For almost twenty years Dave Portnoy made his life and his firm, Barstool Sports activities, into a web-based actuality present of kinds — oversharing every thing from workplace friction to his personal courting life.
Now he’s written a memoir. With a lot already on the market, why undergo the difficulty?
“Ego,” Portnoy humbly informed me. “The considered strolling into an airport and seeing this guide in all of the bookshops actually appealed to me.”
The Barstool honcho was tempted by the likelihood that his guide, “Cancel Me If You Can,” out Tuesday, may doubtlessly develop into the subsequent “Non-public Components” by Howard Stern, full with a film model.
So who would play him?
“Bradley Cooper. I wish to say that I’m a poor man’s Bradley Cooper,” mentioned the 49-year-old.
The guide traces Portnoy’s meteoric rise from the proprietor of a free newspaper in Boston to a cultural lightning rod — with thousands and thousands within the financial institution, a military of devoted “Stoolies” and a distinguished function on Fox’s “Massive Midday Kickoff.” Alongside the best way, he bought his firm for $551 million and, in 2023, purchased it again for $1.
If Cooper is to play the media mogul, he higher strengthen his jawbone.
The self-proclaimed “Don King of web fights” made his identify by unapologetically instigating feuds in opposition to highly effective folks and the media institution.
Within the guide, he particulars the depths of his grudge in opposition to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — and divulges he would willingly break bread along with his longtime nemesis.
“If I had dinner with Goodell, which I attempted to, we’d most likely have squashed [our beef],” he mentioned.
However he additionally retains a everlasting enemies checklist that features Enterprise Insider and former “Name her Daddy” co-host Sofia Franklyn — whom he accuses of orchestrating a 2021 story with the publication that alleged sexual misconduct in opposition to him. It’s a interval he calls “the bottom of my life.”
“There’s sports activities hate and there’s you f–ked with my life sort of hate,” he mentioned.
However Portnoy believes followers can be most shocked by the depths of the frayed relations between him and two of Barstool’s largest stars, Dan “Massive Cat” Katz and Eric “PFT Commenter” Sollenberger, co-hosts of the wildly common podcast “Pardon My Take.”
“There’s been hints in regards to the forwards and backwards with ‘Pardon My Take,’ however I don’t assume folks knew how tense and dangerous that relationship was at one level,” he mentioned.
Earlier than the Massachusetts native may even dream of such a wacky universe, he was a 20-something burned out from a tech gross sales job and itching to begin a enterprise. A gambler, he cooked up the concept of printing a newspaper about betting.
Portnoy defined that, as “PMT grew extra common” a decade or so in the past, the hosts began to drag away from the mothership. He felt like they grew to become competitors. Due to calls for from the pair’s agent and a rising gulf between their sensibilities — their extra pleasant method vs Portnoy’s unfiltered nature — a schism was effervescent.
Katz and Sollenberger signed with ESPN to do “Barstool Van Discuss,” a TV model of their podcast.
It aired Oct. 17, 2017. ESPN canceled it six days later after an inner revolt from community workers — together with Sam Ponder, an ESPN persona on the time, who had publicly fought with Portnoy over outdated feedback she deemed misogynistic. (They’ve since hashed it out at a Manhattan restaurant, and Portnoy mentioned she gained his respect for approaching him in particular person.)
The present might have fizzled, however the hosts and Portnoy’s fraught relationship was smoothed over, he writes, by “an enemy who would unintentionally bestow the best present attainable to us: unity. Thanks, ESPN.”
Pulling the plug “realigned the Barstool Universe. Dan got here to the painful realization that for as a lot as he might have needed to distance ‘PMT’ from the perceived stink of Barstool, it was unattainable,” Portnoy writes.
With $30,000 he saved from his job and a $20,000 mortgage from his father, he give up his gross sales gig, cold-called advertisers, and, to distribute the paper himself, purchased a $1,800 Chevy Astrovan from a Mormon household desirous to promote earlier than they left on a mission.
The primary version learn: “Welcome to the world of Barstool Sports activities, the one newspaper in Boston written by the widespread man for the widespread man.”
Portnoy enlisted three writers to work free of charge, churning out humorous bro-centric articles and constructing an area fanbase. A number of years later, he ditched print for a weblog format, posting irreverent, generally outrageous observations about sports activities and ridiculous information tales.
The timing was wonderful. Boston’s professional groups, which had limped alongside in loserville for many years, had been abruptly ascendant — in all sports activities. Beantown grew to become Titletown, and Barstool Sports activities was its unconditional cheerleader and protector. On the similar time, Portnoy expanded, hiring writers in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.
In 2015, after Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was handed a four-game suspension by the NFL for “Deflategate,” Portnoy and three colleagues traveled to the NFL workplace in Manhattan, asking to talk with Goodell. Once they had been turned away, they handcuffed themselves to one another and sat on the foyer flooring.
{The handcuffs} had been prescient. They had been promptly arrested, spending 24 hours in jail earlier than making bail.
