Barstool Sports Founder Sues Business Insider Over Alleged Defamation

Barstool Sports Founder Sues Business Insider Over Alleged Defamation
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy poses with a mascot in Coral Gables, Fla., on Jan. 22, 2022. (Mark Brown/Getty Images)
Zachary Stieber
2/7/2022
Updated:
2/7/2022

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has sued Business Insider, alleging the media company defamed him.

Portnoy, 44, says two articles, one published in 2021 and another published this year, were an attempt to smear his reputation and included falsehoods.

The articles say Portnoy engaged in rough sex with multiple women and filmed some of them without permission. They included a quote from one comparing what allegedly happened to rape.

“Mr. Portnoy has never sexually assaulted anyone, and defendants are well-aware of this fact,” the 29-page lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, says.

“Nevertheless, Insider is attempting to cash in on the climate of fear and ‘cancel culture’ permeating the media, whereby it has become open season for anyone to make any claim (no matter how vile and unsupported) about anyone seemingly without consequence.”

According to the suit, Insider was presented with evidence that contradicts the allegations laid out in the stories but still refuses to update, correct, or retract them.

Instead, the company has continued “to use Mr. Portnoy as bait to attract consumers to its subscription service,” the suit says.

Both articles about Portnoy are not accessible unless readers subscribe to Insider. They’re included as exhibits in the filing.

Nicholas Carlson, an editor at Insider, said in a recent editor’s note about the articles that they were published “because we consider them to be in the public interest and newsworthy.”

A spokesperson for the publication told The Epoch Times via email, “We stand behind our reporting and will defend the case vigorously.”

Insider was started as a news website in 2007 by investor Kevin Ryan and Henry Blodget, a former analyst who was barred by federal regulators in the early 2000s from the securities industry because he issued fraudulent research.

Blodget is named as a defendant, as are Carlson and reporters Julia Black and Melkorka Licea.

Portnoy is asking the court to award him damages, the amount of which he says should be determined by a jury.