The most infamous moment of Julie Stewart-Binks’ career came nine years ago next week.
Co-hosting the Jason Whitlock vehicle Whitlock’s House Party by the Bay in the lead up to Super Bowl 50, the then-28-year-old eagerly urged Rob Gronkowski to give her a lap dance live on set. Gronk unsurprisingly obliged, creating both a viral and cringeworthy moment for all involved.
It somehow still lives on via the NFL on Fox YouTube page.
But whatever Fox earned in pageviews and retweets via the clip was ultimately overshadowed by criticism, much of which was directed toward Stewart-Binks. To many, the segment served as the worst kind of stereotype regarding women in sports: a 20-something-year-old co-host using sexuality and access to athletes for professional gain.
Stewart-Binks publicly defended herself against critics on social media, while Fox executives remained silent for more than a month. Just a couple months later, Stewart-Binks left Fox after the network declined to pick up the option on her contract. And while she’s worked in various roles across the sports media space in the years since, including stops at ESPN and Barstool Sports, her career has never quite recaptured the upward trajectory she enjoyed pre-Gronk lap dance.
And now we know that there’s more to the story following the news of Stewart-Binks’ lawsuit accusing Fox Sports executive Charlie Dixon of sexual assault.
In both her lawsuit and an interview with The Athletic’s Katie Strang, Stewart-Binks says that Dixon sexually assaulted her in a hotel room just days prior to the viral on-air lap dance. The Toronto native alleges that Dixon, an executive vice president and head of content at Fox Sports and FS1, “pushed her against the wall of the hotel and pinned her arms to her side. With her arms forcefully held down and his body pressed against hers, Dixon tried to force his tongue into her mouth” before continuing to lick her mouth, which she kept closed.
As for the Gronkowski stunt, Stewart-Binks said that she felt obligated to participate, as Dixon had admonished her talent for television prior to the alleged assault. “Had I not (done it), I would have felt like I failed and that I would have confirmed what (Dixon) told me,” she told Strang.
Despite their apparent desperation to create a viral moment, Fox executives didn’t publicly address it until six weeks later in the wake of the backlash. Meanwhile, Stewart-Binks says that Fox told her not to comment on it, while her agency, CAA, advised her to “ride it out.”
She was informed less than two months after the Super Bowl that Fox wouldn’t be picking up the option on her contract.
Stewart-Binks informed a Fox human resources official about the incident involving Dixon a year later after she was contacted regarding a probe into allegations against another Fox Sports executive, Jamie Horowitz. While Horowitz was fired, Dixon still remains at the company, and was accused of inappropriately touching a former Fox Sports hair stylist in a separate lawsuit filed earlier this month.
“These allegations are from over eight years ago. At the time, we promptly hired a third-party firm to investigate and addressed the matter based on their findings,” Fox Sports said in a statement to The Athletic’s regarding Stewart-Binks’ lawsuit.
While it remains to be seen how the lawsuit will play out, the accusations, if nothing else, shed new light on the six-second lap dance that proved to be a crossroads for Stewart-Binks’ career. Between both Dixon’s alleged comments to her — including, “you’re not hot enough to be a hot girl on TV” — and the alleged assault that followed, it’s understandable why she would have felt pressured to partake in such a segment, especially with the option for her contract coming due.
In her interview with Strang, Stewart-Binks said, “I will spend my entire life trying to make up for this,” she says, wiping away tears with a shaking hand. “I will die trying to make up for this moment that’s clearly not who I am.”
As for the aftermath of the incident, it sure seems like the network hung Stewart-Binks out to dry, with none of her bosses publicly commenting on the matter until more than a month after it took place. While Horowitz defended the host at the time, the reality is that the damage was already done, with Fox declining to pick up her option only adding to the notion that she took the fall. In an ironic twist, Gronk is now the one employed at Fox as an analyst for the Fox NFL Sunday pregame show.
Add it all up and it’s the type of unfortunate, messy and in some instances, outright disgusting situation that’s seemingly become all too common at Fox Sports over the years. And although we may now have more context regarding how such a baffling programming decision like the Gronk lap dance came to fruition, the reality is that nearly a decade’s worth of damage to Juile Stewart-Binks’ career has already been done as a result.
