Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy showed Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson a never-before-seen video of a shouting match with an angry restaurant owner amid their conversation about changes to Barstool Sports.
Portnoy, who reviews pizza shops, first shared a video of a fight he engaged in with a pizza restaurant owner to Carlson. The man approached Portnoy and told him he does not appreciate him judging a business’ pizza by one bite.
“Dave, enjoy your pizza as any customer, but I don’t appreciate what you do, coming in and judging a business with one bite,” the owner said.
“Well, we do more. Is this your spot?” Portnoy responded.
“This is my spot. I hope you enjoy your pizza. But I don’t appreciate what you do to small businesses,” he said.
“Well I help, the good news is that—”
“I don’t see it that way,” the man interrupted. “Maybe I’ll be a little clearer, move on. Don’t stand in front of my business.”
“Let me be clear. Fuck you,” Portnoy responded, raising his middle finger. “Fuck you.”
“Let me be clear — get the fuck out in front of my business,” the man yelled back.
“Fuck you, it’s a public street, you motherfucker. It’s a public street. This ain’t your business,” Portnoy said.
Portnoy told the pizza restaurant owner he wore a shirt “six sizes too small” and to “lose some weight.” The owner called Portnoy a “clown.”
Portnoy told Carlson the man “went out of his way to pick a fight” with him and said he is what is “wrong with this country.”
“Clearly that guy hates Trump, hates everything, but why do you hate me? You don’t know anything about me,” he told Carlson.
Portnoy purchased 100% stake in Barstool Sports back from Penn Entertainment Inc. after selling his stake in February for $388 million. Portnoy said the company “underestimated” the difficulty of owning the company and of dealing with powerful, appointed regulators, leading to the buyback by Portnoy.
Dave Portnoy founded Barstool Sports and just completed the most impressive business transaction of our lifetime. He also just got into an epic fight and shared the video with us first. Watch. pic.twitter.com/6LSFLTczzM
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 31, 2023
The Barstool Sports owner said the regulators belonging to PENN barred them from promoting their products that had previously been successful, leading Portnoy to develop a rocky relationship with PENN Entertainment.
“We were on trial and we were the only ones on trial. It didn’t matter what the backgrounds or the history of the other gambling companies,” Portnoy said about the regulators. “So it became really difficult for us to succeed in this business when, you know, for example, we weren’t allowed to do college football game day shows. Like we, for years, would go to a college campus before a football game and we’d do a college football show, it was called ‘Barstool Sports Game Day.’ We weren’t allowed to do that anymore because they said we were promoting underage gambling.”
“Everything we did was met with resistance so it made it really hard for this PENN-Barstool relationship to prosper and I think PENN got to the point where they said, ‘you know, we’re not getting the results we wanted,'” he continued. (RELATED: Dave Portnoy Slams New York’s Indoor Dining Ban As ‘Stealing The Right To Earn A Living’ In Twitter Rant)
PENN Entertainment paid $600 million to buy out the company and returned it to Portnoy’s control once it lost money.
Barstool Sports laid off nearly 25 percent of staff Thursday, leading 100 jobs to be lost, the NY Post reported.
Portnoy said the liberal media makes him out to be “Hitler” due to his support for former President Donald Trump. He strongly opposed the COVID-19 lockdowns and received criticism for appearing on Carlson’ former show on Fox News, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”