- 'Sup you beautiful bastards?
Hope you've had a fantastic Thursday morning?
I don't know, we're posting this at a different time,
'cause this is a bonus video.
So that means that, yes, in addition to this this morning,
The Thursday "Philip DeFranco Show"
will be coming out later.
This was one of yesterday's most requested stories
but we unfortunately had to cut it for time,
so I figured, hey, let's gift the beautiful bastards
an extra morning show.
Also, very quickly, a big thank you to Ridge
for sponsoring this happy accident.
and Ridge, if you don't know,
is a minimalist front pocket wallet that's slim,
RFID blocking, and comes with a lifetime guarantee.
I actually like them so much that I had a Ridge wallet
before they were even a sponsor.
Also, fantastically, they have a special offer for you
that we're going to talk about at the end of the video.
But, with that said, buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into this story about "Call Her Daddy".
So for those unfamiliar, "Call Her Daddy"
is a super popular podcast hosted by Alexandra Cooper
and Sophia Franklin, where they have very open
conversations about sex and dating.
So they start this podcast back in 2018
and then Barstool Sports picks it up.
And Barstool, of course, just a massive enterprise.
It is incredibly popular, a lot of traffic,
and, after Barstool picks it up,
that's when we see this podcast just soar.
And reportedly, as a part of this deal,
Barstool owned the IP of "Call Her Daddy",
while giving both Alex and Sophia salaries
for the podcast and bonuses for download.
It's being reported that it was a three year contract,
they're currently in year two of it,
and, after that, they would have the right
to potentially take "Call Her Daddy" back,
negotiate with Barstool,
or follow a different path for the show.
And for a while it seemed that things were going well,
but new episodes of the show stopped coming out.
And it's a weekly podcast, but an episode with these two
has not come out since April 8th,
with Barstool allegedly losing around $100,000
per episode they do not put out.
So this radio silence comes as a shock to their fans,
which they call the Daddy Gang.
But also, notably, this silence came after
the two girls said on a previous episode
that big things were going on behind the scenes.
So there was a lot of fan speculation.
Then on April 15th, they posted this cryptic photo
on their Instagram, saying there will be no new
episode this week but finally the trail will be revealed.
Then the next week they posted this,
saying, "We are always 100% transparent with the Daddy Gang,
"but legally we can't speak out yet.
"What we will say is we will never
"fucking leave you, Daddy Gang.
"The minute we can speak, we will #freethefathers."
In that reference, the Fathers is a nickname
that the fans of the show called Sophia and Alexandra.
You know, that goes out and people are like,
"Wait, they can't illegally speak about the issue,"
as a ton of eyebrows get raised,
people wondering what the hell is going on,
which brings us to Sunday, when David Portnoy,
the president of Barstool Sports
did a 30 minute podcast on the "Call Her Daddy" feed,
explaining that there's been a huge feud
about contracts going on behind the scene.
In it Portnoy says,
- [Portnoy] In my 17 years of doing this,
I had never dealt with anybody as unprofessional,
and disloyal, and greedy as those two.
- Also claiming that Sophia and Alex
were actually shopping "Call Her Daddy" around,
even though they were still under contract with Barstool.
Also, regarding their contract,
he said that their base started at $70,000 each,
but when all was said and done, with the bonuses,
Sophia made 461,000 and Alex made 506,000.
Also saying, when their contract started,
they were both making the same base amount of money,
but a few months in Alex went in asking for a raise.
Portnoy saying that Alex got more money
because she was the one mainly communicating with Barstool.
She was also editing the show.
So when it came time to start talking
about negotiations in year two,
David felt they had a good meeting about it,
but he later got an email from the girls,
or potentially their lawyer, expressing frustration.
And then on a conference call with Portnoy,
he said that their lawyer demanded that Sophia and Alex get
- [Portnoy] A one million dollar guarantee for each of 'em.
They no longer want to be qualified
as Barstool Sports employees, they want to be freelancers.
They want 50% of everything we did.
So if they sold a sweatshirt, they got 50%,
if we sold an ad, they got 50%.
They wanted to be able to sell their own merch,
do their own ads, and they wanted us
to give them back "Call Her Daddy".
What did we get in return? Nothing.
