Call Her Daddy - 81- Daddy Speaks

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

El Pres Explains the Call Her Daddy Fiasco From the Barstool Perspective

Okay, here's what we got today. This is going to be the explanation in my mind of what is going on or what has happened with Call Her Daddy. Call Her Daddy obviously, what, hasn't been on the air for five weeks or so, maybe going on six. And the goal throughout this entire time that they haven't been coming into work and you know doing their job basically was i wanted to let them come back on the airwaves and control the narrative tell the story the way they wanted to um for those and we put we're putting this obviously on the call her daddy feed

so some people may be like who the fuck is this guy talking right now well this guy i'm dave portnoy still president day um i'm the guy who started Barstool Sports. I'm the guy who found Call Her Daddy. I'm basically their boss. You've probably heard me in and out of the episodes, but I wasn't that involved in Call Her Daddy. It was their own world. They didn't really come into the office that much. They weren't involved in the day-to-day activities of Barstool.

So, again, my goal was let Alex and Sophia come back on, call her daddy together, and tell the story of what is going on. The trail, all that stuff that has been leading up to this moment. Last night, or I guess this morning, the New York Post had an article that was posted about them basically saying that they don't get along anymore and they've been arguing with each other. And it's kind of a he said, she said. People choosing sides, saying Alex is wrong, Sophia is wrong, Barstool is wrong, whatever it may be. So I'm here to give my unbiased take. Now, I know it can be like, I'm biased.

You're Barstool. You own Barstool. How is it unbiased? I'm going to give my unbiased take on what happened. You can believe it. You can not believe it. You can do whatever you want, really. I will say this. I've been doing it for 17 years, Barstool, and I've never had anybody say I'm a liar or dishonest or don't tell the truth. Some people may not like me. They'd be like, Hey, that guy's an asshole. He's a douchebag, but nobody's ever said I'm a liar. In fact, I'm probably honest to a fault. So take it or leave it. What I'm going to say right now and how this went down. Try to tell the whole story. Don't know how long it'll take, maybe 20 minutes,

maybe less, who knows. But here it is. Here is the Call Her Daddy story the way I see it. So I'm going to start at the beginning. The first time I saw Call Her Daddy was on Alex's Instagram feed. I saw a little teaser, like a two-minute clip, 20-second clip. I don't remember what it was. And I knew Alex because I knew she had dated Syndergaard and I followed her. I'm like, oh, this is pretty interesting. What is this?

I've never seen anything like this before. So I reached out to Alex to find out what she was doing with the podcast. That set off probably a chain of six to eight meetings with just Alex. We didn't even really know who Sophia was talking about call her daddy, what her plans were. She actually told me she did all the editing herself, which impressed me. It's like, okay, this is not just some blonde bimbo. This is somebody who's

very smart and I think could have a chance to do something big. So we finally reached a deal with Alex. And that's when we found out, well, Sophia came with it. It's a duo, and we came to an agreement for both of them to sign contracts. Now, this point right here, what I'm about to say, feels very important. There was back and forth at the time of signing them on the intellectual property of Call Her Daddy. They did have a lawyer, and Alex didn't want to give over the name in the beginning. In Barstool, we said, well, we're not going to do this deal if you don't give us ownership of Caller Daddy because it makes no sense. We don't want to blow you guys up and then just have you walk out the door and you won't Caller Daddy and we're left holding our dicks. We didn't want that

to be the situation. And we came to agreement. It made no sense. It was either take it or leave it. We weren't going to do this deal if we didn't get the IP. So we got the IP. That was a crucial part of the very beginning of this deal. And what I told Alex when we did this, best three-year deal. That's what we had, a three-year contract. I think it was like 70 grand, somewhere around that neighborhood to start, and they had all these bonuses for downloads.

