Does Barstool Deal Show Content to Commerce Doesn’t Work?

The vision for content to commerce has always been that if you create a highly engaged audience, you can then create products down funnel to monetize them. The thinking was that a highly engaged audience would trust a publisher enough to buy directly from them versus going with a pure play ecommerce or DTC offering. 

This vision remains a viable strategy. There have been numerous companies that have accomplished this. The entire Chernin thesis has been predicated on this with numerous companies in their portfolio representing it.