For nearly two decades Dave Portnoy made his life and his company, Barstool Sports, into an online reality show of sorts — oversharing everything from office friction to his own dating life.
Now he’s written a memoir. With so much already out there, why go through the trouble?
“Ego,” Portnoy humbly told me. “The thought of walking into an airport and seeing this book in all the bookshops really appealed to me.”
The Barstool honcho was tempted by the possibility that his book, “Cancel Me If You Can,” out Tuesday, could potentially become the next “Private Parts” by Howard Stern, complete with a movie version.
So who would play him?
“Bradley Cooper. I like to say that I’m a poor man’s Bradley Cooper,” said the 49-year-old.
The book traces Portnoy’s meteoric rise from the owner of a free newspaper in Boston to a cultural lightning rod — with millions in the bank, an army of devoted “Stoolies” and a prominent role on Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff.” Along the way, he sold his company for $551 million and, in 2023, bought it back for $1.
If Cooper is to play the media mogul, he better strengthen his jawbone.
The self-proclaimed “Don King of internet fights” made his name by unapologetically instigating feuds against powerful people and the media establishment.
In the book, he details the depths of his grudge against NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — and reveals he would willingly break bread with his longtime nemesis.
“If I had dinner with Goodell, which I tried to, we would probably have squashed [our beef],” he said.
But he also keeps a permanent enemies list that includes Business Insider and former “Call her Daddy” co-host Sofia Franklyn — whom he accuses of orchestrating a 2021 story with the publication that alleged sexual misconduct against him. It’s a period he calls “the lowest of my life.”
“There’s sports hate and there’s you f–ked with my life type of hate,” he said.
But Portnoy believes followers will be most shocked by the depths of the frayed relations between him and two of Barstool’s biggest stars, Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Eric “PFT Commenter” Sollenberger, co-hosts of the wildly popular podcast “Pardon My Take.”
“There’s been hints about the back and forth with ‘Pardon My Take,’ but I don’t think people knew how tense and bad that relationship was at one point,” he said.
Before the Massachusetts native could even dream of such a wacky universe, he was a 20-something burned out from a tech sales job and itching to start a business. A gambler, he cooked up the idea of printing a newspaper about betting.
Portnoy explained that, as “PMT grew more popular” a decade or so ago, the hosts started to pull away from the mothership. He felt like they became competition. Thanks to demands from the pair’s agent and a growing gulf between their sensibilities — their more friendly approach vs Portnoy’s unfiltered nature — a schism was bubbling.
Katz and Sollenberger signed with ESPN to do “Barstool Van Talk,” a TV version of their podcast.
It aired Oct. 17, 2017. ESPN canceled it six days later after an internal revolt from network employees — including Sam Ponder, an ESPN personality at the time, who had publicly fought with Portnoy over old comments she deemed misogynistic. (They have since hashed it out at a Manhattan restaurant, and Portnoy said she gained his respect for approaching him in person.)
The show may have fizzled, but the hosts and Portnoy’s fraught relationship was smoothed over, he writes, by “an enemy who would unintentionally bestow the greatest gift possible to us: unity. Thank you, ESPN.”
Pulling the plug “realigned the Barstool Universe. Dan came to the painful realization that for as much as he may have wanted to distance ‘PMT’ from the perceived stink of Barstool, it was impossible,” Portnoy writes.
With $30,000 he saved from his job and a $20,000 loan from his father, he quit his sales gig, cold-called advertisers, and, to distribute the paper himself, bought a $1,800 Chevy Astrovan from a Mormon family eager to sell before they left on a mission.
The first edition read: “Welcome to the world of Barstool Sports, the only newspaper in Boston written by the common man for the common man.”
Portnoy enlisted three writers to work for free, churning out humorous bro-centric articles and building a local fanbase. A few years later, he ditched print for a blog format, posting irreverent, sometimes outrageous observations about sports and ridiculous news stories.
The timing was excellent. Boston’s pro teams, which had limped along in loserville for decades, were suddenly ascendant — in all sports. Beantown became Titletown, and Barstool Sports was its unconditional cheerleader and protector. At the same 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 office in Manhattan, asking to speak with Goodell. When they were turned away, they handcuffed themselves to each other and sat on the lobby floor.
The handcuffs were prescient. They were promptly arrested, spending 24 hours in jail before making bail.