And what I told Alex and what I tell every single person that I sign here on the content side is, you know what? At the end of the three years or however long your contract is, best case scenario, when you walk out the door, you're a huge star and you can renegotiate with us for a lot more money or your value is so great you can go somewhere else. That's the dream scenario. Well, let's get underway so

call her daddy launches instant success smash hit huge huge podcast bigger than my wildest dreams i think bigger than what they thought it would be right off the bat um so the thing just explodes out of the gate it's pretty much all hunky-dory everybody's happy we're promoting the hell out of it they seem happy they're sort of interacting with Barstool. Things are going well. And as the podcast continues to grow, at some point, and there are little points of contention here, they're making the same amount of money, I believe, in the beginning. Probably after, I don't know, six months, Alex came into my office by herself and asked for a raise and we gave it to her by the way we had given Sophia a raise as well but Alex was making more money than Sophia in the

beginning and to be honest I thought rightfully so like Alex is who I talk to all the time Alex is who I found for the contract to me Alex was the one who's doing all the editing Sophia was just sort of along for the ride in the beginning. That's how I viewed it. So it justified Alex making more money. And we're still fairly early into this three-year deal. Continue along, and a year is up, basically. They've done a year's worth of work.

The thing is huge. And I can tell now that they want more money. Now, this is the first part that starts to get a little bit iffy. We're starting to have contract negotiations with these girls for year two because we get it. They've made a shit ton of money and the podcast is gigantic. And you can ask any of the 200 people who work here the content. If you have success, we're more than happy to renegotiate.

There's nothing we like doing more than paying people more money because they're doing well. So we start the negotiations and Alex and Sophia are in my office and we have a conversation. I think I ended it. If you guys are unhappy with anything, just tell me. I'm the most blunt, straightforward person. Just tell me if you're not happy, I'll try to fix it. We have a conversation. I thought it went well. They walk out the door and I get basically an email from Alex and Sophia, which clearly was not written by Alex and Sophia. It was written from a lawyer that basically said in lawyer speak, hey, we want to sit down and redo this deal uh and more than that it said we don't feel we're represented properly when we signed with you guys and never would have given you the ip that set me off right there because i knew that was just a flat out lie like it couldn't have been more

crystal clear why we wanted the ip and the deal never would have happened without it anyways we get that email and i wrote back to the lawyer, put your hard hat on buddy, like get ready for, and the lawyer sucks. He's the money, whatever. He's the worst lawyer, but that started a chain. So we meet with the lawyer and it's a ridiculous, it was actually a conference call, Erica, myself and the lawyer. And he presented a list of demands for us and i also want to say something before i do this at the end of year one alex made five hundred and six thousand dollars sophia made four hundred and sixty one thousand dollars so they weren't getting fucking dirt money it was written in their contracts that they were getting paid bonuses on their downloads. Their downloads are fucking huge.

So they went from unknown talent that we took a risk on to each making close to half a million dollars a year. Pretty fucking good first year. And I sat and watched them both leak that they were wildly underpaid. This is while we were trying to start a year two negotiation to pay them more money on top of that. Anyways, here's the list of demands that their lawyer asked for a $1 million guarantee for each of them. They no longer want to be qualified as Barstool Sports employees. They want to be freelancers. want 50 of everything we did so if they sold a sweatshirt they got 50 if we sold an ad they got 50 they wanted to be able to sell their own merch do

their own ads and they wanted us to give them back call her daddy what did we get in return nothing nothing at that point i cut off negotiations was like, this is fucking crazy. They want all this shit and what do we get? Just to kiss their feet and they'll come back into the office? It was insanity. And that's when they started the trail. And the trail is exactly what everybody thought it was. They were shopping, call her daddy around, looking to go somewhere else, break their contract with us. Now, our stance, my stance, Barstool's stance was, if you guys take, call her daddy and go somewhere else, we're going to sue the fuck out of you. Like, you're under a three-year contract.

