▶ Watch Video: Dave Portnoy: “I don’t go out of my way looking for fights”
Welcome to Barstool Sports, a digital-age company that is a force in American culture. The headquarters resembles a frat house, and the boss’ office is a mess. “The worst,” said Barstool’s president Dave Portnoy, a reigning king of content and controversy.
Portnoy says he doesn’t like a fight, and won’t “go out of my way” for one, “but if you are going to pick a fight with me, I will do anything I can to ruin you.”
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What was once a free weekly newspaper of gambling tips founded out of his mom’s basement in 2003 is now an online empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Asked to explain what Barstool is, Portnoy said, “You’re sitting at a bar, watching a game with your buddies. Anything you would talk about, that’s what we’re recording, how people interact with each other normally.”
And that’s really what it is, podcasts and streaming shows of exactly that – people talking about pretty much anything: football, trivia, movies, and food, like Portnoy’s own “One Bite Pizza Reviews.”
Dave Portnoy’s top pizza scores:
“We have a bunch of (hopefully) creative, funny, talented people, and we let ’em just run wild,” Portnoy said. His job is “managing that ship.”
As for managing himself, well, he doesn’t hold back. “I feel like I have a good moral compass,” he said. “So, I don’t care what people say. I never have.”
Over the years, that’s led to outrage and accusations that Portnoy is just another online troll – sexist, racist, and, as alleged by a 2021 article about his sex life, “rough and demeaning” in bed, allegations he flat out denies, and which have never led to charges.
He objects to media outlets, like The New York Times, framing him as “Dave Portnoy, who has a history of racist and sexist remarks…” “I object strenuously to that,” he said. “And I hate them. They’re the ones who have said it, or people who don’t like me. I feel like virtually every single criticism (and some of ’em are brutal) have context around them that a fair-minded person, if they looked at the evidence, would be like, ‘What they’re saying about him’s just not true.’ But once it’s said, it will never go away.”
“People are coming up with real hate”
Raised in a liberal Jewish home outside of Boston, Portnoy now represents a movement in conservative politics – a young, mostly-male fan base who turned away from Democrats and voted for Donald Trump.
I asked Portnoy, “What happened to the Democrats? Why did they lose so many young men?”
“People often think I have the answer,” he replied. “My nutshell is generally they were very anti-normal guys.”
“What do you mean, ‘normal guys’? Are you saying there’s only one way to be a guy?”
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“It’s okay to be like, if that girl’s hot, ‘Hey, that girl’s hot. I want to drink, I want to party, I like frat parties…’ That was all bad,” Portnoy said. “And to be honest, the White guy … was the bad guy, became the bad guy. And there’s a lot of, you know, White dudes who are like, ‘Well, I’m not the bad guy. Like, what are you getting mad at me for? I wasn’t here for colonialism or any of the stuff that you guys are complaining about 200 years ago. Like, what did I do?’
“And even with the Trump stuff, he won the election,” he said. “You had a candidate basically calling you a deplorable or, you know, you’re a Nazi if you vote for Trump. I don’t know if they used that exact word, but it felt like that.”
Lately, though, Portnoy has been in the headlines, not for crossing a line, but for his efforts to draw one on antisemitism. He said, “I’ve seen in my own experience, just being at Barstool, the difference between how much hate I get – I never, I mean, occasionally you get, ‘Hey, kike’ or ‘Jew’ or whatever. It’s every day now. Like, there’s a definitive shift in what’s going on. So yeah, now, for me being a Jewish person, you have to step up. You’re kind of someone people look up to in the Jewish community. You have to go, ‘All right, this is not normal, ha-ha with the guys. People are coming up with real hate.'”
I asked, “How do you explain that line to people?”
“It’s a tough one,” Portnoy replied, “and sometimes they don’t get it.”
Just last week, a man was arrested for shouting antisemitic abuse at Portnoy while he was taping a video in Mississippi.
I asked, “The success of Barstool and yourself is based on not being afraid to offend, right? Speech is speech; a joke is a joke. Do you see a connection between what you unleashed and what you now have to deal with?”
“No,” Portnoy said. “Because I think Barstool, and myself, has always had a pretty good moral compass. So, we’ve never stood for hate or anything of that ilk. I mean, do I think that feminists should complain about a Diet Coke can being skinny, and that somehow is, like, leading to an eating disorder by Diet Coke having a skinny can? That I think’s crazy. And there are things that I think people get far too worked up [about], like he/she, verbs – like, crazy to me. Making jokes that you are trying to hurt people’s feelings and are based in hate? That’s never flown with us.”
He’s voted for Trump three times. Still, Portnoy, who supports abortion rights, says these days he’s disgusted by politics. “I mean, who the heck would want to get into politics anyways?” he said. “People always ask me that. It’s like, what are you, crazy? You can get more done as a private citizen. Everyone just hates your guts. And I don’t know why half these people – I feel like it gets the worst candidates, period. Ninety-nine percent of politicians are scumbags. But, you know, look at what happened to Charlie Kirk. Serious stuff. Like, I don’t want that in my life.”
Referring to acts of political violence that have been inflicted upon Kirk, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, President Trump, and Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Portnoy said, “I mean, I like my life.”
One BIte Pizza Reviews
Portnoy is legally separated and has no plans for kids. He does give back, boosting small businesses all over the country with his pizza reviews, and with the tens of millions of dollars he raised for them during the pandemic. But at 48, he doesn’t trust much of anything, including the media.
Which made me wonder: Why did he say yes to an interview like this?
“It was primarily because I love the show,” Portnoy replied. “And even on the way over here I’m like, you know, if this turns into a hit piece on me (which happens a lot with reporters and it’s like, ‘Oh, that stunk’), I think it would still be worth it to be on ‘CBS Sunday Morning.” It’s just part of, I mean, if you love a show, you wanna be part of it. Now, if it turns ugly, I’ll probably hate the show after! But at least I’ll be on it!
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Lauren Barnello.