis has found his sports commentary still draws more fire.

“I have found in my career that people are angrier about my sports opinions than they are about my political opinions,” he said.

In 2021, Travis sold Outkick to Fox Corporation, a deal that has seen the site grow its audience — and scoop up prominent names in the conservative media world, including Curt Schilling and Tomi Lahren.

“I had three options,” Travis said when asked about the sale to Fox. “I’m big on sports gambling for people who aren’t familiar with me, and I did an FS1 show originally called Lock It In, later Fox Bet Live Daily for four years.”

On those shows, Travis discussed sports and made gambling picks every day.

“Prior to that, I had been all in on sports gambling for a long time. I loved following the line, making picks, being involved in the gambling aspect of the business. So to me, there were three real options as sort of the sports gambling tide took off in the sports media universe,” Travis explained.

One of those options was following the Barstool Sports method and starting their own sportsbook.

“We could continue to ride out the affiliate model, which was incredibly lucrative. As every state comes on, you get paid based on every new subscriber who comes on board. Or we could sell and partner with a bigger media entity that had a larger sports gambling strategy,” Travis said.

As the founder of the company, Travis weighed each option heavily.

“Ultimately we had a bunch of bidders in the sports gambling space. I thought Fox as the partner made the most sense,” Travis said.

“You have said before you wanted to make $100 million. You sold Outkick for all cash. How much money did you make?” McLaughlin asked.

“That’s in the NDA provision,” Travis laughed.

“Comfortably a hundred million dollars,” Travis said. “When I would say that, people would be like, ‘You’re never gonna have a hundred million!’ You know, I’m to the point now where it’s like, ‘Okay, you’ve got a hundred million. What do you do now?’ Kind of going forward, which is a good spot to be in. The stock market could be cut in half and my value could go down substantially, but, you know, I’ve got more money than I ever thought that I would have.”

Download the full episode here, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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