What makes you think you can just get up and leave? Like, what company would sign somebody if the second they get big, you're just going to walk out the door? The analogy that I always used with them was like an athlete analogy. If you sign a three-year contract with the Boston Red Sox, and at the all-star break of year one, 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. You've got to wait until the contract's done.

We cut off negotiations with the Call Her Daddy girls after they made those demands with the lawyer and then i sat and i thought about it it's like these girls are going to walk whatever let's see what we can do so i offered this trade hey we'll give you back call her daddy and we'll give you new contracts but we have the rights to alcohol so when you leave the alcohol call her daddy is still owned by barstool you guys get i think we said 10 originally of anything we do and barstool gets the rest all the merch all the ip all the feed everything goes to you it literally as i tried to explain to them just for that millions of dollars waiting for them if they just fulfilled

their contract um nothing didn't hear anything back from lawyer they wouldn't do it they're like we want 90 of the alcohol it's like well what what the fuck are we getting out of this i actually sent alex a text after we had that conference call with the lawyer the first time that in my 17 years of doing this, I had never dealt with anybody as unprofessional and disloyal and greedy as those two. I'm paraphrasing. That was essentially it. I didn't talk to the Call Her Daddy girls, who prior to that I thought I had a good relationship with. I don't know, for four or five months.

And as everybody knows, they just stopped coming into the office. They just stopped doing their podcast. And then they had the gall to be like, oh, we're not legally allowed to talk about it. You can talk about whatever the fuck you want. People who know me know I love controversy. I love talking about it. I was still trying to get them back here. And by the way, the timing of all this with Corona and all that shit was very good. Because if you don't know me, I fucking have sold Barstool Sports twice.

I'm worth $100 million, at least till the stock market crashed. I don't fucking need their money, but I'd love to have revenue streams to help pay the bills here during this time. So it worked out in an advantageous manner. Because if this is just me, I would have told them to fucking kick rocks and go fuck themselves a long time ago like i don't need this fucking headache and this ungrateful bullshit in my life but times are different so again we go they haven't put up an episode for a month whatever it may be alex reaches out to me and says hey dave can sophia and I come meet with you at your apartment? And I'm like, sure.

This is maybe three weeks ago. So they come up on my roof deck and we talk. And again, I looked him straight in the eyes. It's like, listen, you guys, I've asked you a hundred times. Are you shopping? Call her daddy. Why does everyone say that you're talking to other people? They just look right in the eyes go oh no we're not that's not true we're happy to be here we love being here just that's what they had said forever straight lies what is

all the uh stuff about you guys in the trail and being held hostage what does that mean oh you know how it goes dave we're just joking that's what they always said well for the first time they basically came clean. It's like, yeah, we're thinking about leaving. And I'm like, you know, we're going to sue you if you leave. I remember Sophia's like, sue us for what? Call her daddy's ours. Blatant lie. They know it's not ours. They absolutely know it's not ours. But they were looking to get out of the contract. We're sitting down negotiating. It's the middle of Corona. And I cut them a deal that was so outrageously good in their favor that I thought we'd get something done.

It was half a million dollar guarantee for each of them, an increase in merch. I think they were getting seven and a half percent, something like that. There were bonuses involved and here's the kicker. Well, there's two parts. They had, I think 18 months left on their contract. I said, I cut six months off of it so they could leave in one year and I would give them call her daddy. I would give them the IP. Let me repeat that. This is about three weeks ago. They came up to my roof deck. I think they came up. I don't think I came up. They thought this is a courtesy meeting to make themselves, you know, legally, like we tried to make it work. They were getting, they already had a deal. I found out after the fact, but when I made this offer half a million

dollar guarantee to each of them, They get an increase in merch. And I knocked six months off their deal. And we just give them the IP. We were getting fucked in the ass, Barstool was. I just wanted to get money for the next year in the revenue stream going. I just wanted to get this fucking thing going so we could pay the bills when we're shut down and we have this payroll. That's literally without that, this deal probably never gets offered. I thought they'd sign it there. I honestly, that's how good of a deal.