- With David saying that's when he cut off negotiations,
and that's when he said they started
shopping the show around, which was not okay with him.
And he said,
- [Portnoy] If you guys take "Call Her Daddy"
and go somewhere else, we're going to sue
the fuck out of you.
Like you're under a three year contract,
what makes you think you can just get up and leave?
- And also saying why would anyone have signed them
in the first place if they knew they would get big
and then walk out the door?
Then he continues.
He says he throws another offer at them, they don't accept.
But then, three weeks ago, he says that Alex
messages him and asks if the three of them could meet.
So they did, with David saying that they denied
that they were shopping the show around,
but said that they were thinking of leaving
and getting out of their contract.
So he says he offers them this
- [Portnoy] Half a million dollar guarantee
for each of 'em and increase of merch.
I think they were getting 7.5%, something like that.
There were bonuses involved, and here's the kicker,
well there's two part, they had, I think,
18 months left on their contract,
I said I'd cut six months off of it.
So they could leave in one year
and I would give them "Call Her Daddy".
I would give him the IP.
- Okay, so a deal that he thought
they were going to just take this on the spot,
but they actually didn't.
But, according to Portnoy, Alex then reaches out
to him on her own and says that Sophia
was the one refusing to get a deal done,
and saying that even though Alex wanted to take the offer,
Sophia was not budging and wanting to keep moving
the goalpost forward so they could get more.
With Portnoy also claiming that a lot of this
had to do with the fact that Sophia's boyfriend,
Peter Nelson, the Executive Vice President at HBO sports,
who is often referred to as Suitman,
was sort of taking the lead and getting them lawyers,
shopping the show around and trying
to land to them a new deal deal,
which Portnoy actually says that he did.
- [Portnoy] And he got a deal with Wondery.
They were going to call a podcast "The Fathers",
and as Sophia would always say to me,
"We're prepared for lawsuit."
Wondery, scumbags, they knew we were going to sue 'em.
I don't know what they're gonna defend themselves for.
It's come to my attention that a certain scumbag agent,
who I've never trusted, actually took
one of our guys contracts and showed it to Peter Nelson.
And they went line by line,
trying to figure out how can we get out of this?
I've heard they had conspiracy theories
to say that we had gender discrimination.
Every trick in the book,
they were getting ready to use against us,
to get out of the contract and go to Wondery
- So Portnoy says that he calls Sophia,
saying that Alex wants to get the deal done,
that she should get moving because he was thinking
about offering Alex her own podcast.
Also it now involved Alex getting more than Sophia,
as opposed to the equal 50/50 initially offered.
But them also saying that Sophia
is getting ready to hit Barstool with a lawsuit.
We then finally see Sophia respond to the situation
on her Instagram story and basically saying
yes, she and Alex did explore other options,
also saying they did so for the benefit of the audience,
but also saying they could have handled
the situation entirely differently,
and she regrets the way they went about it.
With Sophia also saying that she was interested
in negotiating back with Barstool but said,
- I found out that Alex had gone
behind my back and done something.
And I found out it wasn't the first time.
- And also going to say as much as she wants to do
"Call Her Daddy", she can't do it
under the conditions Alex is.
- I can't do it while she's demanding
that she controls the show.
I don't want to be like her employee.
We are partners.
We've always been that way, we've always been 50 50.
And so it's putting me in an extremely tough position.
- Portnoy then responds to this,
essentially saying that he read it as
they were gearing up for a lawsuit.
- It felt like, to me, she was just getting ready
for a lawsuit, gearing up for a lawsuit.
And, to be honest, that's the vibe I've had from her
and our lawyers and William Morris,
and probably Suitman, for the last two weeks.
- Essentially saying Sophia has kind of
screwed herself out of "Call Her Daddy".
I condensed and explained that situation,
one, because there were a lot of requests to.
But also, two, I think it's on the very interesting
note about the evolution and the conversation
about media figures, influencers,
their relationships with companies,
the relationships with the audiences.
This is actually something that culture reporter
Taylor Lorenz covered in a "New York Times" article,
noting the implications it has for the industry in general,
saying, "Media companies have long acted
"as talent incubator, providing content producers,
name brand recognition, and access to a larger audience.
"But, as that talent builds a following on social media,
"the balance of power shifts.
