Dave Portnoy revives Alex Cooper, Sofia Franklyn
Dave Portnoy just won’t let the “Call Her Daddy” saga die.
in his new memoir, “Cancel Me If You Can,” the outspoken multi-millionaire founder of Barstool Sports alleges that the podcast’s Alex Cooper and her former co-host, Sofia Franklyn, plotted to falsely accuse him of sexual harassment to break their contracts with his company.
Portnoy slams Franklyn as a “f–king liar” — and admits to getting back at the women by conspiring to break up their partnership.
And while Portnoy makes it clear he has no issue with Cooper, he does give a revealing glimpse into her steely nature.
He details how, in 2020, Cooper ousted Franklyn from the podcast that the former pals debuted on Barstool two years prior – and how she snagged the “Call Her Daddy” business for herself, going on to rake in an estimated $32 million in annual earnings, according to Forbes.
“Dave is an axe-to-grind person and he’ll never give it up,” a source in the know told Page Six, while admitting that Cooper and Franklyn were “extremely difficult from the jump” and reportedly “really hard to manage.”
“They were very shrewd,” the source added. “They wanted what they wanted — money and fame — and they would stop at nothing to get it. it was a really dark time [at Barstool].
“This just all played out in a mean girl way, I never understood why Sofia didn’t fight for a share of the IP.”
Page Six has reached out to the two women for comment on Portnoy’s allegations.
Cooper, 31, and Franklyn, 33, were roommates in NYC when debuted their first episode of “Daddy” in October 2018 on Barstool.
They became a huge hit among 20somethings with their raucous tales of sex and dating. But behind the scenes, things were rocky.
“It was the classic [example of] you think you see something online and people genuinely believe you’re like sisters, but our relationship was so awful,’” Cooper later revealed on her Hulu docu-series, “Call Her Alex.”
Things went downhill in April 2019, when Logan Paul planted some “rather poisonous seeds” in Cooper and Franklyn’s minds during a discussion about pay on his podcast, Portnoy said.
In 2020, Portnoy says, he offered each of them a massive deal to stay at Barstool: $500,000 in annual salary and 3.5% of all merchandising they sold; at the end of their stint with the company, all merch money and the “Call Her Daddy” IP would revert to them, along with 10-20% of future sales for any alcohol brand started under the brand name.
When Cooper met Portnoy on the rooftop of his building, he claims, she told him, ‘I love the deal you proposed, and I want to take it. But Sofia is never going to take it’.”
“‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You guys realize I’ll sue you if you take the podcast to another network before your contract is out, right?’ Alex claimed to me that they had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool,” he alleged.
“That was it. That was their game plan to get out of their contractual obligation to Barstool Sports in the event that I did not relinquish their IP to them and wish them well on their merry way as they jumped ship to a rival podcast network.”
Cooper then allegedly decided to cut out Franklyn and take the money herself.
“I don’t want Sofia, even if she decides to take the deal,” Portnoy recalls her asking him. “Can I get the entire IP by myself if I honor the deal?”
Privately, Cooper also alleged that Franklyn had substance issues, Portnoy writes.
Portnoy, already annoyed by what he considered the overbearing interference by Franklyn’s then-boyfriend, former HBO exec Peter Nelson — whom he call “this Lord Farquaad-looking, factory-reject Ken doll” and “in my eyes quite possibly a human incarnation of Satan” — agreed. (We have reached out to Nelson for comment.)
But, ever the businessman, he offered Franklyn a rival podcast.
“I knew at that point the dirty little secret that nobody knew about ‘CHD;’ the girls hated each other,” he writes, admitting he wanted them to launch two “warring podcasts.”
“Let’s squeeze every last drop out of this fracture for as long as possible. People will pick sides, we’ll make merch about it,” Portnoy adds. “For me, the worst thing that could happen was for these two girls to see eye to eye again.”
Portnoy even confesses to leaking the story of Cooper and Franklyn’s bitter feud to The Post to stop them from ganging up against him.
“It worked perfectly, Alex and Sofia completely severed all communication,” he said, “They each believed the other had leaked the story. The friendship, and the podcast, as we knew it, would never exist again. They hated each other.”
A year later, Cooper signed a $60 million three-year stint with Spotify, then moved “Call Her Daddy” to radio giant Sirius XM for a whopping $125 million multi-year contract.
