Dave Portnoy reveals what led Pat McAfee to leave Barstool

Pat McAfee left Barstool Sports back in 2018 after about an 18-month stint. Since then he has gone on to great success and is arguably ESPN’s most important talent. Don’t believe me, believe reports that McAfee is negotiating a new deal that could pay him north of $60 million per year.

>Barstool, to its credit, has kept right on ticking despite losing someone from their system who went on to more high-profile things elsewhere. It’s one of those rare media separations that works out for everyone involved.

>Those curious to go into the wayback machine to get a further understanding of what led up to the McAfee-Barstool split were given a gift by Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel, who interviewed Dave Portnoy and asked for more details on the exit.

Why Pat McAfee left Barstool“He thought the business side disrespected him, so he felt he had to leave, was his version of events,” Portnoy told FOS. “I think he probably was always going to leave. He’s a super ambitious guy. Super talented guy. But that was the reason he publicly gave—that he couldn’t trust our business side anymore. Now, I don’t think our business side did anything wrong. I think he kind of blew it out of proportion, but that is the reason he gave.”

>“It had something to do with, he was late getting paid on something, like a commission check,” Portnoy continued. “In the inherent nature of how he was set up with us, we were almost partners, right? If he did a sales deal or we closed one for Pat, he would get 50% and Barstool would get 50% of it, I believe was the agreement. Whereas, if we sold something for “Pardon My Take” Barstool gets 100%. So he had a natural distrust that if our sales department was going to a client, they’d always want the client to go to PMT. The structure created a little bit of a distrust.”

>Portnoy said this version of events is not true and that Barstool sales people get full commission regardless of who they sell. Eight years ago his show was not at the same level of “Pardon My Take”, which created a situation where PMT was the easiest property to sell.

>Again, there’s been happy and wildly profitable chapters for all parties involved since all of this went down. Still, it’s interesting to get some insight on what led to a fork on the road and set McAfee on what’s been a remarkable trajectory post-Barstool.