By: Don Driggers
Founder of popular media outlet Barstool Sports is striking back against a gossip outlet who published stories about alleged sexual assault.
According to The New York Post, “Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has filed a lawsuit against the media outlet Insider.com over “false and defamatory” stories that quoted women who claimed that he assaulted them during sexual encounters. Portnoy, 44, followed through on his threat from last week to take legal action against the online publication after it published a second story alleging that the sports media mogul filmed sex with women without their consent.”
The New York Post reports, “last year, several women told Insider.com that Portnoy became violent during sex by choking them and filming them without permission. One woman claimed that he broke her ribs during a tryst. Portnoy has strongly denied the allegations. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Insider told The Post: “We stand behind our reporting and will defend the case vigorously.”
“Portnoy founded Barstool in 2003 in his hometown in Massachusetts, literally taking to the streets to distribute what was then a free four-page newspaper. He later went digital and built the company into a major success”, according to The New York Post. The current legal issues have not seemed to cause any repercussions for the business value of Barstool Sport. The New York Post states, “In January 2020, Penn National Gaming paid $163 million for a 36% stake in Barstool Sports. In 2016, Portnoy sold majority control of the company to Peter Chernin’s Chernin Group. Shares of Penn National Gaming were trading up by more than 4% on Wall Street on Tuesday.
Dave Portnoy’s Wikipedia page says, “born to Jewish parents Michael and Linda ( Kaufman), Portnoy grew up in Swampscott, Massachusetts, where he attended Swampscott High School. One of his classmates was ESPN’s Todd McShay.
Portnoy began attending the University of Michigan in 1995, graduating with a degree in education.
This isn’t Portnoy’s first brush with the law. Wikipedia says, “Portnoy has twice been detained in NFL-related incidents: first on May 12, 2015, when he was arrested by New York City police after he and three Barstool employees handcuffed one another on the floor of NFL headquarters to protest Deflategate and again in 2019 when he was placed in a holding cell at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for a portion of Super Bowl LIII. In the latter incident, he had created fake passes to attend a press event the day prior and was prohibited from attending the game.”
Portnoy also, according to Wikipedia, was investigated by “The National Labor Relations Board in 2019 for posts on Twitter on charges that he illegally threatened to fire his workers if they unionized. That December, Portnoy reached an informal settlement with the Board, which required him to delete his threatening tweets and remove any potential anti-union material created by Barstool Sports. The settlement also noted that the Twitter account originally encouraging employees to unionize was actually owned by Barstool in an attempt to out labor organizers.”
