Why BroBible's staff bought the website back from the media company that had acquired it
Publisher Brandon Wenerd explained how breaking free of BroBible's parent company allowed it to adapt to the current media climate.
When the staff behind BroBible bought their company back in 2018, the move felt less like a business transaction and more like a band reuniting after years under the wrong label. The site had spent several years inside a venture-funded media holding company, gaining access to resources but losing the scrappy, independent identity that first helped it stand out in the late 2000s blogosphere.
Today, BroBible employs 16 people, has diversified revenue across programmatic advertising, events, and branded social content, and continues to serve a loyal readership that has followed it from their college dorm rooms into middle age. As publisher Brandon Wenerd puts it, “We built a direct rapport with our audience, and that rapport was really what accelerated our business.”
In a wide-ranging conversation, Wenerd walked through BroBible’s early blogging days, its complicated relationship with its former parent company, and how reacquiring the site gave its small team permission to rebuild — this time with the lessons of the past decade firmly in mind.
Falling into Media Through Hunter S. Thompson
Wenerd’s path into digital publishing wasn’t linear. His first gig in media was working as a research assistant for Anita Thompson, Hunter S. Thompson’s widow. By chance, a college essay and an early-era blog comment led to correspondence with her.
“She had a blog and I just kind of took a chance,” he recalled. “I sent her this paper… and then asked, hey, is there anything you’re looking for help on?”
That turned into a multiyear project compiling Ancient Gods of Wisdom, a collection of Hunter S. Thompson interviews spanning 40 years. Wenerd did the work remotely, often deep into the night while still finishing school. Immersing himself in Thompson’s voice and cadence left an imprint that would follow him into the conversational, culture-driven writing that defined early BroBible.
Discovering BroBible in the Wild West of Blogging
In 2009, after dabbling in freelance work and realizing he wanted to pursue blogging more seriously, Wenerd came across an inquiry from BroBible’s founder, Doug Banker, looking for writers. BroBible at that time wasn’t the publisher people know today. It launched as a “brocial network” — a niche social platform meant to serve Northeast college athletes, lacrosse players, and fraternity circles.
“That vision was a little limited in scope,” Wenerd admitted. The real traffic wasn’t in social networking — it was in blogging. Within months the site shifted from message board to blog in the mold of Gawker, Deadspin, and Bleacher Report. That pivot laid the foundation for BroBible’s voice: conversational, culturally plugged in, and focused on the intersection of sports, lifestyle, and humor.
The operation was tiny but hungry. “It’s always been a job,” he said, “and back then it was as simple as: here’s a little hunger and a little vision.”
The team — just seven people in the beginning — churned out up to 30 posts a day. Direct homepage traffic was everything; RSS was still niche, Facebook not yet a traffic empire. “We lived in front of our laptops,” he said. “Direct traffic was a huge part of how we existed in people’s media diets.”
The site’s ethos mirrored that of early Gawker: build a relationship with the audience, embrace a raw voice, and let readers help surface the stories worth telling. “If you’re a college student at Alabama and you have a piece of news that deserves a bigger spotlight, send it to us,” Wenerd recalled telling readers.
When Events Became the Business
BroBible’s first meaningful revenue didn’t come from banner ads. Direct sold advertising was limited, and programmatic ad networks were still in their infancy. Instead, the team turned to live events.
They began booking concerts at New York’s Terminal 5 featuring emerging artists like Pretty Lights, Avicii, and college-aged rappers who resonated with their audience. The business model was scrappy but effective: venues kept the bar revenue, BroBible kept the ticket revenue, and major brands sponsored the events.
“We would sell sponsorship on those events to Diageo, Microsoft, Axe Body Spray,” he said. “That was where we learned how to build media value around doing something small and amplifying it to give it a big footprint.”
For two years, events were BroBible’s number one revenue source. The site had scale, but not enough scale to be a pure ad-supported business. Sponsorship-driven experiences filled that gap.
Still, it wasn’t sustainable forever. “Events are amazing, but they’re hard,” Wenerd said. “There are a lot of logistics.”