The incident gave Barstool a public enemy number-one within the league commissioner. That fall, on the Patriots’ kickoff sport, Portnoy exacted his revenge by distributing 70,000 towels with the picture of Goodell as a red-nosed clown — a most unwelcome sight for the NFL honcho as he entered Gillette Stadium.
“I got here to be taught the Patriots appreciated what we did,” Portnoy writes.
Consequently, El Presidente, as he was identified, achieved infamy. He was banned from NFL occasions for almost 10 years. In 2020, he bid $250,000 to look at “Monday Night time Soccer” with Goodell; two days later, the league returned Portnoy’s cash after an “intensive background test.”
Such stunts helped increase Barstool’s profile and attraction, which Portnoy mentioned was constructed on the workers being a ragtag group of everymen and ladies. (As CEO, he employed Erika Ayers Badan.)
He introduced the viewers alongside for the journey, they usually rewarded him with fealty.
“We’re the underdog versus the institution. So whether or not that’s Barstool versus Goodell, Barstool versus the woke, we didn’t actually shift or bend. And we didn’t should. We simply stayed true to ourselves,” he informed me.
His oft-repeated motto, “brick by brick,” refers to their fortitude that’s a part of the corporate’s distinctive DNA. Barstool mobilized its viewers to lift cash for fallen cops, the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and, finally, small companies throughout COVID lockdowns.
“[Critics] thought they had been blowing down a home made from straw,” Portnoy mentioned, “nevertheless it wasn’t constructed that manner.”
Certainly, Portnoy and, by extension, Barstool have evaded quite a few makes an attempt at cancellation. However in 2021, within the midst of the frenzied #MeToo period, Enterprise Insider dropped a bombshell — printing accounts from two younger girls who accused him of violent intercourse.
Portnoy held a “press convention” vehemently denying the allegations, saying any relations had been consensual.
“It was as little as I’ve been in my life. I didn’t have the abdomen for it,” Portnoy mentioned, calling it a “dishonest hit piece” full of “outright lies and contradictions.”
A Enterprise Insider spokesperson mentioned in a press release: “We proceed to face by our reporting. Dave Portnoy sued Enterprise Insider in federal courtroom over these articles and misplaced.”
Portnoy blames Franklyn and one other former worker who labored on her podcast, alleging in his guide that the previous “Name Her Daddy” co-host solicited tales on Instagram from girls who had connected with him. Portnoy factors to a podcast episode of “Chisme With DoKnow,” the place his “star accuser” tells the host that she was courting a former Barstool worker who launched her to the Enterprise Insider reporter.
Franklyn left Barstool, then the house of “Name Her Daddy” amidst a contract dispute and fallout along with her co-host, Alex Cooper.
The Publish has reached out to Franklyn.
He supplied to go on the document with Enterprise Insider, he writes, when the positioning gave him someday to reply to a “gigantic checklist of questions.” He unsuccessfully sued for defamation, however mentioned he has no regrets: “I don’t know what else I may have performed.”
In spite of everything, Portnoy is a fighter. It’s a trait he shares with President Trump, whom he interviewed on the White Home in 2020 — regardless that Barstool was constructed as an escape from politics.
“This was the president of the USA summoning me to the Oval Workplace. I couldn’t say no,” he writes. At occasions, he has felt a kinship with Trump.
“I feel he’s very imply in case you’re imply to him. I positively share that. Like, come at me with a feather, I hit you with a hammer,” he mentioned. “I’ve been accused of issues in my life that I completely know are false, unfaithful and repeated again and again.”
Portnoy has voted for Trump and notes that our president has a “proper” to hate the media. However he thinks the nation wants a extra unifying chief.
So would he leap into the political enviornment?
“I’ve thought of it,” he mentioned, acknowledging that each final destructive factor about him could be dredged up. “I commute.”
Portnoy, an avowed capitalist who says he’s dwelling the American dream and splits his time between the Florida Keys, Saratoga, NY, and Nantucket, Mass., has no love for Zohran Mamdani or the socialist surge overtaking blue cities like New York.
If Portnoy’s public persona has been underpinned by battle, his private life has been outlined by loyalty.
Atop his frustrations with media protection of him is his assertion that no has ever reached out to the lady who is aware of him greatest: his ex-wife, Renee Portnoy. The pair met within the early days of Barstool when she was employed as a promotional mannequin at hand out the newspaper. They divorced in 2017 on good phrases — however she nonetheless has entry to his checking account, as a result of he credit her with serving to him construct his empire.
He doesn’t foresee them getting again collectively, although, noting they’re each in “blissful relationships. I feel we’ll be lifelong mates.”
Pushing 50, Portnoy marvels at his journey. “I’ve been doing Barstool mainly half my life, which is loopy.”
His subsequent massive transfer? Portnoy claims he may fully disappear. However not anytime quickly. He may need a film premiere to attend with Bradley Cooper.
