There are many unusual things with Barstool Sports, but one that particularly stands out is the way that company often conducts internal business publicly. They’ve often turned editorial decisions and personnel moves into front-facing content, and have drawn a lot of attention for doing so. The latest case of that came with company founder, owner, and CEO Dave Portnoy announcing in the middle of their annual Bracket Busters NCAA Tournament upset team draft that he’d cancelled the Barstool Backstage music podcast for receiving too many copyright violation strikes.
Near the top of the 28-minute stream here (around 2:30), hosts Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Kevin Clancy talked about how this company-wide event often sees someone trip up in some way and face some job-related consequences from Portnoy. There, Katz said “Essentially, you just have to do this and Cyber Monday, and if you can survive those two days, you have a job for life at Barstool.”
That proved interesting given developments later in the show. Dante Deiana, the host of the Barstool Backstage music podcast, didn’t appear to do anything particularly wrong during this broadcast. But Portnoy used his team (he was paired with Jon Gruden and Mike Katic here’s chance to pick a bracket-buster to go off on Deiana for repeated copyright violation strikes and say Barstool Backstage was cancelled. That comes around the 22-minute mark of the video below (which is even titled “Dave Portnoy Cancels A Barstool Show During Our $40K Underdog Pick Tournament Presented By Experian”):
Portnoy says “While we’re waiting for Katic to get up, a quick announcement for Dante the Don. We’ve officially canceled Barstool Backstage for another violation of copyright, we’re taking them off the network.” The feed then shows Deiana on Zoom, but doesn’t let him talk. Portnoy then says “These guys are so dumb, it’s really hard to wrap my brain around it. I got the text ‘Hey, for the 39th time, they posted copyright. So it’s on Dante to pay the legal fees.” Deiana then tries to talk and Portnoy says ‘All right, shut up, Dante, you’re out.”
Neither Portnoy nor Deiana addressed this on X, beyond Portnoy retweeting the Barstool feed’s post on this. And Deiana retweeted an unrelated Portnoy post, criticizing Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, later in the day.
But, while there have been cases of Barstool parting ways with and then rehiring people such as Ben Mintz, that usually hasn’t happened extenuating circumstances. (In that case, that was about previous Penn ownership mandating Mintz’s firing following him reading a racial slur on air, and Portnoy first hiring Mintz personally after that, then bringing him back to Barstool once Portnoy reacquired that company). And while Barstool frequently addresses corporate drama in a very public and click-generating way, that doesn’t tend to include false statements. So it does seem likely Deiana is actually gone from the company (at least for now).
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first time Portnoy has publicly blasted Deiana and Backstage. Less than two weeks ago, Portnoy went off on Deiana for retweeting former Barstool employee Michael Angelo, and called Deiana “a crazy f**k I had to yell at today,” referencing that he “keeps posting copyrighted music” and saying “I’m now mad at Dante”:
Portnoy then showed up on a Backstage podcast after that to offer further criticism, saying he thought he’d explained to Deiana how not to do this and wasn’t listened to, and going off on Deiana for the retweet of Angelo (which Deiana described with “Huge mistake, I own it, I obviously knew nothing about the backstory”):
It’s interesting that this comes at a time where Deiana and Backstage were seemingly gaining some traction. That show has landed some prominent guests from the music world, from State Champs to O.A.R. to Chase Rice. And he’s teamed with Cleveland-based group Forward Hospitality to launched six 70’s-themed “Good Night John Boy” bars/clubs around the country, with his tweet on the latest one (coming to Delray Beach in Florida) getting an endorsement from Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel:
Dante and the Fwd team continue to create fun environments from scratch in several regions across the country. The branch of GNJB in Chicago is outstanding, plays a mix of music including disco, 90s, 2000s, and today. Exciting that it’s growing. https://t.co/t3QLDcBWYz
— Ryan Glasspiegel (@sportsrapport) March 18, 2025
Barstool Sports has obviously parted ways with plenty of prominent personalities in the past in one way or another, from Alex Cooper to Grace O’Malley to the Bussin’ With The Boys team. (The latter took their own shot on this Bracket Buster stream, with Katz suggesting that “there’s a 50-50 chance” Bussin‘ co-host Will Compton might show up to this Barstool event anyway because he “has PTSD” and doesn’t understand what’s going on.) And they’ve been just fine without those people. And the stated rationale of repeated music copyright lawsuits is somewhat understandable; Barstool would be far from the first brand to get in trouble for that.
But it is notable to see Barstool cut ties with Deiana and Backstage at a time when the Backstage brand seemed to be getting some traction. And it’s significant to see Portnoy do that in such a public way on an unrelated event. It’s interesting to ponder if it’s better or worse for Experian that the Bracket Busters event they thought they were sponsoring turned out to include a public firing. That’s not necessarily what they signed up for, but like many things with Barstool, the airing of the corporate drama might get more people to watch.