I looked, I'm like, what are you guys nuts? I don't trust either of you, but I'm telling you this deal is so good. You there's no, you can't not take it it but they didn't take it right on the spot and guess what they basically went dark we still got the alcohol i should clarify that we still got like 80 of alcohol but it doesn't matter they got everything else we do millions in merch it would be theirs they'd own the ip they'd own the blog they know everything it was a no-brainer deal like if we offered that deal i tried to explain it to our pmt guys a huge podcast damn big cat he didn't even understand what i was saying he's like what do you mean they get the ip we didn't get the nobody gets the ip well after that meeting a day

goes by two days go by three days go by we can't fucking get a hold of them we can't get a hold of their lawyer who's doing it he won't return our phone calls and erica our cno ceo and i are like what is going on are they not going to take this deal and that's when the controversy basically starts to unfold i can't remember if alex texted me or called me but she's like can i talk to you alone i'm like sure again it's like oh boy what do we got here and i talked to alex and she basically says we're never going to get a deal done sofia refuses get a deal done like i get it this deal that you just put in front of us is a no-brainer i've been begging her to do it we can't get the deal done she's gonna and i'm telling you dave she's gonna move the goalposts every time you concede and give us more they're gonna want more and guess what

that's what her lawyers were doing and i was starting to hear whispers and alex confirmed it and this is a big part of the story sophia's new boyfriend, which I guess call her daddy people call suit. I call him fucking a bad guy from a James Bond movie who thinks he's way smarter than he is. Peter Nelson, is that his name? HBO exec, probably greenlit a hit piece on me not too long ago but he had come into the mix he was the one who brought in all these lawyers the lawyer was his friend he i believe this is what i believe and he was openly shopping call her daddy he was acting almost as a manager and he got a deal with wondry they're going to call the podcast the Fathers. And as Sophia would always say to me, we're prepared for a lawsuit. Wondery, scumbags, they knew we were going to sue them. I don't know

what they're going to defend themselves for. It's come to my attention that a certain scumbag agent who I've never trusted actually took one of our guys' contracts and showed it to Peter Nelson. And they went line by line trying to figure out how can we get out of this I've heard they had conspiracy theories to say that we had gender discrimination every trick in the book they were getting ready to use against us to get out of the contract and go to Wondery and Alex credit to her in my mind if you want to say that it was like this deal that Barstool just gave us is so good how can we pass it down we have to go to Barstool now we're getting the IP there'll be no lawsuit there'll be no fight we can leave in 12 months what's the rush well the rush

is from the way I understand it Peter Nelson had to put his neck out. He had represented saying, hey, I control Call Her Daddy. And when Alex bails, guess what? You don't control Call Her Daddy anymore. The second Alex told me, I want to do a deal with Barstool. I don't think I can get it done with Sophia. I called Sophia and told her that. And I told Alex that I was going to do that. I said, listen, Sophia, Alex doesn't think we can get a deal done with you involved. I'm telling you right now, she's moving to do a deal with us. If you want to be a barstool, you should move to get a deal with us. I didn't hear anything from two to three days from Sophia.

Goose eggs. Nothing. And we started hatching a deal with Alex. And it wasn't more money than what Sophia was getting it wasn't the original contract that we put in front of them from my roof deck was 50 50 equal equal and I could tell Alex was into it now what changed was when she came back to me it's like I can't get Sophia to do this I want to do it myself we were already giving them 100 of the ip at the end if they were together when it was just alex she she got 75

barstool kept 25 and we said to her if sophia will come back what do we fucking care we were giving it all away we're just trying to get this thing back on the air Alex though then at that point was like getting 75 percent and in her mind I think she's like you know what I deserve 75 percent anyways in her mind she believes I do all the editing I do all the work I do most of it I should be getting 75 no matter what she was willing to do the 50 50 it there. Nobody moved on it. And then once we got ready to do a deal with Alex, and I believe the Wondry deal clearly fell through because there was no longer Call Her Daddy, I think Sophia wanted to come back maybe, but it was too late. It was too late. The 50-50 deal, Alex didn't want to do anymore. She's like, I do more of the work.

