The ROAR Podcast: George Barrios

He took a company worth less than a billion dollars and helped turn it into a global content machine valued at more than $9 billion. He cannibalized one of the most profitable businesses in favor of you to launch a streaming service that nearly everyone told him was a terrible idea. And he watched it climb past 2 million subscribers. He got fired in January of 2020 in a moment that wiped billions off a public company's market cap overnight. And then he came back to architect one of the biggest mergers in the history of sports entertainment. This is George Barrios. Over more than two decades, George built a career across Time Warner, HBO, and the New York Times Company, before stepping into the role that most people know him for, Chief Financial Strategy Officer and eventually co-president of WWE. Along with his longtime partner, Michelle Wilson, he helped write a playbook that didn't just change wrestling, it reframed how the entire sports industry thinks about intellectual property, content, and the battle for the fans' time. Today, the two of them run Isos Capital. They sit at the center of the global sports group, the largest sports investment holding company in the world. In this conversation, Adam sits down for George for all of it. The WAV network gamble, the data infrastructure most organizations only pretend to build, the partnership that survived what George calls the swamp, and his new book, Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt. They get into where that title actually came from, what really separates confidence from arrogance, and why George believes artificial intelligence isn't the next internet is something much bigger. I'm Bryce Clinton. This is The Roar Podcast.

Welcome to The Roar Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Grossman. With me today is George Barrios. George, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Adam. It's great to be here.

Well, it's great to have you. I mean, you've had a very long and successful career and still are obviously a young guy. I like

the successful part. The long part, I don't like to admit that. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we're excited to talk about multiple different things. Also, one of the things we'll cover and primarily focus on is you have a new book coming out, which we're very excited to talk about. But we like to start the podcast the way we always like to, which is we want to learn more about you, your Not so long, I guess, career, but a very successful career date. And we'll start from there, and then we'll dive into the book in particular.

Thanks. Yeah, and the book covers all of it. And look, I have to admit, it is a long career now. I went from being so proud of being the youngest guy in the room, and now I'm the oldest guy. Actually, I don't even want to be in the

room anymore, but

I

usually am the oldest guy in the room.

Yeah, I started the first, let's say, 20 years or so as a kind of general management, financial management, strategic management roles at different levels. And lucky for me, moving up over the years in different industries. So I started out at Time Warner. And HBO, a lot of cool things there. And did a stint at Praxair, which I always said it was like a kind of business boot camp. I probably learned