Dave Portnoy revealed former Barstool Sports employee Grace O’Malley’s six-figure salary after she claimed to have made “decent” money while working at his company.
On Monday’s episode of the “This Past Weekend” podcast with Theo Von, the 26-year-old spoke about her experience working at Barstool after leaving the company following her falling out with longtime BFF Brianna Chickenfry.
“I had a salary and that was kind of it,” she told Von. “So I had the option to leave and I took it.”
When Von asked if it was “a good salary,” O’Malley said it “was decent” but “nothing close” to half a million as Von suggested.
After clips of her interview went viral online, Portnoy took to TikTok to share “exactly” how much money was on the table.
“She was finishing up her third year at Barstool [and] her base salary was $175,000 a year,” he said. “On top of that, she got 70 percent of anything that we were able to sell on her personal socials so if we had ads and were like, ‘Hey, Grace, do this on your Instagram,’ she would get 70 percent of that.”
“So she got another $75,000 in 2024 that way. Total salary, for last year, was a quarter million. $250,000 to Grace. I think that is pretty fair. Pretty good.”
Elsewhere in the episode, O’Malley noted that her pay “wasn’t equated” to what Chickenfry was making.
“My buddy was making a little bit more. A lot a bit more. A whole s—t ton more,” she joked.
While the two women used to co-host their “Plan Bri Uncut” podcast, O’Malley noted that Chickenfry was also working on the “BFFs” podcast.
“So it’s all relative,” she said.
As for salary discrepancies, the Barstool founder noted that Chickenfry was always a “much bigger” internet personality than O’Malley — with roughly triple the followers.
“That is why Bri got paid more,” Portnoy said, noting that O’Malley didn’t even have a social media presence when she first joined the company.
Speaking with Von, O’Malley also claimed she “never made any money” from her months-long podcast tour with Chickenfry.
“Barstool took it all,” she said. “I had an interesting contract. But I loved them so much.”
However, Portnoy told his followers that the money both Chickenfry — real name Brianna LaPaglia — and O’Malley made on tour was included in their salary.
While LaPaglia signed to the company in 2020, O’Malley joined her two years later after being asked to co-host her podcast.
O’Malley announced her departure from Barstool Sports on Dec. 16 despite being in talks to start her own podcast with the outlet — which Portnoy said would have been extremely lucrative.
“We thought Grace was going to continue with us and launch her own podcast with Barstool and what we told her for that was, ‘We will support you, get you anybody you need, hire anybody and once Barstool makes back your salary — your base salary of $175,000 — we will split every dollar moving forward fifty-fifty. Like partners.’”
“So there was tons of upside for Grace,” he added.
While Portnoy thought it was a very “creator-friendly deal,” O’Malley ultimately turned it down due to the handling of her friendship breakup with LaPaglia.
The media mogul concluded his video by saying he was “super upset” with the insinuation that he “scams” his employees and doesn’t pay people fairly.
“Because we f—king don’t and that’s why a lot of them have been with us for, like, over a decade.”
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