We did offer Sophia her own podcast of the work. We did offer Sophia her own podcast on the network. We'd pay her half a million dollars. Start your own brand, Sophia. We'll produce the hell out of it. We'll support the hell out of it. We'll do whatever you want. You guys can tell your own stories. And when you leave, Sophia, you can keep 100% of what you're doing. If you think you're the talent, Sophia, this thing will build up. We'll put your podcast on the Call Her Daddy daddy feed so all the listeners will get to hear your story and follow you and you tell them where to go one year we'll honor the contract never heard back from sophia all we heard was lawyers from then on in her team don't be confused neither of them

to alex is the only one who still will talk to us direct sophia will not we talked to lawyers she got new william morris she signed and they basically just started threatening that they're going to sue us sue barstool like if you've empowered alex we didn't empower shit we didn't power shit our goal was to get call her daddy back on the air. Alex came to us and laid out a scenario. And by the way, the scenario is not just like blindly believing Alex. And it is a, he said, she said, so theoretically Alex could be lying right now. And Sophia could be telling the truth. And she's like, wait a minute. No, I'm the one who wanted to get this deal done. But I don't know because who's leaking these articles in the New York post. Somebody who's savvy in the ways of media, somebody who's like

worked at HBO. And why is he mentioned in that article? And what does he have to do with anything? Why am I hearing stories with such specific names that can't be made up, like an Agent X talking to Peter Nelson about a contract? How do you know agent X's name? Unless it's true. So I tend to believe Alex. And I know Peter Nelson fucking hates us. Eric has had lunch with him. He hates us.

Go look at his Forbes under 40. Dude's a dork. He seems like somebody would hate us. Alex confirmed that he fucking hates us. Alex says she has proof that he hates us. He was trying to manipulate the situation to me sophia mixed business and pleasure and again i don't really like they both were going to stab us in the back alex and sophia were conspiring to fuck barstool over

and when i say fuck over you can argue about salaries. They both made decent money. But, you know, you signed a three-year contract. You should honor it. You shouldn't lie to my face every time we ask, are you shopping this? Because we keep hearing rumors. Lies, lies, lies. They were getting ready to concoct a totally bullshit story

to get out of this and go on their own. It all seems to start percolating when this peter nelson the suit gets in the picture that's my opinion of it so they're getting ready to fuck us over we have this meeting on my roof deck i make a deal that they didn't expect ever to get offered a Alex says, wait a minute. We have to stay with Barstool. This is the best option now. Sophia says, no, because my boyfriend has stuck his neck out

and got us a deal at Wondery, and he's going to look like an asshole if we pull out, and they get in a fight about that. And now it's a he said, she said from there. But I'm telling you this, the deal we offered was 50-50 down the middle. And they didn't take it. Until Alice came back and said, I want that deal. And Sophia is still coming back now with different changes.

Like if she came back, we can't talk about her and stuff. Like things like, i remember i had a conversation with her lawyers and i'm like i'm just gonna say what happened i'm gonna tell the truth and we'll let the people decide it's like oh you can't you can't you know you can't talk about her there's indemnification i'm bad at words i'm like wait a minute i'm not gonna bad mouth her i'm not gonna just uh disparage her i'm just gonna say the fucking truth i don't think the truth is disparaging and this is the truth as i understand it i'm sure they're gonna like her camp will be like no it was alex like backstabbing and this and that there's a couple points here

which she's right about alex made more money alex came into me and asked me for more money a long time ago she got the raise sofia didn't I thought it was warranted at the time but the 50 50 they were back on equal feet the newest contract which is only after one year they were 50 50 they're each making half a million they each got half of the IP for whatever reason that contract did not get signed and they they had three, four days of radio silence. Again, until Alex came forward. He's like, I'm telling you, Sophia's not going to do it. It's like, what do you mean? How could she not do it?