She founded her own media empire, Unwell, in 2023. The podcast network has grown to seven shows in addition to “Call Her Daddy.” Her Unwell Hydration, which sells sports drinks, can be found at Target, Meijer and Sprouts, and is an official partner of the National Women’s Soccer League. She’s also produced a Hulu reality show, “Overboard For Love.”
In her Hulu docu-series, “Call Her Alex,” Cooper admits that Portnoy “said, ‘If you stay at Barstool for one more year, you can own ‘Call Her Daddy.’ Sofia didn’t want to take the deal, but I did, so I stayed.”
Cooper has said she has not spoken to Franklyn since their spit.
Franklyn, meanwhile, has not had the same level of success. She launched her own podcast, “Sofia With An F,” and is engaged and planning a wedding in Italy this summer to a man whose name she has yet to reveal.
She is set to release her own memoir, “Daddy Issues,” in November — and savagely cut Cooper from a photo on the cover.
Portnoy is expecting the worst. He writes in his book: “Women are going to believe her just because she’s a woman, because they feel bad for her or they don’t like Alex or they hate my guts or whatever. That’s fine.”
He has publicly stated he believes Franklyn helped orchestrate a 2021 Business Insider exposé that contained sexual misconduct allegations against him.
“You can say whatever you want about me, but literally nobody has ever said I don’t tell the truth 100% of the time. So to all the women who think Sofia is some feminist icon, just remember you are propping up a woman who I believe was willing to lie at the drop of a hat about sexual harassment, which sets all women back,” he writes.
Franklyn’s book “tackles her explosive exit from ‘Call Her Daddy,’ the severe emotional toll of her fallout with Alex Cooper, and her path to reinvention,” according to a press release.
“The decision [to write the book] was one I came to on my own,” she told Rolling Stone in February. “Six years ago, I was reeling from an experience I didn’t understand. I needed to grow up and be free of ego as much as humanly possible.”
According to another insider who has worked within Cooper’s orbit: “Alex always maintains ‘Call Her Daddy’ was her idea and she did the work. She did edit it, and it always seemed like Alex was the engine and the driver, but Sofia maintained it was a lot of her ideas.”
Legally, Franklyn has no rights to “Call Her Daddy”.
A cursory check of the United States Patent and Trademark Office shows that Barstool Sports, which owned the “Call Her Daddy” trademark, officially signed over the brand to Cooper’s production company, Bulldozer Productions, in November 2021. Cooper merged that company in March 2025 into TRNDG IP, LLC, for which she served as president and which remains the current owner of the brand.
Asked whether she has any legal way to fight Portnoy’s accusations that she and Cooper planned to make fake sexual harassment claims against him, trademark lawyer Matthew Asbell of Lippes Mathias replied she would have to “somehow prove that to be false and damaging. A public response may also give more life to the story and just help Portnoy sell more books.”
Cooper is now expecting her first baby with husband and business partner Matt Kaplan, who found himself at the center of a Vanity Fair expose last month, which alleged he had created “the most toxic work environment.”
In April, Bloomberg News alleged that Kaplan “frequently” yelled at staff members, citing people familiar with the company’s operations.
The Vanity Fair piece claimed sources also said that Kaplan used words like “stupid” or “retarded” to refer to employees and threatened to ruin their careers. One source claimed Cooper had witnessed her husband lose his temper and scream “the nastiest things” at people but did not intervene to defend anyone involved.
Some female staffers said that Kaplan asked about their sex lives and commented on their physical appearances.
Cooper has also been embroiled in a feud with Alix Earle after Unwell dropped Earle’s “Hot Mess” podcast in February 2025. The women stayed largely silent on their reported beef until early April 2026, when Earle reposted a Tiktok video of another content creator calling Cooper “so awful” and comparing her to “an ambulance chaser” for “profiting” from women’s vulnerable moments.
Cooper retaliated by telling Earle to stop being “passive aggressive” and “get specific and just say what you’ve got to say about me. There’s no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself” Earle replied: “On it!”
However, Earle refused to discuss the fallout on the “Today” show in May, saying “Let’s keep the positive vibes going.”
Still, said the source in the know, “This mean girl thing is going to plague Alex Cooper forever.”