The incident gave Barstool a public enemy number-one in the league commissioner. That fall, at the Patriots’ kickoff game, Portnoy exacted his revenge by distributing 70,000 towels with the image of Goodell as a red-nosed clown — a most unwelcome sight for the NFL honcho as he entered Gillette Stadium.
“I came to learn the Patriots appreciated what we did,” Portnoy writes.
As a result, El Presidente, as he was known, achieved infamy. He was banned from NFL events for nearly 10 years. In 2020, he bid $250,000 to watch “Monday Night Football” with Goodell; two days later, the league returned Portnoy’s money after an “extensive background check.”
Such stunts helped raise Barstool’s profile and appeal, which Portnoy said was built on the staff being a ragtag group of everymen and women. (As CEO, he hired Erika Ayers Badan.)
He brought the audience along for the ride, and they rewarded him with fealty.
“We’re the underdog versus the establishment. So whether that’s Barstool versus Goodell, Barstool versus the woke, we didn’t really shift or bend. And we didn’t have to. We just stayed true to ourselves,” he told me.
His oft-repeated motto, “brick by brick,” refers to their fortitude that’s part of the company’s unique DNA. Barstool mobilized its audience to raise money for fallen cops, the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing and, eventually, small businesses during COVID lockdowns.
“[Critics] thought they were blowing down a house made of straw,” Portnoy said, “but it wasn’t built that way.”
Indeed, Portnoy and, by extension, Barstool have evaded numerous attempts at cancellation. But in 2021, in the midst of the frenzied #MeToo era, Business Insider dropped a bombshell — printing accounts from two young women who accused him of violent sex.
Portnoy held a “press conference” vehemently denying the allegations, saying any relations were consensual.
“It was as low as I’ve been in my life. I did not have the stomach for it,” Portnoy said, calling it a “dishonest hit piece” filled with “outright lies and contradictions.”
A Business Insider spokesperson said in a statement: “We continue to stand by our reporting. Dave Portnoy sued Business Insider in federal court over these articles and lost.”
Portnoy blames Franklyn and another former employee who worked on her podcast, alleging in his book that the former “Call Her Daddy” co-host solicited tales on Instagram from women who had hooked up with him. Portnoy points to a podcast episode of “Chisme With DoKnow,” where his “star accuser” tells the host that she was dating a former Barstool employee who introduced her to the Business Insider reporter.
Franklyn left Barstool, then the home of “Call Her Daddy” amidst a contract dispute and fallout with her co-host, Alex Cooper.
The Post has reached out to Franklyn.
He offered to go on the record with Business Insider, he writes, when the site gave him one day to respond to a “gigantic list of questions.” He unsuccessfully sued for defamation, but said he has no regrets: “I don’t know what else I could have done.”
After all, Portnoy is a fighter. It’s a trait he shares with President Trump, whom he interviewed at the White House in 2020 — even though Barstool was built as an escape from politics.
“This was the president of the United States summoning me to the Oval Office. I couldn’t say no,” he writes. At times, he has felt a kinship with Trump.
“I think he’s very mean if you’re mean to him. I definitely share that. Like, come at me with a feather, I hit you with a hammer,” he said. “I have been accused of things in my life that I absolutely know are false, untrue and repeated over and over.”
Portnoy has voted for Trump and notes that our president has a “right” to hate the media. But he thinks the country needs a more unifying leader.
So would he jump into the political arena?
“I’ve thought about it,” he said, acknowledging that every last negative thing about him would be dredged up. “I go back and forth.”
Portnoy, an avowed capitalist who says he’s living 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 conflict, his personal life has been defined by loyalty.
Atop his frustrations with media coverage of him is his assertion that no has ever reached out to the woman who knows him best: his ex-wife, Renee Portnoy. The pair met in the early days of Barstool when she was hired as a promotional model to hand out the newspaper. They divorced in 2017 on good terms — but she still has access to his bank account, because he credits her with helping him build his empire.
He doesn’t foresee them getting back together, though, noting they’re both in “happy relationships. I think we’ll be lifelong friends.”
Pushing 50, Portnoy marvels at his journey. “I’ve been doing Barstool basically half my life, which is crazy.”
His next big move? Portnoy claims he could completely disappear. But not anytime soon. He might have a movie premiere to attend with Bradley Cooper.