Because Peter Nelson. And it makes fucking sense. Do I know that for a fact? No. Does Alex say that's what happened? Yes. Does Sophia say that's what's happened? No.

But if I'm an impartial person, there's no other explanation how that deal didn't get done. So that's the caller daddy situation. And as we sit, we're getting ready potentially to bring Alex back on to try to do it herself. And honestly, there's such horror stories that Sophia was asking. Again, I don't have proof, but like, hey, if we sign this and then intentionally get fired do we get the ip like such dishonest shit and they're both dishonest up to this point but right now my gut tells me since the roof deck meeting alex has been saying the truth and not sophia because i haven't heard a word of the peter nelson stuff she hasn't mentioned we're going

on one tree or any of that that's all alex so that Peter Nelson stuff. She hasn't mentioned we're going to one tree or any of that. That's all Alex. So Alex has openly been like, yeah, we're trying to fuck you. I haven't heard that from Sophia. That's what makes me think Alex is telling the truth. Will she come back with Caller Day? I don't know. I really don't know.

A part of me is like, you know what? No amount of money is worth this. Let's just get rid of them, keep the IP, and start it over ourselves. I think they're both talented. But at some level, you've got to do business the right way. At least this is like a second chance in my book for Alex. And the Sophia cry poor right now of like, oh, it should be 50-50. Well, we offered it, and you didn't take it.

The only time you took it is when it's like, well, Alex is saying she wants it, and we're going to do it with her. Are you coming or not? By then it's too late. That ship had sailed. It's a long rambling story. And they're both going to point the finger at each other. I don't have a dog in this fight.

I really don't. The one thing that I've said to both lawyers and they both try to get us to point the finger is we don't want to be in the middle of it. Like we don't, we, I didn't talk to these girls for four fucking months. For four months, we knew they were planning on leaving and making up excuses to make us look bad. And now you want us to like pick sides. Do you know how much money we've lost by them not doing the book? We lose close to a hundred thousand dollars an episode. I haven't even said this.

They wanted us to retrograde, retroact their new contracts. They wanted to get paid for the episodes they didn't do. Do you know how insane that is? And that's where the Free the Fathers thing came out as we continue to talk. So what's Free the Fathers? That was a deal we did like this. Hey, we want to get paid for the months we haven't worked.

Obviously, I'm like, are you fucking out of your mind? We've lost three, $400,000 in advertising. Why the fuck would we back pay you to this raise? And we came to an agreement. My idea, a little shady, I guess. But it's like, let's sell free the fathers. You guys keep saying free the fathers, free the fathers, free guess. But it's like, let's sell Free the Fathers. You guys keep saying Free the Fathers, Free the Fathers, Free the Fathers. Let's sell that merch. And then that'll make up, hopefully, for the gap in you guys not working

unless losing all the advertising. This was all through Alex. Sophia had nothing to do with it in the sense that I think Sophia never planned on coming back. By the way, we didn't sell a ton of that merch, so it didn't really work that way. So now we're sitting here this way. Like, I think Sophia's getting ready to sue Barstool. For what? I don't know.

I think she's getting ready to sue Alex. For what? I don't know. Alex wants us to defend her lawsuit versus Sophia. We're not doing that. So it's quite the convoluted web. It's quite the convoluted web. You can make your own decisions based on what I said. Hopefully it wasn't too rambling.

Hopefully it wasn't too long. But that's the truth as I see it. The only things I know for a fact are what they made before, how much we offered them again, and the fact that when we did that new contract, they didn't sign it. And they had plenty of time to sign it. We couldn't even get them on the phone

until Alex got the ball rolling by saying, I want to stay at Barstool. You're never going to get a deal with Sophia. And it didn't seem like we were until Alex came and left her no choice. That's my interpretation of it. That's a wrap.