Barstool Sports Reveals What Top Podcaster Actually Earns

We're getting a rare glimpse into what major podcasters make, focusing on the salary disclosures from Barstool Sports. This thought-provoking conversation explores the impact of transparency in podcast earnings. Then we tease a topic of discussion for our next episode—AI's role in podcasting and what jobs should have a human's touch?

Don't forget to let us know what you're most proud of accomplishing in 2024 for our next episode's Sound-Off segment!

Chapters

• 0:00 About Last Episode's Opening...
• 1:15 Podcaster's Salary
• 11:23 The Future of AI in Podcasting

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

I can't believe you opened the last episo de with the pump up music and do you know how insane that sounds when you're listening on 2X? It sounded so crazy. I was in my car. The new episode of Buzzcast drops, fire up my podcast app and it just starts playing. I'm like what happened with our episode? Something is terribly wrong. I had no id ea what what was coming. I had to slow it down to 1l or 1x to figure it out.

Alban: 0:28

1. 0, just like a chat gpt model I actually um, we got a fan mail message from Devin from the Kingdom and Amelia podcast.

Jordan: 0:38

He said what was going on the pre-show with the singing along to the music. I was like, oh, maybe we should have like explained this, so sometimes to get pumped up for an episode, kevin will play the song from that.

Kevin: 0:52

I think it's stock on the roadcaster is that right, that's right, yeah, yeah, this comes stock music track that comes on the roadcaster and I will play it and I will make sure jordan and Alban are sufficiently pumped up before we start talking this.

Jordan: 1:04

This time, after I don't k now how many episodes, it just finally made it into the final cut. So you're welcome everyone, All right.

Kevin: 1:16

So did you guys see this? There's a little bit of podcast news going around around Barstool Sports and I don't know the name of the podcaster, but she is a comedian and she was working with Barstool Sports and she went on another podcast and she didn't make any allegations, as far as I can tell, in the context that I saw. But she alluded to the fact that Barstool made a lot more money on the podcast than she did. She didn't get paid a lot of money to do the podcast. And then Dave Portnoy, who now is once again the owner of Barstool Sports he started it, then he sold it and he bought it back, so he again is the owner.

Kevin: 1:52

He decided to go out on the socials and just put it all out there and just say exactly what she got paid. So he said we paid her a base salary of I think we paid her a base salary of, I think $175,000 for the year for the content and then she got like 70% of any of the ad sales that they were able to monetize through their social channels around her podcast content or something like that. And so she ended up making about $250,000 a year to do the show and his argument was that that was really good money for somebody who was like an up-and-comer. Now that she's has some notoriety behind her and she's done the show and it's been successful and she's got a bigger fan base and stuff, obviously she can go out and make more money. But like they were taking a big risk by starting her out and, you know, paying for the whole production of the show and setting up the tour and paying her salary and everything else.

Kevin: 2:48

Anyway, I thought it was interesting because a lot of people in podcasting they're just not super transparent with the numbers. Like, even like the Joe Rogan show and the Spotify deal, we still are only speculating about what we think the contract was. Like nobody really knows exactly what the number was. Everyone says somewhere around $200 million, some people reported 150, some people reported 300. So I think everyone's just kind of said, well, it's probably around 200, but we don't really know for sure and you don't get real numbers often in podcasting. So I thought that was interesting. It was one of the actual first times in podcasting, at least in recent years, where I've actually heard hey, this is exactly how much this person who was on a really big podcast got paid.

Alban: 3:17

Do we know how much Barstool made? Now, did he say that part? No, he did not. So still be accurate that they made a lot more than she did.

Jordan: 3:33

Well, maybe because so here's the thing is. He said that she received 70% of the payout for ads played on her podcast, which to me reads as they get a 30% cut.

Kevin: 3:39

Oh, wait, wait, wait. Let me clarify that for you, because I went back and listened again. I don't think he was saying that she got 70% of the ads that played on the podcast. I think that was 100% them. She only got paid for the ads that they ran on the socials associated with the podcast. No, yeah, I think all the ad revenue for the podcast was theirs.

