Barstool’s Dave Portnoy celebrates after exec Peter Nelson exits HBO Sports
Peter Nelson is exiting his post as the president at HBO Sports, and nobody celebrated harder than Dave Portnoy.
The Barstool Sports founder developed a beef with Nelson earlier this year over a podcast situation. Nelson was dating Sofia Franklyn, a co-host of the popular Barstool Sports podcast, “Call Her Daddy”. Nelson reportedly worked to engineer Franklyn and co-host Alexandra Cooper’s exit from Barstool to another podcasting network, causing a lengthy interruption in their publishing schedule, and some tension between the co-hosts, as well as between Portnoy and the two women. Cooper eventually split with Franklyn and struck her own deal to remain at Barstool, blowing up Nelson’s plan for the pair to move to a competitor.
So when Awful Announcing reported Monday that Nelson was leaving HBO, Portnoy broke out a bottle of champagne to celebrate his victory over a rival.
Put this on ice for when I get home tomorrow #suitman pic.twitter.com/QCaK10Q2Lt
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 10, 2020
Portnoy previously stated in an HBO “Real Sports” story on him and Barstool, that he keeps a special bottle of champagne around and drinks it when any of his rivals go down. This was one of those occasions.
He also released a video:
RIP SUITMAN https://t.co/yeXaStRda3 pic.twitter.com/1gm7YQix8g
— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 10, 2020
“Suitman. Gone. No job, no life, no future,” Portnoy said. Suitman was Franklyn’s alias on the show when talking about Nelson.
HBO has moved away from live sports, getting out of boxing after 2018, and no longer producing content under their “24/7” brand. They still have “Real Sports” and “Hard Knocks” and release sports documentaries. HBO’s content strategy change comes as they transition to a new subscription product, HBO Max.