Dave Portnoy On How Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn Left Barstool

Key Points:

• Dave Portnoy revealed in a WSJ Magazine interview that former Call Her Daddy co-hosts Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn planned to claim sexual harassment to exit their Barstool Sports contracts amid tense negotiations in 2020.
• Call Her Daddy, launched by Cooper and Franklyn in 2018 and later acquired by Barstool, quickly became a major success despite contrasting with Barstool's typical content, leading to a lucrative but fraught partnership.
• Portnoy confirmed Cooper and Franklyn disliked each other, and after their split from Barstool, they pursued separate paths with Cooper retaining the Call Her Daddy brand and Franklyn starting a new podcast.
• In a 2024 Hollywood Reporter interview, Cooper emphasized the importance of securing the Call Her Daddy intellectual property, crediting it as key to her media success and explaining her decision to stay with Barstool for an additional year despite low pay.
• Cooper also noted that Portnoy was unable to replace the original hosts easily due to her efforts to associate the Call Her Daddy brand directly with their faces, highlighting the value of personal branding within the podcast.