Jordan: 3:57

Okay, so I thought it was 70% of the ad revenue from her podcast. I'm like that's actually really fair, because that's what you get with like a marketing agency. Um, but hearing that, perhaps they kept it, yeah, I think they did, I think.

Kevin: 4:13

I think that was probably again we were all speculating, but this is just fun stuff to speculate about people who make a lot of money in podcasting. But I think if you negotiate you know a salary that's a very low risk thing. She was going to get paid $150,000, whether the show bombed or went on to be a huge success either way.

Kevin: 4:34

And so when you de-risk to that level of like that's a great salary for a year and anybody would be super happy with that, Even if the show goes nowhere and does nothing and they sell no ads and they never make their money back on it, she's de-rested a lot. So I'm sure they said, okay, well, if we're going to give $150,000 as a salary, then we're going to get whatever we do in ad sales, that's ours. Now other stuff outside of this we can talk about splitting the revenue, we can do a rev share, and I think that's what he was talking about is we did have some rev share stuff outside of the podcast. But the podcast itself sounds to me like they said we're going to pay you upfront for it, so you have no risk. But if there's, if it turns out to be a big upside, that's all ours, that's our price.

Alban: 5:11

Yeah, and that makes sense, because the company wins when the show blows up, but the company is going to get crushed when the show does poorly. And during 2020, we saw so many interesting shows come out that lots of people were working on and so lots of money was being invested in them, even if they didn't get a huge following. So I just remember lots of these shows. They popped up lots of agencies and then lots of them started getting shut down. Two years ago ago, and Spotify bought a bunch and they're shutting them down. And it's because you spin up 10 shows One of them is a hit and pays for all 10, nine of them only cost money. You know, in the end they don't make something big, and so I know the creators of the hit show are kind of like all right, well, we're not getting a great deal here anymore, which is true but you are actually paying for the company being able to recoup the money from the nine that didn't win out.

Alban: 6:09

Obviously, if you're a solo creator or you're an indie creator and you're somebody who does the whole show yourself and you own all of it and you took all the risk on your and you were successful. The reward of that is all these like a hundred million dollar plus deals that we saw back then were Rogan and smart lists and a bunch of others sold these really big shows because they had all the upside, but we all forget they had all the downside too. You could have made these shows for a long time and been like, okay, it didn't do anything. The companies are excited because they go oh, we don't even have to worry about the duds, we only get the big winner. Yeah, We'll pay big money for that.

Kevin: 6:49

Yeah, and I thought it was a pretty good deal that she only had a one year agreement with Barstool. So the show ended up being successful and she's able to. I think she ended up leaving and she's going independent now, but if she wanted to, she could have renegotiated. She could have said, okay, like this year, we're going to do $150,000 salary Plus, I'm going to do, you know, 50% of whatever you do on the ad side or whatever, cause we know it's a success, we know that you've already made your money back, we know this is a winner. So she has more leverage.

Kevin: 7:17

I think oftentimes, at least in show business anyway, from what I've heard, they want to lock you into a longer term contract. Upfront that. So even if the show ends up being a huge success, you still can't renegotiate for five years or something like that, or for 10 years or whatever. You know. When that big story with, like the Friends cast, when they did the Friends TV show, I think the first 10 seasons or something, they had them, or maybe not 10, but a long amount of time they couldn't renegotiate. The show ended up blowing up and then all the actors were sitting around waiting for their contract to come up. So they go back to renegotiate. And that's when they did the big thing where they said hey, we're all going to go in together, we're not going to go negotiate our individual deals, we'll be stronger together. And so they went in together and negotiated and I think they got like a million dollars per episode, each or something.

Jordan: 8:04

It was a huge deal at the time.

Alban: 8:05

Yeah, you see this a lot with music contracts, where the record labels used to be like, hey, you might be up and coming big band, why don't you sign this deal and we'll help you out? And they're like, oh cool. And what they would end up having in the small print is like this is a seven record deal. This is an old band, but jars of clay Do you remember that, kevin?

