Ryen Russillo pushes back on negative Barstool perception: ‘It’s been even better than I could have hoped for’
Credit: Ryen Russillo Show; Wake Up Barstool on FS1 Ryen Russillo made a surprise move from The Ringer to Barstool Sports last year, one that he now says has thoroughly exceeded his expectations. After eight years at the Bill Simmons-founded, Spotify-owned audio network, Russillo made the leap to Dave Portnoy’s company with one unique request. Last year, Russillo revealed he sold his first television script and has been developing it with a “major network.
” As Russillo detailed during an appearance on The Colin Cowherd Podcast this week , Barstool’s openness to allowing him to continue working on that side of his career, along with a long-running relationship with Portnoy, led to strong alignment on the move. “It’s been even better than I could have hoped for,” Russillo said. Russillo brought essentially the same show over from The Ringer to Barstool and was quickly added to Barstool’s deal to license video episodes of its podcasts to Netflix .
Russillo met Portnoy two decades ago in the Boston area through a mutual friend, former ESPN NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay. Back then, Barstool was still a physical newspaper that Portnoy wrote and distributed in the city. Doing business with Portnoy now, Russillo said, was incredibly comfortable and transparent.
“Dave and I talked for like a few minutes, and it was complete transparency of two guys that have known each other for 20 years,” he explained. “And I was pretty fair, I think, about what I was asking for, and they were incredibly fair about how they wanted to structure it. And so you still don’t know, because it’s still a new home, you can get into your routine.
Things at Spotify were going great. But it was just really nice to have him go, ‘Yeah, whatever. ’ I mean, it took five minutes on the phone.