Dave Portnoy still isn’t exactly a union guy.
The Barstool Sports founder has already been reprimanded by the National Labor Relations Board once before.
The original dispute erupted in August 2019, just hours after staff at The Ringer announced plans to unionize. Portnoy responded by resurfacing a 2015 blog post where he dared Barstool employees to try the same, vowing to “smash their little union to smithereens.”
The next day, he followed that up on X (then Twitter), threatening to fire any employee who supported unionization.
Me too. Just so I can crush it and reassert my dominance. https://t.co/DoLl61wRVW
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 13, 2019
That triggered a formal complaint from the IWW Freelance Journalists Union, and the NLRB got involved.
By early 2020, Portnoy had reached a settlement. According to CBS News, the terms required him to delete the offending tweets, scrub anti-union content from Barstool’s platforms, and inform employees of their legal right to organize, both through email and physical postings inside the office.
The agreement also revealed that the company had created a fake Twitter account — Barstool Sports Union — posing as an internal labor group and encouraging employees to direct message it. The account was deleted as part of the deal.
Notably, the settlement didn’t require Portnoy or Barstool to admit wrongdoing.
Well, well, well:
Remember when we put the CEO of Barstool Sports on notice about tweeting threats to intimidate his workers from unionizing?
Looks like he just had to settle with the NLRB over his actions.
Reminder: Threatening workers who want to unionize is illegal 🙂 https://t.co/vPEGbjCH32 pic.twitter.com/F8useTAD7Z
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 21, 2020
In a recent NPR interview, Portnoy said the whole thing was just typical Barstool satire that got out of hand.
“This turned into a big thing. I had to apologize to the National Labor Relations Board,” he said. “…I tweeted out as part of the ongoing satire of what we do, ‘Anyone who creates a union, I will bust that union to shreds, and you’ll be gone.’ It continued. (AOC) would throw a barb back, and we’d up the ante. And it was our own people with the union we created as sort of a Saturday Night Live skit, creating all the issues.”
Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition, followed by asking Portnoy if he “ought to have a real union.”
Portnoy looked at him like he had asked if he would ever consider becoming a New York Jets fan.
“No. No. We definitely shouldn’t have a union,” Barstool’s founder said. “You know what our union is? Talent. If I look at the people that have come and gone, just briefly, like Alex Cooper left Barstool, made $70 million from Spotify. I think [Pat] McAfee got about $100 million at ESPN. Bussin’ With the Boys, a podcast, just got $60 million from FanDuel.
“Also, I don’t fire people. We pay great. And if you’re great, we use a model — I look at us like an athletic team. If you are a great player, and we sign you to a two-year contract, at the end, you’ll have the option. You can go get more money, because we can’t pay you, or you stay with us, and we pay you. But talent, for us, we’re in a talent business. So, talent pays. We pay well. We do well. If you look at the history of our company, almost nobody leaves. We don’t fire anybody. So, we absolutely do not have a union.”
“But I find it interesting, all the companies that kill us for that debacle, they all have unions,” Portnoy continued. “And all their people have been laid off and gone out of business. We haven’t. We’re thriving, and have for 20 years. People love working for Barstool.”
Portnoy’s position on unions hasn’t changed. He doesn’t think Barstool needs one. He sees the company as a talent-driven business that pays well and rewards performance, pointing to former employees who’ve made big money after leaving.
Still, critics argue that without a union, workers may lack important protections and a collective voice, especially in an industry known for its high turnover.
But that hasn’t changed Portnoy’s stance, even after he settled and apologized to the National Labor Relations Board.
