OK, 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 called daddy, obviously. What has it been on the air for five weeks or so?

Maybe, maybe going on six in the goal throughout this entire time that they haven't been coming into working 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 for those. And we put it 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? This guy on tape?

PORTNOY So President Day, I'm the guy who started barstool sports. I'm the guy who found call her daddy. I'm basically their boss. You 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 stool.

So again, my goal was let Alex and Sofia 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 do not 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, Sophie is wrong, parcel's wrong, whatever it may be.

So I'm here to give my unbiased take. No, I know you can be like unbiased, impartial, you impartial housing. I'm biased. 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 will take. Maybe twenty minutes, maybe less. Who knows?

But here it is. Here is the call her daddy story the way I see it.

So I start the beginning. The first time I saw her 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 like, oh, this is pretty interesting. What is this? I've never seen anything like this before.

So 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 Sofia 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, OK, 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 while Sofia 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 they and Alex didn't want to give over the name in the beginning in BASTABLE, we said, well, we're not going to do this deal if you don't give us ownership of color, 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 call our 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 want 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 seventy 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.

So the thing just explodes out of the gate is 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 out, 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's, who I talked to all the time, Alex is who I found for the contract. To me, Alex was the one who's doing all the editing. So for you is just sort of along for the ride.

In the beginning, that's how I viewed it.

So was justified, Alex, making more money and we're still fairly early into this three year deal continue. A long and a year is up basically a year. They've done a year's worth of work.

The thing is huge. And I can tell now that, you know, 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 or 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 Sophie are in my office and we have a conversation. I think I ended it. If you guys are unhappy with anything, just tell me, like 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 Sofia, which clearly was not written by Alex and Sofia.

It was written from a lawyer that basically said in lawyer speak, hey, we want to sit down and redo this deal. In more than that, it said we don't feel we are represented properly. When we signed with you guys, it never would have given me 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 a lawyer, Sox's the money, whatever, he's the worst lawyer. But that started to change.

So we meet with the lawyer and it's a ridiculous 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 or two negotiation to pay them more money. On top of that, anyways, here's the list of demands that their lawyer asked for a one million dollar guarantee for each of them. They no longer want to be qualified as barstool sports employees. They want to be freelancers.

They want 50 percent of everything we did. So if they sold the sweatshirt, they got 50 percent. If we sold an ad, they got 50 percent. 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, I 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, Barzelay 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 bigger, 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 got to wait to get contracts done. We cut off negotiations with. They 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 Basel.

You guys get I think we said 10 percent originally of anything we do in Basel gets the rest of 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 fulfill their contract. Nothing didn't hear anything back from lawyer, they wouldn't do it. Like we want 90 percent of the alcohol.

It's like, 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 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 what 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 Korona and all that shit was very good because if you don't know me.

I fuckin have sold barstool sports twice worth 100 million dollars, 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 this is just me.

I would have told them a 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 app. It's over a month, whatever it may be. Alex reaches out to me and says, Hey, Dave, can Sophie and I come meet with you at your apartment? And I'm like, sure, this is 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 me right in the eye is going to or 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 stuff about you guys in the trail and being held hostage? Was 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. So, yeah, we're thinking about leaving and I'm like, you know, we're going to sue you if you leave. I remember Sophie is like sue us for what we call her daddy's hours.

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 the middle 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 March. 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 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 dollars guaranteed to each of them, they get an increase in merch. And at the end, I knocked six months off their deal and we just give them the IP.

We're getting fucked in the ass bastard 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.

There's no you can't not take 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 percent of alcohol, but doesn't matter.

They got everything else we do millions. And Mirch, it would be theirs. They'd only ipe. They own the block. They owe everything. It was a no brainer deal. Like, if we offer 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. So what do you mean? They get the IP? We didn't get them. 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 all their lawyers doing it.

He won't return our phone calls. And Erica are seeing a CEO, 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.

I was 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, Sophia refuses to 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 going to and I'm telling you, Dave, she's going to move the goalpost every time you concede and give us more.

They're going to 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. Sofia's new boyfriend, which I guess call her daddy. People call suit. I call him fuckin a bad guy from a James Bond movie who thinks he's way smarter than he is. Peter Nelson, is that his name? HBO exact 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 one jury. They're going to call a podcast The Father's. And as Sofia would always say to me, we're prepared for a lawsuit.