Alban: 8:27

Yeah, I'm sure jars of clay were like the story of like the worst deal that they got like a seven album deal and they, you know, started taking off and then they went oh wait, this record label has us and we have to do seven albums. And then they cranked through seven albums quickly to be like we got to get out from underneath this, because you negotiate that deal when you're nobody and you go I mean, who cares, we're probably never going to take off. And then you're the one that takes off and you kind of got locked in so you can end up making 150 grand for a one-year deal and then, if it takes off, you get to go independent. That ends up sounding pretty sweet to me.

Jordan: 9:06

Yeah, it doesn't sound bad.

Kevin: 9:10

The internet is not the place you want to go to for sympathy when you you know she didn't actually just make 150. She made $250,000 in a year. I don't think you're getting a lot of internet sympathy in that scenario. But, to her credit, I don't think she was disparaging Barstool as much as like Dave took it personally a little bit Because I mean, he's the founder, so that's bound to happen.

Kevin: 9:32

But to be fair to her, I don't think she was trying to disparage them. She was just saying the show actually ended up being a lot bigger than any of us dreamed it would be and my deal wasn't that great. But I don't think she was complaining about it. So I just want to be fair to both sides, at least from stuff that I saw about it.

Alban: 9:47

Yeah Well, I don't need to do market research, kevin, to tell you that the average podcaster, or the median podcaster, makes $0 from their show. The median is negative money, that they're putting effort in buying tools and stuff and in the end they're getting something else back. Mostly it's not monetary.

Jordan: 10:07

Hobbies are expensive, so it's kind of whatever.

Kevin: 10:11

They are. But that was a refreshing story, at least for me to hear, because just a lot of news around podcasting recently anyway, has been, I don't know, a little bit negative. Like a lot of companies, especially companies that put all their eggs in the ad basket and stuff have downsized, have been letting people off, have gone under. Is the audio world of podcasting? It's not. You know, maybe the expectations were too big, but it's. It's not fulfilling whatever those expectations were.

Kevin: 10:35

And we've been here all along saying like podcasting just keeps getting better and we love it and the hosting business is great and more creators than ever are coming in and starting new shows and everything is fine from our perspective. But mainstream news, whenever there's a story about podcasting, usually it's been negative. Anyway, it was encouraging for me to say, hey, this person just started a podcast last year Barstool started it for them. It was a win, sounds like on both sides. The podcaster now is in a better position to go on and create new shows and do more content and have a great, flourishing career. That was a win for Barstool. They're going to go out and continue to invest in the podcasting space and create new shows. So I think good news for podcasting.

Jordan: 11:09

I like good news like that too. It's been a rough year to be putting together outlines for episodes about current topics that have like a positive spin. It's been a struggle this year, so I always appreciate a good story.

Alban: 11:24

A topic I want to talk about on our next buzzcast is something around all these like AI tools that keep coming out, and I've got to formulate this more, so it wasn't good for our quick cast today, but I'm feeling more and more like there's all these AI tools and what they end up doing is replacing the good part of the human in the podcasting. It is not a tool. Sometimes these tools come in like what we tried to build with co-host, which was we know that writing the description can be kind of painful, or we know that identifying the chapter markers if of painful, or we know that identifying the chapter markers if you already edited it, that's not like one of the critical aspects of podcasting. And so we're like oh, we can step in and help. But now I'm seeing some that are like clone your voice, pick out some new sources, and those new sources will then get turned into what sounds like you telling the news and will publish that every day, and I'm like okay, so all of the human aspect is gone.

Alban: 12:21

And the only thing that's connected is that you're like a fake voice actor and I just want to like think through what parts of podcasting are really human and valuable, and what do we want to keep, and what parts are we excited to offload to the robots, you know, when they're able to do all these jobs? What parts do we want to keep for ourselves, or do we give podcasting up to the robots and we go? Oh yeah, there's nothing special here, ever to begin with.

Jordan: 12:47

Yeah.

Kevin: 12:48

I hear you. So, yeah, you want to put on your futurist hat a little bit and try to problem solve and project, and I think that would be a lot of fun, because this happens a lot with emerging technology. Right, Let me explain what I'm thinking about here. A technology comes out and it shows a lot of potential, but all the use cases in the beginning are kind of like the worst actual implementation of that technology. We don't know it yet because it's all too new, but over time we start to figure out how this technology can actually solve more realistic problems.

