"I know how he is when someone goes after him," said the second woman, who said she was both choked and filmed without advance permission. She asked not to have the specific details of her experience publicly revealed, fearing harassment from Portnoy or his fans. Insider spoke to someone with whom the woman shared details of her rough sex with Portnoy. "I thought he would say something in public, or share videos of me."
In an email, Barstool Sports' attorney said many of the accusations in the article "embody half-truths, are highly misleading, lack appropriate context, and appear to have been provided to you by individuals whose motivations and trustworthiness should at least have been fully vetted." The attorney asked for more time for further comment. Insider provided an additional two days, but Barstool's attorney did not provide additional comment or communication.
Perpetually tan and bearded, Portnoy has built a half-a-billion-dollar digital-media empire off of sports gambling, crude humor, and barely clothed women. Barstool Sports — whose slogan is "By The Common Man, For The Common Man" — does for digital media what Donald Trump did for politics. It speaks to the masses: no pretension, no highfalutin language, and, notably, no apologies. The company says it reaches an estimated 54 million monthly unique visitors. In 2020, Barstool was valued at $450 million; Portnoy has an estimated net worth of $100 million.
Portnoy founded Barstool in 2003 in his hometown of Swampscott, Massachusetts. The free four-page newspaper offered betting tips alongside rambling sports rants. Portnoy hit the streets every day to distribute the paper to Boston-area commuters, writing all the articles under various pseudonyms. To drum up more interest, Portnoy started hiring young local models to hand out the paper in skimpy outfits (one of whom, Renee Satterthwaite, became his wife; they separated in 2017).
By 2007, Barstool had taken its operations online. In the heyday of stream-of-consciousness blogging, Barstool featured early columns like "Smokeshow of the day," in which employees scoured Facebook for photos of attractive local women, and "Guess that Ass," which invited readers to guess which female celebrity was pictured in each meticulously cropped image.
A 2013
profile in Entrepreneur magazine described Barstool's original Milton, Massachusetts, offices as "the unholy union of a fraternity house and a crime scene: Beer advertisements featuring half-naked women adorn the walls, towers of junk wobble in every corner, and the carpet is soiled with a panoply of dark dribbles and stains."
The environment reflected their company's irreverent attitude. Portnoy didn't just court controversy; he relished in it. As he became increasingly known for going against the grain, fans who felt alienated by modern-day "woke" culture turned to him as the antidote.
Take a 2017 episode of the podcast "Barstool Radio," during which Portnoy seemed to defend a hypothetical casting-couch scenario in which Harvey Weinstein says to a struggling actress, "Hey, if you sleep with me, I'm going to put you in a starring role."
"No force, just a question," the Barstool founder said. "Do you have a problem with that trade?"
He's ignited feuds with female journalists, like the ESPN sportscaster Sam Ponder, whom he
told to stop posting pictures of her "ugly kid" and to "sex it up and be slutty" while she hosted the college football pregame show "College GameDay."
In 2010, Portnoy infamously wrote a blog post defending an Australian man who had been acquitted of raping a 24-year-old woman on the so-called skinny-jeans defense.
"I never condone rape, but if you're a size six and you're wearing skinny jeans, you kind of deserve to be raped," Portnoy wrote. The post has since been removed from Barstool's site, but just this May, Portnoy told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson there was only one part of that statement that he regretted. "I thought size 6 was like size 20," he said. "I had my, I had my measurements screwed up. I wasn't on top of that."
Portnoy's brashness is exactly what fans and some colleagues say they love most about him.
Portnoy has become a celebrity in his own right. In 2017, he appeared on Seth Meyers' show.
"The big thing about him is he's very truthful," Portnoy's longtime friend Elio Imbornone said. "You might not want to hear exactly what he wants to say, but he says what he believes and you've got to respect that."
Still, not everyone at Barstool is free to broadcast their opinions. In 2018, Portnoy
removed two posts that cast a sympathetic light on Brett Kavanaugh's sexual-assault accuser Christine Blasey Ford, citing Barstool's "no politics" policy, but left other posts on the hearings in place. Two years later, amid Black Lives Matter protests, Portnoy told his content team, in an email reviewed by Insider: "If anybody wants to write about politics or mentions white privilege or BLM on either side of the fence it must be approved by me and only me. Nobody else has the authority to publish anything." He told them "not to bother" asking Barstool's editor in chief, Keith Markovich. "Ask me."
It's even written into Barstool contracts that employees need to check their political correctness at the door.
In 2017, the sportscaster Elika Sadeghi
leaked the terms of the Barstool contract she was offered after the company pursued her for an on-camera position.
"I understand and acknowledge that as part of my job I may be exposed to speech and conduct that explicitly relates to sex, sexual orientation, gender, national origin, religion, disability and age," it said. "I expressly agree and represent that I do not object to being exposed to such speech and conduct and do not find it otherwise offensive or objectionable, and that I am willing to work in such an environment."
Sadeghi did not accept the job.
Critics of Barstool, both within and outside the company, told Insider there's a real risk to speaking out.
The online community of Stoolies, as Barstool's fans call themselves, have waged harassment campaigns against detractors. These have included death threats, doxing, online harassment, and targeting of people's families, friends, and workplaces.
Bob Murchison, a private-equity investor with no professional connection to Barstool, first began tracking Barstool's content in 2019 after it hired a radio host with a history of transphobic comments. Murchison, who has a transgender son, has taken it upon himself to privately warn advertisers of what he perceives to be the company's transphobic, misogynist, and racist content.
In 2019, a Barstool employee shared a tweet containing Murchison's cellphone number and email address; his home address was posted on fan-run message boards. In response, Stoolies sent Murchison death threats and packages (including one with an object meant to look like a bomb and another containing feces), staged a "prayer vigil" in his hometown that was also attended by Barstool employees, contacted organizations with which he was affiliated to make false claims of criminal activity against him, and showed up to his house, where they filmed videos of their trespassing, which they later posted online.
"I reached out to Erika Nardini" — Barstool's CEO — "and Barstool counsel several times asking them to address this horrific behavior," Murchison told Insider. "Their responses left me with the impression that the harassment would only be stopped if I agreed to stop my criticism of their content. I believe the harassment was intended to intimidate and silence me." Nardini did not respond to our request for comment.
Portnoy declined to get involved, saying on "Barstool Radio" in 2019: "This Murchison guy, he sounds like a crazy person. I'm not going to war with someone I've literally never said a word to."
But Portnoy doesn't always stay silent.
The online community of Stoolies, as Barstool's fans call themselves, has waged harassment campaigns against detractors. Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
This spring, Nantucket magazine featured a glowing profile of Portnoy, including a cover shot with Portnoy lounging in the ocean atop a rosé floatie. After readers complained about being offended by Portnoy's inclusion given his history of misogynistic and racist comments, the magazine issued an apology. Portnoy went on the attack,
telling Page Six that the Nantucket magazine editors were "spineless jellyfish who are held hostage by the whims of the vocal minority." He added that anyone who didn't like him "can go fuck themselves."
Since 2020, Portnoy has issued commands on Twitter for his fans to "ATTACK!!!!" people who criticize him or Barstool, tagging an employee who was hired expressly for the purpose of harassing Portnoy's enemies
'I was literally screaming in pain': Young women say they met Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy for sex and it turned violent and humiliating
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