Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy popped open a bottle of champagne while lounging in a pool to celebrate the demise of Deadspin after the popular sports blogger laid off its entire staff in the wake of its parent company’s acquisition by a European startup.
Portnoy reacted on Monday to a social media post from former Deadspin editor-in-chief Julie DiCaro, who wrote that staffers “got half an hour’s notice that Deadspin has been sold to a European startup and they’re not taking any staff.”
“Listen, even I’m getting confused,” Portnoy said in a video that he posted to his X social media account in which he is seen floating on a pool.
“How many times can I pop a bottle for the same goddamn company? How many times can I kill Deadspin? How many times can Julie DiCaro lose her goddamn job? It seems like infinity!”
When reached by The Post, DiCaro said via email: “I haven’t seen the video but I have zero interest in anything Dave Portnoy does.”
According to DiCaro’s LinkedIn page, she worked full time at Deadspin from May 2020 until this week, when the publication shuttered.
Deadspin has been critical of Portnoy and his company, Barstool Sports, for maintaining a culture that some have said is racist and sexist.
In August, Deadspin ran a story titled “Why Dave Portnoy is bad for business” — a critical piece detailing how he bought back his company from PENN Entertainment.
Portnoy took the opportunity on Monday to dunk on the site.
“But here we are once again. New bottle of champagne… Deadspin out of business, bought, everyone fired for the 90th straight time!” Portnoy said.
“This is just kicking a dead ass dog! But you know what? I’m not beyond it.”
Penn took a 36% stake of Barstool Sports in February 2020 for about $163 million and subsequently acquired the remainder of the company for about $388 million in February 2023.
Neither Penn nor Portnoy disclosed terms of the divestment deal.
Last summer, Penn paid ESPN $1.5 billion for exclusive rights to rebrand a sports-betting app under the name “ESPN Bet.”
Deadspin closed up shop just months after the publication was forced to apologize for wrongly accusing a young Kansas City Chiefs fan of wearing “blackface.”
Jim Spanfeller, the CEO of parent G/O Media, broke the news of the layoffs and Deadspin’s sale to Lineup Publishing in a memo to shocked staff — the latest piece of the company’s crumbling empire to be dumped amid a wave of job cuts roiling the entire industry.
Lineup will “not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote.
“While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Eleven staffers spread out across offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago were left without a job.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