Kevin: 13:18

That seem obvious kind of in hindsight, but not at the beginning. At the beginning it's kind of like oh well, you could do this and it's like, but nobody really wants that. Or well, you can make it do this, but nobody really wants that. And they're neat things and they're novel things, but they're not super useful things. And I think we are seeing a lot of that, as AI is a very cool and very exciting new technology. But most of the use cases especially around podcasting, where it's being implemented right now, like we chipped away the obvious ones right away, Like it can help you with coming up with a description for your show and some show notes and chapter markers and stuff like that and now like, oh well, it can actually create the whole podcast for you. Well, that's not great. Now we're just trying to force it in other places. But that happens a lot and I'll think through for the longer discussion other examples of this in history, but I think it's happened before.

Kevin: 14:07

Yeah, another one. I think Ben Thompson just talked about this. I should go back and listen to this episode, but he has a Stratechery episode where he's talking about the glasses, the Google Glass, and MetaSolution.

Jordan: 14:18

The Ray-Bans right.

Kevin: 14:19

The Ray-Bans are out and, of course, apple's what do they call it? The Vision Pro and how all of this stuff is like. He's like it's going to work out at some point, but no one's quite nailed it yet and we have, like, all the hardware pieces and stuff. It was one of the things that was very genius about Steve Jobs' insight into how and when to release the first version of the iPhone. It's not that smartphones hadn't been around before. It's not that touchscreens were a new thing. It was coming together with all this right technology and the right use case in the right time and delivering it in the right package, and it's very rare that somebody has the skill set to be able to do that really well, and Steve Jobs was one of those unique individuals who seemed to be able to do that a couple of times throughout his career, his life.

Alban: 15:00

Yeah, the thing that's like hitting me wrong with the AI is that we keep getting so many of these pitches from people that are like, oh, here's what you can do and I'm like you're going to do to podcasting what we did to blog writing like a year ago, which was we just had a bunch of people who were like, wait, I could spin up a blog and copy every other blog post that was written and rewrite them using chat, gpt, and now there's like a proliferation of junk, just a bunch of AI junk, and there's no like human in there trying to guide it to be like I'm going to write something even better, I'm going to use AI to do all the research and I'm going to compile it into something beautiful.

Alban: 15:41

Instead, it's just like I'm going to pretend like I wrote thousands and thousands of blog posts. We've got to figure out what part of podcasting is like human and good. We want to be a part of it, even if we didn't have to be and what parts are we excited to offload so we can do better and better work, and the opportunities to replace the good parts are here. So we got to make sure we understand which are the good parts, which are the bad parts, and which parts are we happy to give up, which we need to keep?

Jordan: 16:09

It's like saying that you enjoy painting but you actually don't paint. You just print out AI generated paintings. I love painting. It's just weird.

Alban: 16:19

I don't like painting the walls of my house. I want to hire somebody to come in and paint the walls because I've never enjoyed rolling walls. But you know what I do enjoy? It's like the little sitting down with the family and like we're doing a little painting. Like little things and they don't look great, but you painted a little art piece. That's fun.

Jordan: 16:38

Yeah, even if you're not creative, you can buy those like paint by number kits, like yeah, sure, maybe you're not the best artist, but you can still enjoy the process of painting so we need a podcast by numbers, like okay, I have to land the plane on this because it's supposed to be a quick cast and we're coming up on like 18 minutes so

Kevin: 16:57

I know jordan doesn't want to do a lot of editing, but I think we have a great topic to discuss for the next show. I'll do a little bit of homework so I come a little bit more prepared. I also want to point out I just discovered that Riverside Sorry folks, but you've got a little bug Every time I open the people tab, my camera goes off. If anybody from Riverside happens to listen to the show, please report that for me.

Jordan: 17:14

Oh, Alban just did.

Kevin: 17:16

Alban like. Is there a?

Jordan: 17:17

bug.

Alban: 17:19

And then he does it, triggered it.

Jordan: 17:21

All right, and then we still need some submissions for our sound off question from last episode what were you most proud of in 2024? Don't forget to tap the text, the show button, and let us know what you're proud of. So until next time, keep podcasting.