Alex Cooper publicly disputed Dave Portnoy's memoir allegation that she and her former co-host planned to fabricate sexual harassment claims to escape their Barstool Sports contract, but refused to offer her own account.
Cooper, the host of the massively successful "Call Her Daddy" podcast and founder of the Unwell Network, sat for a CNBC interview this week in which the interviewer pressed her directly on the most explosive passage from Portnoy's book, "Cancel Me If You Can." Her response amounted to a flat denial, a compliment, and a pivot: she said she hadn't read the memoir and had no interest in relitigating the past.
The exchange matters because Portnoy's allegation, that Cooper and former co-host Sofia Franklyn devised a scheme to level false workplace harassment claims against Barstool in order to break their contract, is not a throwaway gossip item. It is a specific, on-the-record accusation, published in a memoir, by the man who built the company that launched Cooper's career. And Cooper, now sitting atop a media empire worth nine figures in deal value, chose to wave it away with a smile.
In "Cancel Me If You Can," Portnoy writes that he offered Cooper and Franklyn what he called "the most generous offer in Barstool history", a deal that would have made both women "instant millionaires." Cooper, he claims, contacted him privately, without Franklyn, and told him she wanted to accept.
Page Six reported the key passage from the memoir:
"'I love the deal you proposed, and I want to take it. But Sofia is never going to take it.'"
Portnoy writes that he warned both women he would sue if they took the podcast to a rival network before their contract expired. That's when, he says, Cooper revealed their fallback strategy.
"Alex claimed to me that they had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool."
He described it bluntly: "That was it. That was their game plan to get out of their contractual obligation to Barstool Sports in the event that I did not relinquish their IP to them and wish them well on their merry way as they jumped ship to a rival podcast network."
Portnoy acknowledged in the book that Barstool had been attacked "for making sexist jokes" but maintained the company had "never been accused of inappropriate workplace conduct." He also conceded the tactical danger of even a false claim. "Had they decided to go that route, even though it was patently untrue, it would have been a tough fight for us to win in the court of public opinion," he wrote. "Nobody would have believed my side of the story."
That last line carries weight. Portnoy is not a man unfamiliar with public accusations. In 2021, Business Insider published allegations of violent sexual conduct against him, allegations he denied and subsequently challenged in federal court, where he lost. He described that period as "as low as I've been in my life."
When CNBC put the allegation to Cooper directly, she did not confirm it, deny it with specifics, or explain what actually happened during the contract dispute. She offered a diplomatic sidestep.
"Whenever I see Dave online, we all enjoy his banter. He is a very entertaining person, and I have a very great and complicated relationship with Dave."
She credited Portnoy with launching her career: "He gave me my start in this industry and I will never not be grateful to him."
But on the substance, the claim that she told Portnoy she and Franklyn planned to allege sexual harassment they both knew hadn't occurred, Cooper offered five words: "That's not how I remember that at all."
She did not say what she does remember. She did not say the conversation never happened. She did not say Portnoy fabricated it. She said her memory differs, then shut the door.
"But I also am like, Dave's got his version, and I've got my version, and we're all good."
Asked whether she planned to tell her side, Cooper declined: "No. I'm in my mother era. I'm no drama right now. We're here to talk business."
She also admitted she has not read Portnoy's memoir.
The timeline matters. In 2020, Franklyn left "Call Her Daddy," claiming "contract negotiations fell apart." She launched her own show, "Sofia with an F," and has a forthcoming memoir titled "Daddy Issues" that will reportedly address her fallout with Cooper.
Cooper stayed at Barstool, briefly. In June 2021, she departed and signed an exclusive multi-year distribution deal with Spotify worth a reported $60 million, taking the "Call Her Daddy" intellectual property with her. Three years later, in August 2024, she signed with SiriusXM in a deal reportedly valued at $125 million.
That is $185 million in reported deal value across two contracts, built on a podcast that originated under a Barstool Sports agreement. Whatever happened during the contract dispute, Portnoy's version, Cooper's unspoken version, or something in between, the financial stakes explain why neither side treats the story casually.
Portnoy, for his part, has his own dramatic arc. He sold Barstool Sports for $551 million and then bought it back for $1 in 2023. His memoir covers not just the Cooper-Franklyn episode but a career built on confrontation, including his 2015 arrest after he and colleagues handcuffed themselves together inside the NFL offices to protest Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension. "We're the underdog versus the establishment," Portnoy has said. "So whether that's Barstool versus Goodell, Barstool versus the woke, we didn't really shift or bend."
Strip away the celebrity gloss and the podcast-industry money, and the core of this story is straightforward. A business owner says, in print and under his own name, that two employees told him they planned to fabricate sexual harassment allegations to escape a contract. One of those employees, now far wealthier and more famous than when the dispute began, says she remembers things differently, but won't say how.
Cooper's refusal to engage is her right. No one is obligated to relitigate old business disputes on camera. But "that's not how I remember that at all" is not a rebuttal. It is a placeholder. It does not address whether the conversation Portnoy describes took place, whether she discussed harassment claims with him in any context, or whether Portnoy invented the episode from whole cloth.
If Portnoy's account is accurate, it describes something more serious than a messy contract negotiation. Fabricating harassment allegations to gain leverage in a business dispute is a form of dishonesty that damages real victims, the people whose genuine claims become harder to believe every time someone treats harassment as a bargaining chip.
If Portnoy's account is wrong, Cooper has every reason to say so clearly, and every platform in the world on which to do it. She chose not to. Franklyn's forthcoming memoir may eventually fill in the gaps. For now, one side has put a detailed, specific claim on the record, and the other side has offered a careful non-answer wrapped in gratitude and good vibes.
In a culture that has spent years insisting that harassment allegations must always be taken seriously, the possibility that such allegations were once considered disposable leverage in a podcast contract dispute ought to bother everyone, left, right, and center.
