Just as Dave Portnoy was trying to create hype around the arrival of new Barstool host Ryen Russillo, a former staffer took the opportunity to air dirty laundry.
On Tuesday as Russillo finally announced his move from The Ringer to Barstool, Portnoy again expressed frustration with Spotify executives over the company preventing Russillo from keeping his podcast and YouTube feeds as he left the company. The practice has become fairly customary in recent years.
However, former Barstool host and baseball commentator Jared Carrabis stepped into the light to accuse Portnoy of the very same thing. According to Carrabis, when he left Barstool for DraftKings in 2022, he also lost his feeds.
From the jump, the argument appeared to be incredibly granular and in-the-weeds. And it turns out, the devil was, in fact, in the details.
“Dave, you’re one of the smartest people I know, but I don’t know how to spell this out for you any more,” wrote Carrabis, explaining that Barstool kept his Section 10 podcast feeds when he left the company.
In response, Portnoy pointed out that it was actually then-Barstool owner Penn Entertainment that made that decision, similar to how he is blaming Spotify for keeping Russillo’s feeds now. Portnoy also clarified that he did negotiate to give Carrabis the Section 10 branding back, which he now utilizes for social media and his new podcast feed.
Carrabis argued that Portnoy only gave the Section 10 branding back once he was moving from DraftKings to Underdog, and had let Portnoy know that DraftKings was allowing him to keep the feeds to the shows he created there.
“Let me dumb it done for you since you are one of the dumbest people I know,” Portnoy wrote, again explaining the semantic distinction he was making between whether it was him or Penn who ultimately took the feeds.
Given that the impetus for the argument was both Carrabis and Russillo changing employers for lucrative salaries, there is no victim in this story. However, it is admittedly odd that Carrabis would interject in Barstool’s business three years after leaving given he has been granted ownership over his Section 10 brand, presumably out of Portnoy’s goodwill.
Hopefully both sides can move on from this incredibly serious, super important matter in due time.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.