"And so often, talent no longer needs the media company
"to operate as a middleman and many realize
"they could monetize their own platforms
"more effectively by themselves."
And you looked at this situation,
you have Alex and Sophia,
general unknowns before this podcast
and before Barstool Sports
and, all of a sudden, now they have millions
of people around the world following them.
And so what you end up seeing are these people
that all of a sudden have this audience,
they have this power and they start asking,
"Well, why am I making kind of nickels and dimes,
"where you're making dollars?"
Granted, I know a lot of people going to say,
"Well, is it really nickels and dimes
"if you're talking about $500,000 in a year?"
But with what they show is apparently making per episode,
I mean with Portnoy himself saying
they were losing $100,000 for each episode
they missed during this dispute,
I feel like this is an apt description.
And the thing is, as others have noted,
this isn't the first time we're seeing stuff like this.
For example, tons of people from Buzzfeed
have left the company to make their own content,
have become incredibly successful.
People like Scott Rogowsky,
who made a name for himself on HQ trivia,
leaving to do his own thing.
You also see contracts and situations
like Tfue and FaZe Clan, the lawsuits connected to that.
And as Jordi Hays, a digital strategist
who works with online creators, told Lorenz,
"We're entering a period where creators
"are business owners and media brands of their own.
"They can't just be seen as employees.
"The tools are available to them to become founders
"and CEOs of their brand, and develop businesses
"with multiple powerful revenue streams,
"like merch, ad sales, and subscription revenue."
And the general idea that the creator
is more important than the company,
I believe to be very true.
And the thing is, granted it's my opinion,
I believe it is a fact, the power ultimately
lies with the talent, not the company.
Which is why there are usually contracts involved,
especially with the risk of company takes on
when they take on new talent, especially an unknown.
Which is also why, in general,
you often see companies open to renegotiations,
because they want to hold onto
that person as long as possible.
Obviously it's a different story,
but part of the reason I was able
to get my show back, after many years ago I sold it,
it was because at the end of the day,
what is "The Philip DeFranco Show" without Philip DeFranco?
That's where the loyalty is, it's to the person
and the perceived relationship and character,
which, I will say, is also part of the reason
this may actually be very devastating
for Alex and or Sophia,
because the biggest thing being hit here,
and it looks like very effectively,
based off of social media reactions, is their character.
- [Portnoy] In my 17 years of doing this,
I had never dealt with anybody as unprofessional,
and disloyal, and greedy as those two.
Like if we offered that deal,
I tried to explain it to our PMT guys,
a huge podcast, Dan, Big Cat,
He didn't even understand what I was saying.
He's like, what do you mean they get the IP?
We didn't get IP? Nobody gets the IP.
- And that's a hard thing to bounce back from,
when members of your audience all of a sudden
question your character and who you are as a person.
I think part of the reason Portnoy
was able to do it so effectively is,
one, in general, no matter your opinion of him,
he is a fantastic storyteller,
and the picture that he's painting
is that he has bent over backwards
to try to make things work,
while getting pretty much spit in the face.
And, unlike any other time there's someone
who does a story about you or an expose video,
he literally posted this on their feed.
That's literally 100% audience crossover.
But, all of that said, with this story,
I do want to pass the question off to you,
what are your thoughts as we're seeing
more and more stories like this?
When you see these creators fighting
to get out of these contracts
or some general craziness happening,
do you often end up siding with them?
Because, at the end of the day,
that's the person you support,
you want them to succeed,
or do you end up aligning with these companies
because there is a legal deal, you know what you sign?
The company when making a deal with smallish creator,
they're they're taking on a risk,
which is why they get what they get.
For every skyrocket success like "Call Her Daddy",
there are thousands, if not tens of thousands,
of just failures or things that do kind of okay.
But, yeah, I'd love to know your thoughts on this one
in those comments down below.
Also, we're at the end of the video.
Thank you for watching.
Make sure you hit that like button,
especially if you want more morning videos.
Also, once again, a big shout out to Ridge
for sponsoring this video.
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Transition fail, segue fail.
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Yeah, that's it for this bonus video.
I love your face.
And I guess this is not a watch,
I'll see you in around seven hours,
with a hopefully not 30 minute "Philip DeFranco Show".