One, two, three scumbags. They knew we're 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 one jury.

And Alex, credit to her, in my mind, if you want to say that it was like this deal that Bastable 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 will 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 he had represented saying, hey, I control caller 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 Bastable. I don't think I can get it done with Sofia. I called Sophie and told her that, and I told Alex that I was going to do that.

So listen, Sofia, 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 Sofia Gazette's.

Nothing. And we start hatching a deal with Alex, and it wasn't more money than what Sofia 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 is like, I can't get Sofia to do this. I want to do it myself. We were already given them 100 percent of the IP at the end if they were together. When it was just Alec, she she got 75 percent, barstool kept 25 percent, 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, it 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 was there, nobody moved on it. And then once we got ready to do a deal with Alex, and I believe the 1G deal clearly fell through because there was no longer call her daddy, I think Sophea want to come back. Maybe it was too late. It was too late. The 50 50 deal.

Alex didn't want to do any more, just like I do more 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 will produce the hell out of it, will 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 percent 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 feet. 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, Sofia will not. We talked to lawyers. She got new William Morris, she signed and they basically just started threatening that they were 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 caller her daddy back on the air. Alice 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 want 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 media, somebody who has, 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 out and I know Peter Nelson fucking hates us.

Eric has had lunch with them. He hates us. Go look at his forbes' under 40 dudes to talk. He seems like somebody would hate us.

Alice 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, mix business and pleasure. And again, I don't really like they both, we're going to stab us in the back, Alex and Sophia, we're conspiring to fuck Bastable 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 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 get 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, Alex says, wait a minute, we have to stay with Basel. This is the best option.

Now, Sofia says no because my boyfriend has stuck his neck out and got us a deal at 1G 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 is 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's still coming back now with different changes, like if she came back, we can't 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 going to say what happened? I'm going to 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 going to badmouth her. I'm not going to disparage her.

I'm just going to 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 going to like her camp will be like, no, it was Alex, like backstabbing in this and that. There's a couple points here which she's right about. Alex made more money. Alex came in to me and asked me for more money a long time ago. She got the raise. Sofia didn't I thought was warranted at the time.

But the fifty fifty. They were back on equal feet, the newest contract, which is only after one year, they were 50.

They're each making a half a million. Each got half of the IP. For whatever reason, that contract did not get signed. And they had three, four days of radio silence again till Alex came forward. Like I'm telling you, Sophia's not going to do it. Like, what do you mean? How could you 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. The Zofia say that's what's happened. No, but if I'm an impartial person, there's no other explanation of how that deal didn't get done.

So that's the caller daddy situation. And as we said, we're getting ready potentially to bring Alex back on to try 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 I 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 Sofia, because I haven't heard a word of the Peter Nelson stuff.

She hasn't mentioned we're going to one or any of that.

That's all, Alex. So that's Alex has openly been like, yeah, we were trying to fuck you, I haven't heard that from Sylvia. That's what makes me think Alex is telling the truth. Will she come back? 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 started over ourselves. I think they're both talented, but some level you do business the right way.

At least this is like a second chance in my book for Alex in the Sofia cried poor right now of like, oh, should be 50 50.

Well, we offered it and you didn't take it. The only time you took it is once, 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 has 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 wanna 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're 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? We lose close to one hundred thousand dollars an episode. I haven't even said this.

They wanted us to retrograde Retro Act, their new contracts. They want to get paid like for the episodes they didn't do. Do you know how insane that is and that's where the free the father's thing came out as we continue to talk. So what's free? The father's. 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, 400000 dollars in advertising. Why the fuck would we back pay you to this raise? And we came to an agreement, my dear. 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 the fathers. Let's sell that merch and then that'll make up hopefully for the gap. And you guys not working less, losing all the advertising. This is all through, Alex.

So if he had nothing to do with it in the sense that I think Sofiane never planned on coming back. By the way, we didn't sell a ton of that march, so it didn't really work that way. So now we're sitting here this way, like I think Sophie is 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 first.

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, in 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 a barstool.

You're never going to get a deal with Sofia. And it didn't seem like we were. Until Alex came and left her no choice. That's my interpretation of it. That's around.