One of the many fascinating things about Barstool Sports in its current iteration is Dave Portnoy’s multiple roles. Portnoy is currently the company’s sole owner, its lead executive, and one of its biggest on-air personalities.
All of that came to a head in a feud with Barstool host Kirk Minihane this week.
Before we get to that, it’s worth going into some background on where Portnoy is at now. Portnoy founded the company in 2001, but sold a minority stake to Penn Entertainment in January 2020 and then majority control to them early in 2023. However, when Penn wanted to strike a deal with ESPN for the ESPN Bet branding of their betting product in the summer of 2023, they sold their Barstool stake back to Portnoy for a dollar. And when Barstool CEO Erika Ayers Badan left (eventually to take over at Food52) early this year, Portnoy said he wouldn’t replace her, telling AA “I’m going to run the show.”
But Portnoy has also continued significant hosting work for Barstool, including on The Unnamed Show. And the latest episode there (with Minihane and Ryan Whitney, released Friday) saw a dive into how and why Portnoy fired Minihane for a few minutes earlier this week, with both.
Here’s the episode, with the conversation on that occurrence starting after the show’s initial ad reads (about 3:04 into the video) and running for almost 15 minutes.
The CliffsNotes here is that Barstool personality Brianna LaPaglia, also known as “Brianna ChickenFry,” is under internet fire on a few fronts, particularly around her ending her friendship and podcast partnership on Plan Bri Uncut with Grace O’Malley and planning to launch a solo version. LaPaglia has said that’s over O’Malley not supporting her publicly while LaPaglia was receiving alleged emotional abuse from country star Zach Bryan while dating him and receiving abuse from the internet on several fronts. Portnoy (who was on The BFFs podcast with LaPaglia and Josh Richards, but is leaving that) has previously spoken out in defense of LaPaglia and blasted Bryan.
As per the recap on The Unnamed Show here, Minihane comes into this because of a clip of him calling LaPaglia “the biggest fraud on the internet” over her apparent about-face on Taylor Swift. He said that was about her initially criticizing the music star but becoming a fan after attending a Swift concert. The Minihane clip got spread around various social media platforms and was used to criticize LaPaglia with lines like “Even her coworkers don’t like her.”
LaPaglia took that to Portnoy and said she didn’t know Minihane but wanted to go on his show to defend herself. Portnoy said there’s no way she should do that, and instead sent Minihane an angry text with several expletives and no context. Minihane called Portnoy from his car while driving his daughter back from a college visit, and that led to a remarkable rant from Portnoy (Minihane says at 5:15 “You were foaming at the mouth,” and Portnoy says “That’s as mad as I’ve been in a long time”). That eventually led to Minihane saying “I’m going to say what I want” and to Portnoy saying “You’re fired.”
Minihane says the confusing thing for him here, unlike a previous firing where “I deserved it,” was that he wasn’t sure what made this such a big deal. He then says he took some time to cool down and think about what he’d do next, then called Portnoy back a few minutes later. They were both calmer at that point and were able to resolve this, with Portnoy bringing him back. But this conversation shows there’s still a significant divide between Portnoy and Minihane here, with Whitney largely taking Minihane’s side, and it shows the challenges Portnoy is facing wearing all these hats at Barstool.
Throughout this conversation, Portnoy brings up all the internet fire LaPaglia is taking, and says he’s dealing with that “12 hours a day.” He also says she’s getting “the most hate on the internet,” and that Minihane and Whitney haven’t dealt with hate on that level. And he’s particularly upset at Minihane for this clip because of how it added to that, with people who don’t know Minihane (who’s often been acerbic towards many people, including colleagues) taking this as proof LaPaglia’s colleagues hate her.
But Whitney notes that Portnoy is being much more defensive of LaPaglia than he’s usually been of Barstool employees. And while Portnoy is particularly mad at Minihane for saying this about someone he doesn’t know, Minihane counters that Portnoy (in his on-air work and beyond) has criticized “about five million people” he doesn’t know.
This speaks to a lot of the challenges around Barstool. The company has always been known for its hosts’ relatively unfiltered takes, even though those have caused it problems over the years. And that includes takes on each other; while that’s often frowned upon at other media companies, including ESPN (although that’s changing: ESPN-on-ESPN crime used to be absolutely prohibited, but now we’re in an era where Pat McAfee can blast Norby Williamson on-air and eventually see Norby leave the company), Barstool has often capitalized on intracompany feuds, even getting major revenue from shows and writeups discussing them.
In that environment, it’s understandable why Minihane would feel a “the biggest fraud” comment on a coworker was fair game, even if he didn’t know them. And there have been plenty of comments from Portnoy towards Barstool employees over the years that seem even harsher than that.
But most of those comments were made in Portnoy’s role as an on-air figure rather than as an executive. And many of them were made while Ayers Badan was in the CEO role, from 2016-24.
Portnoy obviously still held a lot of power during that time, as founder and sole owner, then majority owner, then minority owner, but Ayers Badan was handling many of the business-side responsibilities. And that included at least some of the responses to media requests about the company and external criticism of their figures. It’s unlikely Portnoy would be spending “12 hours a day” on the LaPaglia situation if he wasn’t essentially the CEO as well as the owner.
The LaPaglia situation leading to this Portnoy-Minihane feud is particularly interesting because, as bizarre as it seems, the situation is quite precedented at Barstool. Hosts of an extremely popular women-focused podcast in a messy business split? That sure sounds like what happened with the sex advice and comedy podcast Call Her Daddy in 2020, with Barstool eventually moving forward with just Alex Cooper after a contentious contract renegotiation while Sofia Franklyn exited. (Cooper would then leave the next year, taking the podcast to Spotify and then bringing it to SiriusXM this year, and she’s since shown up on even Peacock’s Olympic coverage.)
Of course, Portnoy played a role there too. He was especially prominent with accusations that Franklyn’s dating of HBO executive Peter Nelson played a role in an unflattering Real Sports segment on the company (HBO denied that, saying Nelson removed himself from any involvement with that segment). But Ayers Badan was leading Barstool’s business operations at that point, so it certainly wasn’t all on Portnoy to handle that.
Cooper did specifically credit Portnoy for a key move to return the Call Her Daddy intellectual property to her, which led to her staying that extra year. He definitely was involved in dealing with some of the media and public commentary on the Call Her Daddy drama. But it does seem likely that he’s playing an even larger role in similar issues today, with no replacement exec on Ayers Badan’s level named and with him taking more control of operations. The really notable part of this is about LaPaglia going to Portnoy for a complaint about a coworker, and Portnoy then taking that complaint to that coworker in his role as lead executive, with that leading to a firing (albeit a short-lived one).
This doesn’t mean there are unsolvable issues at Barstool. As noted, the company’s done just fine despite a lot of internal drama in the past, and they’ve often even profited off it. But the Portnoy-Minihane divide here is interesting, and it does show some of the challenges of one figure wearing so many hats. It seems unlikely that Dave Portnoy the on-air personality would have had as much of an issue with Minihane’s take as Portnoy the company owner and executive did here.
[Barrett Media, Dave Portnoy on YouTube]
