AUDIO: Barstool CEO Erika Nardini Responds to Deadspin Story

Barstool CEO Erika Nardini was a guest of Cheddar’s Jon Steinberg for a spot that will air on Fusion TV this Sunday morning. Deadspin, which has written countless articles criticizing Barstool, is part of the Fusion Media Group, whose parent company is Univision, ran a story today by its editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell entitled Oh God, Even Our Parent Company Is Airing The Barstool Sports CEO’s Evasive, Charming Bullshit.

On Barstool Radio on SiriusXM this afternoon, Nardini responded to this piece:

Nardini said that she likes Steinberg and was happy to do him a favor by appearing on his new show, and was very taken aback that this was how the spot was received by a different segment of the same company that was airing it. “I don’t understand how your company or your network works, but we wouldn’t do that over here,” Nardini said.

Barstool founder Dave Portnoy asked her how they responded to it. “Yeah, they called me,” Nardini said. “They were falling all over themselves about it.” It wasn’t 100% percent clear if she meant that this was Steinberg apologizing — she later said he did — or if this part was referring to other people at Fusion/Univision.

The core of Greenwell’s piece, which said that their parent company was the latest “victim of Nardini’s manipulation,” was this paragraph:

"The reason Nardini does these interviews, of course, is not to say something interesting about the company she runs or about being a woman in the male-dominated field of sports media, but to launder Barstool’s image. See, she practically screams, Barstool can’t be misogynistic, because I’m a woman! All those other women, the harpies constantly bitching about how they’re relentlessly harassed by my employees and our readers, just need to lighten up and be cool like me! The journalistic outlets that publish these interviews are simply being played."

Here is an interview I did with Nardini this past January, essentially asking her to respond to people who believe that, at the 21:45-mark below: