Barstool Sports Founder Dave Portnoy Accused Of Violent Sex Acts Against Multiple Women, Stock Plunges
Nov. 4 2021, Published 3:54 p.m. ET
Dave Portnoy is being accused of violent sex acts against multiple women who say the 44-year-old Barstool Sports founder choked them beyond what they wanted, filmed their encounters without consent and/or threatened them.
The women say they were left "traumatized" by their experiences, and one even claims she became suicidal as a result.
The bombshell allegations were made in a lengthy report published Thursday by Business Insider. The publication interviewed more than two dozen people who have direct experience with Portnoy and Barstool, including eight current or former employees.
Some of the women who spoke to the outlet are as young as 19 and said they had no professional connection to Portnoy. Many said they had sexually explicit online conversations with him, with three alleging that they engaged in sexual acts with "El Presidente" that turned into "frightening and humiliating experiences."
All three said they were afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation from the digital media mogul and his relentless fan base. They did not use the accusers' real names for the story.
One woman, Madison, told the publication she slid into Portnoy's DMs last summer and that he responded. She said the conversation was instantly sexual; he asked her about her sexual fantasies, and she told him, "I mean actually this ones kind of common. Like a rape fantasy, where I don't have any control of what's going on."
"You and I are going to get along so well," he responded.
Before she knew it, Madison said she was on a first-class flight to visit Portnoy in Nantucket, courtesy of Portnoy.
"He was very rude. He wasn't funny at all. He just reminded me of a boring, grumpy old man," she recalled, adding that after they ate some pizza that he had ordered, they started kissing.
Madison said she became uncomfortable when Portnoy pulled out his phone and started filming her – without asking permission – while she performed oral sex on him. "I never said anything. I was scared. He was just so mean," she told the outlet.
She said things escalated until she found herself crying and shouting, "Too much! Too much!" and "It hurts!"
She recalled feeling like "a human sex doll."
"It was so painful," Madison told Insider. "I kept trying to get away and he was like, 'Stop running away from me. Stop running away from me.'"
But Portnoy, she said, "just went harder."
Following the encounter, she sent a friend the following text message: "It was so rough I felt like I was being raped he video taped me and spit in my mouth and choked me so hard I couldn't breathe. And it hurt and I was literally screaming in pain."
The second woman told Insider, "I know how he is when someone goes after him," adding that she was also choked and recorded without consent.
She asked not to have specific details of her experience included in the article, saying, "I thought he would say something in public, or share videos of me."
In an email response, Barstool Sports' attorney told Insider that many of the claims made 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."
Insider notes that the attorney asked for more time for further comment. The publication claims to have given them two more days but that they did not follow back up.