Two women accuse the founder of Barstool Sports of violent sexual encounters at his home in Nantucket last year that left at least one of them “literally screaming in pain,” according to a report published Thursday by Business Insider.
Dave Portnoy, 44, has denied the allegations on Twitter and called the story by reporter Julia Black a “hit piece.”
“It’s like they’re asking the internet, ‘Tell us bad stories about Dave Portnoy,’” he said in a 10-minute videotaped statement. “Well guess what? A lot of (expletive) people hate me. I guarantee this: They’ll never be able to prove anything. Nothing, because nothing’s ever happened. But I can’t stop a he said, she said.”
According to NBC News, Insider defended the report, which was originally meant to be a personality profile of the millionaire celebrity blogger who started the popular digital media company in 2003.
“Around mid-April, our reporter spoke with a woman about what she described as a frightening sexual encounter with Portnoy,” Insider said, according to the network. “A draft was in the works by that point, but we decided we would be remiss to not explore further. We eventually heard from more women and the additional reporting led the article in a new and unexpected direction.”
The accusers, who used pseudonyms for the Insider report, said they first met Portnoy after messaging him either through texts or his inbox on social media.
One of the women claims that in the summer of 2020, Portnoy purchased a first-class ticket for her to fly to his home, where they had sex, but she said Portnoy’s aggressions hurt her physically.
She also claimed that Portnoy filmed parts of the encounter without her consent and choked her hard enough to cut off her breathing, then refused to back off when she implored him to stop.
“It was so painful,” the woman, identified as Madison, told Insider. “I kept trying to get away, and he was like, ‘Stop running away from me. Stop running away from me.’”
Later, she confided to a friend that she felt like she was “being raped,” Insider reported.
The second woman, identified as Allison, similarly claimed Portnoy was too “aggressive,” choked her and “kept spitting in my mouth” before he kicked her out of his house.
The encounter, she said, left her feeling humiliated, depressed and suicidal.
“I was kind of scared. I didn’t want to disappoint him,” she told Insider.
Afterward, she said she had to be hospitalized for three nights, and that her mother called the Nantucket Police about the incident, but no charges were ever filed.
Portnoy — who is known as “El Presidente” on the Barstool website — did not deny that the woman was at his home, but he said the encounter was completely consensual.
“We did have pizza, hung out, hooked up,” Portnoy said in the videotaped statement he posted to Twitter. “At no point during — at no point — was it not 100% consensual. At no point did she ask me to stop, at no point did either us think something unseemly happened. There was no weirdness after. It was totally fine, normal interaction ... 100% consensual.”
Also in the video, Portnoy reveals text messages as proof that he and the woman had made plans to meet at a local bar before going back to his home.
“To me, that’s pretty black and white...it’s such a strange area to be in because it’s a sensitive issue and these allegations are horrific,” Portnoy said. “But they’re saying she’s so depressed by me, suicidal almost. But she was continually hitting me up to hang out. ... I don’t know.”
Barstool Sports issued a statement Thursday, saying it was a private matter outside the scope of the workplace, NBC reported.
“This recent news does not involve any workplace behavior,” the company said, according to the network. “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on the private lives of our employees, but we take this matter seriously and are monitoring it closely.”
The Barstool Sports website features content focused on sports and pop culture, and the outspoken Portnoy continues to run the site and retains creative control over its content despite having sold his majority stake in the company in recent years.
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