Ryen Russillo pushes back on negative Barstool perception: ‘It’s been even better than I could have hoped for’

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.”

Beyond his own comfort, Russillo said his experience with the Barstool team behind the scenes has been eye-opening.

“It’s funny because there’s a perception of Barstool, and yet if you dealt with any of the behind-the-scenes people and how locked-in they are, how forward-thinking they are, how smart they are about all these different things, there’s a whole group of people that, you’re never going to know any of their names, the support around it has been great,” he explained.

But Russillo was aware coming in that he wasn’t the typical Barstool personality, the kind of guy with an intense allegiance to a particular sports city and often a goofy nickname.

“I told (Portnoy), ‘I just turned 50, I don’t wanna come in and have you be bothered that I don’t want to be, like, one of the characters or any of that kind of stuff,'” Russillo said. “And Dave was just like … ‘I totally get it, don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.'”

Russillo recently made his first trip to Barstool’s headquarters in Chicago, where he appeared on several shows and spent time with many of his new colleagues.

The trip, Russillo said, was the latest reminder of how strong a beginning he has had in this chapter of his career, and left him feeling appreciative of Portnoy’s leadership, even if that isn’t a quality most would associate with the inflammatory Barstool boss.

“I can understand tastes and opinions and how different we all are, and I totally get that if we’re speaking specifically about Dave, I get it, he’s not for everybody,” Russillo said. “But when it comes to the business part of it and my dealings with him, to have it take like this long in my career, where you get off the phone, and you’re like, ‘Hey, this is totally fair.’ This is what it’s supposed to be; it’s very straightforward, and everything since that point, too, has been complete transparency on everything, which is really nice.”

While initial coverage of Russillo’s move centered on launching his own production company or content network, it seems that his setup with Barstool is similar to that of many hosts the company has worked with over the years, aside from its in-house personalities. And for Russillo, the arrangement seems to be working great.