Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy alleges in his newly released memoir that the original hosts of the hit podcast Call Her Daddy plotted to fabricate sexual harassment claims as a tactic to escape their contracts with his company.
The explosive charge centers on Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn, whose show was owned and distributed by Barstool Sports from 2018 to 2021 before Cooper ultimately continued the brand on her own. According to The Post Millennial, Portnoy contends that the pair showed no serious dissatisfaction with their compensation or contractual terms until they crossed paths with YouTuber Logan Paul, whom he portrays as a catalyst for their revolt.
"There was no indication that Alex and Sofia were unhappy with their situation, until they met Logan Paul. In April 2019, Alex and Sofia flew to Los Angeles to appear on Logan Paul's podcast, and he planted some rather poisonous seeds in their minds. They got into a discussion about their current contracts and pay, and Logan was unimpressed," Portnoy wrote in his new book, Cancel Me If You Can, per the Daily Mail. From that point, he claims, the relationship between Barstool and its star podcasters began to deteriorate rapidly as the hosts allegedly embraced a more adversarial posture.
"Alex and Sofia slowly began to show their growing dissatisfaction with being tied to Barstool. First, they stopped coming into the office. Near the end of 2019 was really when the major trouble started brewing. Call Her Daddy had hired a lawyer and wanted to have a meeting with us. The lawyer brought a list of demands so preposterous that I couldn't even make it through the meeting." Portnoy describes those demands as emblematic of a broader entitlement culture in modern media, where lucrative opportunities are often met not with gratitude but with escalating ultimatums.
He said the two hosts wanted "a million dollars a year, the right to sell their own ads, ownership over the intellectual property of Call Her Daddy, and 90 percent of their merch sales. Oh, and they no longer wanted to be qualified as employees of Barstool Sports." For a company that had built the Call Her Daddy brand from scratch, Portnoy frames these terms as not just aggressive but fundamentally unreasonable, especially given the financial risk Barstool had assumed.
Portnoy further alleges that Peter Nelson, then Franklyns boyfriend and a former HBO executive, was the hidden hand behind the standoff. He called Nelson "quite possibly a human incarnation of Satan." Franklyn, however, has publicly pushed back on that narrative, saying speculation about Nelsons involvement was "false," and that he "wasnt that involved."
As negotiations soured, Portnoy claims the hosts resorted to economic pressure by withholding the very product that had made them famous. He said that the Call Her Daddy hosts "simply stopped putting out their podcast" in an attempt to force their contract demands, with the back-and-forth leading to a secret meeting on the rooftop of Portnoys apartment building, where he said he proposed "the most generous offer in Barstool history" that he claimed would have made the hosts millionaires.
That offer, he recounts, was not enough to keep the partnership intact. He said that he later received a call from Cooper "out of nowhere" asking to meet again with Portnoy without Franklyn. He recalled her saying, "I love the deal you proposed, and I want to take it. But Sofia is never going to take it."
It is in this context that Portnoy levels his most serious allegation, claiming Cooper disclosed a strategy that went far beyond hardball bargaining. Portnoy wrote, "'Okay,' I said. 'You guys realize I'll sue you if you take the podcast to another network before your contract is out, right?' Alex claimed to me that they had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool."
He added, "That was it. That was their game plan to get out of their contractual obligation to Barstool Sports in the event that I did not relinquish their IP to them and wish them well on their merry way as they jumped ship to a rival podcast network." For Portnoy, the alleged scheme underscores how easily the modern culture of accusation can be weaponized, particularly against a politically incorrect brand that has long been a target of progressive activists.
He said that he and his company had been "pilloried for making sexist jokes" for years, "but we'd never been accused of inappropriate workplace conduct. But had they decided to go that route, even though it was patently untrue, it would have been a tough fight for us to win in the court of public opinion. Nobody would have believed my side of the story." In an era where due process is often subordinated to online outrage, Portnoys account reflects a broader conservative concern that false or exaggerated claims can destroy reputations and businesses before facts are fully examined.
"I realize that this is a heavy accusation I just made: how Call Her Daddy was allegedly planning to break their contract with us by lying about sexual harassment at Barstool." His memoirs revelations raise uncomfortable questions about the incentives in todays media ecosystem, where contractual obligations, corporate loyalty, and basic fairness can be overshadowed by the lure of bigger deals and the power of unproven allegations to rewrite the terms of any dispute.
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