Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has alleged that Call Her Daddy co-hosts Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn planned to fabricate sexual harassment claims in order to exit their Barstool contracts – a bombshell that lands as Cooper separately faces allegations of a toxic workplace at her Unwell Network.
The allegation appears in “Dave Portnoy Has One Rule for Success: Hire Great People and ‘Let Them Run Wild'”, a profile by journalist Joshua Chaffin published in the Wall Street Journal. According to the piece, Portnoy claims Cooper told him directly of the plan.
“Cooper, he claims, told him she and Franklyn had a plan to say they were sexually harassed at Barstool to get out of their contract,” Chaffin wrote.
Portnoy is also quoted describing the pair as “willing to step on my neck and burn any bridge to get ahead,” and revealing what he called the podcast’s best-kept secret: “The girls hated each other.”
The claims emerge as Portnoy prepares to release his self-authored memoir, Cancel Me If You Can.
Dave Portnoy
Cooper responds to Unwell allegations
The timing of Portnoy’s claims is notable. Cooper is currently navigating separate allegations that her company, Unwell, fosters a toxic work environment.
A Vanity Fair report citing more than 40 sources alleged that Cooper’s husband and business partner, Matt Kaplan, was verbally abusive to staff, including accusations of screaming, asking employees about their sex lives, and making inappropriate comments about their physical appearance.
A Bloomberg report in April raised similar claims.
Cooper addressed the allegations publicly at Cannes during a conversation with Wall Street Journal advertising editor Suzanne Vranica.
“I will just kind of leave it at ‘don’t believe everything that you read on the internet’ – but I think everyone knows that at this point,” she said.
When pressed on whether the allegations reflected a broader problem, Cooper pushed back.
“I think, unfortunately, being a woman in this industry is extremely difficult because you’re held to a completely different standard. Whether it’s a smear campaign being created for someone’s narrative – whatever it be,” she said.
“I think when you read lies about yourself to fuel something else that is an obvious situation going on, it’s hard. But I think the reason that I’ve had success in this industry is that I have really thick skin, and I’m going to keep pushing forward.”
Cooper and Kaplan married in 2024 and announced in May that they are expecting their first child.
Alex Cooper
Background on the Call Her Daddy dispute
Cooper and Franklyn created Call Her Daddy in 2018. The podcast became one of Barstool’s biggest properties before their relationship with Portnoy publicly deteriorated in 2020.
Franklyn departed the show, while Cooper continued hosting at Barstool until 2021, when she signed an exclusive deal with Spotify and later launched the Unwell Network.
Portnoy had previously accused Peter Nelson, then an executive at HBO Sports and Franklyn’s partner at the time, of advising Franklyn to reject Barstool’s contract offer while “quietly shopping them even though they were still under contract with Barstool.” HBO denied those claims.
In 2024, Cooper spoke publicly about the split, saying the breakdown stemmed from disagreements over the podcast’s future and intellectual property.
“I think less about the specific person. The thought is: I’m so happy that I trusted myself and fought for this IP,” Cooper told The Hollywood Reporter. “Because I will never forget the day Dave Portnoy offered us that IP on a rooftop, and I was so elated and being like, ‘I will stay another year. I’ll do whatever it takes. I want that IP.’ Because I had put so much sweat equity into this – marketing, editing, writing, all of it.”
In 2025, Cooper made separate misconduct allegations in her documentary Call Her Alex, in which she alleged her Boston University soccer coach, Nancy Feldman, isolated and sexually harassed her until she left the team at the end of her junior year. Following the documentary’s release, 99 BU women’s soccer alumni signed a letter in support of Feldman.
Despite the controversies, Cooper’s commercial position remains strong. Call Her Daddy ranked as the fourth most popular podcast in the world in 2025, according to Spotify’s year-end list.
Main image: Sofia Franklyn and Alex Cooper