Dave Portnoy explains decision for Barstool Sports to turn down Sophie Cunningham podcast

Indiana fever star Sophie Cunningham launched a podcast with Bravo’s Summer House star West Wilson this week, doing so on The Volume network. As it turns out, she also had an opportunity with Barstool Sports.

According to Barstool Sports founder and owner Dave Portnoy, though, Portnoy turned her down. He opened up on the topic on The Unnamed Show.

“Speaking of podcasts, one that I passed on, which I thought was going to happen just went live,” Portnoy said. “Sophie Cunningham, West Wilson. I passed on it. We spent a lot of time. They did a test podcast, these two, in our New York office. Then we had another host (try out).”

It just didn’t work for Barstool. So Cunningham went on and launched the show with The Volume, with the show titled Show Me Something.

The duo will focus on pop culture, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, among other topics. The first episode of the weekly show dropped Wednesday.

Portnoy revealed that Cunningham wasn’t the problem so much as her agent and the stipulations demanded. Cunningham is a vivacious personality and the first episode of her new show was well-received. It created headlines about Caitlin Clark, among others.

“It wasn’t so much her,” Portnoy said on the Barstool show. “Anytime I have to deal with agents it’s hard. I really thought we would be carrying so much of the weight marketing all this shit and her focus wasn’t going to be the podcast, it was just one amongst 9,000 things she was doing. So it felt like we were getting screwed. So I, at the end, like we were ready to sign it and at the end I’m like, ‘I’m not interested anymore.'”

The Barstool head honcho did reveal one thing, though. He’s OK if the Cunningham show crashes and burns.

“I liked her but I’m kind of rooting against it,” he said, before delving again into the reasons it didn’t work out with Barstool. “It was she’s going to do the podcast with us, but she can start another podcast that is talking about something else. She can go do digital with others. The ads are being sold from other people.

“It’s like, there’s just so much going on. And we were going to give her a guarantee. And then like, the thing that I always get uneasy, the amount of value you get from our marketing machine is kind of like priceless. So we’re putting all this behind you and I can’t even get a guarantee you’re only going to do our podcast. So it just seemed like a lot of work.”