Portnoy says he cut off negotiations -- "What do we get in return? Nothing. What do we get? Just to kiss their feet and they'll come back into the office?" -- and that they began shopping CHD around and conspiring to break their contract. Portnoy said he would sue them if they did that. "What company would sign somebody if the second you get big you're just gonna walk out the door?" Portnoy asked. "The analogy I always used with them was like an athlete. If you sign a three-year contract with the Boston Red Sox, and at the All-Star Break of Year 1 you're doing really well, you can't just pick up and go to the New York Yankees because they're going to pay you more."

After cutting off negotiations, however, Portnoy says he reconsidered given that we are in the middle of a pandemic where ad markets are brutal and Barstool still has to meet payroll. Further -- and this went unsaid -- Barstool's parent company Penn National has had its casinos closed for months and it's unclear when they'll draw revenue again. Therefore, he wanted to just concede to Cooper and Franklyn so Barstool could generate some money from their pod for a year. He says he offered them a new deal, and the CHD IP, but that Barstool wanted to retain the rights to alcohol (which has not been released yet, but sounds far along in the development pipeline).

Portnoy says he told Cooper that in 17 years of Barstool he'd never dealt with anyone as "unprofessional, disloyal, and greedy" as she and Franklyn. Meanwhile, his negotiations continued to get met with either denials or what he perceived to be wildly unreasonable counters like 90 percent of alcohol, and to get paid retroactively for the time of work they skipped. They repeatedly denied shopping the podcast to other companies, including in a face-to-face meeting with Portnoy about three weeks ago.

Portnoy says he then offered them $500,000 each, bonuses involved, escalating deals on merchandise, that they could have the CHD IP, and that they could leave their contract six months early (so, a year from now rather than in 18 months). Then they went dark again.

Now comes the drama between Cooper and Franklyn, which the New York Post reported about on Sunday. Essentially, Portnoy says that Cooper reached out to him and said that she knew they were being given a Godfather deal but that Franklyn would never accept any deal, no matter what.

Portnoy says that in his discussions with Cooper, he learned that HBO Sports executive Peter Nelson had "come into the mix" and that he brought in the lawyers and was "openly shopping Call Her Daddy ... He was acting almost as a manager, and he got a deal with Wondery." Portnoy says that they knew Barstool was going to sue, and were getting ready to use "every trick in the book" against them, including gender discrimination allegations. (Portnoy also believes that Nelson green-lit the 2019 HBO Real Sports piece that was unflattering to Barstool.)

At this point, it becomes pretty convoluted. Portnoy says that Cooper wanted the deal done with Barstool at this point because it was only a year left and they'd retain the IP. Barstool began working out a deal with Cooper alone for her to get 75 percent of the IP alone and for Barstool to keep 25 percent of it. Once that became close, Portnoy says that Franklyn wanted to return to the previously offered 50/50 partnership with Cooper, but it was too late. He says he made Franklyn a separate offer to do her own podcast without Cooper and see if she was an actionable talent on her own, and that her podcast would also be shared on the CHD feed (which has a crazy amount of subscribers). There's apparently been no response thus far.

Portnoy then directs his ire back to Nelson, who he says that Cooper says "hates" Barstool. "He was trying to manipulate the situation," Portnoy says. "To me, Sofia mixed business and pleasure." Portnoy says all of the talk of Cooper and Franklyn getting ready to "concoct" a story to get out of Barstool and go to Wondery began "percolating" when Nelson got into the picture. Portnoy thinks that Franklyn was hesitant to pull out of the Wondery deal for the Godfather offer from Barstool that Cooper wanted to take because Nelson "would've looked like an asshole" if that happened.

"This is the truth as I understand it," Portnoy says, who trusts Cooper over Franklyn. "It's a long and rambling story, and they're both gonna point the finger at each other."

We shall see what happens next.

Sofia Franklin

Dave Portnoy: HBO Sports Boss Peter Nelson Has Big Role in Call Her Daddy / Barstool Rift