The end of a podcast era is upon us.
Dave Portnoy will be leaving Barstool Sports’ “BFFs” podcast at year’s end, leaving the show to co-hosts Brianna LaPaglia and Josh Richards, he confirmed on the “Unnamed Show” on Thursday.
“They show me the topics when I go in there, I haven’t done any research, and I’m just ripping apart 18-year-olds, who I don’t even know,” Portnoy told co-hosts Ryan Whitney and Kirk Minihane. “I don’t love necessarily doing that. It’s a little different.”
The Barstool Sports honcho originally shared the news during last week’s “BFFs” episode, though the news got buried as LaPaglia’s high-profile split with country music star Zach Bryan consumed the headlines.
“My plan at the end of the year was to be done with BFFs,” the Barstool CEO said. “Just because I’m getting older, like nearing 50. Talking about teenage drama, a little out of my wheelhouse. So, we’ve known this for months, and we’re like, ‘What’s the best way to announce it?’ (The Zach Bryan drama) came up and complicated the whole thing a little bit because we recorded the podcast, didn’t air. And the one thing about me, I can’t know sh-t.
“I just can’t know it and not say it…It was a really murky situation. I thought that’s how this was ending. I thought I was gonna get on and be like, ‘Hey, I respect their decision. We’re not gonna talk about the Zach thing, but I can’t be on it anymore because I have to talk about it if we’re gonna do it.’ And I woke up the next morning, and it’s like, f–k the money; we’re going.”
Portnoy has plenty to keep him busy in addition to the “Unamed Show”; He runs the Barstool Sports ship — which he bought back from Penn for $1 in Aug. 2023 — and does his wildly popular “One Bite” pizza reviews, as well as various other commercial and philanthropic endeavors.
Portnoy will still continue with his other ventures, including the “Unamed Show” telling Whitney and Minihane that the “BFFs” topics “don’t interest me at all.”
“It certainly accomplished what I wanted to accomplish when we started it,” Portnoy added. “Josh and Bri will continue it. It’s super successful. But, yeah, it’s time for me to try the next thing. I had run my course with it.”