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Jun 30, 2026

Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn’s ‘Call Her Daddy’ Drama Explained: How Dave Portnoy Was Involved

The Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn “Call Her Daddy” drama will go down in history — so much so that Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy included it in his June 2026 memoir, Cancel Me If You Can.

“The revelation of Alex and Sofia’s torpedoed friendship was almost more than the public could handle,” Portnoy wrote in his book. “Two girls who the world loved to hate now hated each other.”

Portnoy’s version of the story offered more details that the public might not have been privy to before. For example, he first noticed Cooper on MLB pitcher Noah Syndergaard’s Instagram in 2017, when they were dating.

After hearing about her decision to launch a podcast, Portnoy reached out to Cooper, and the “Call Her Daddy” era began. The podcast launched at Barstool Sports in 2018 where it lived until 2021, when Cooper and the company mutually parted ways.

However, the end of the “Call Her Daddy” and Barstool era had tons of drama, which rocked the internet in 2020 as Cooper and Franklyn severed their friendship.

Keep scrolling for a complete breakdown:

Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn Call Her Daddy Drama Explained How Dave Portnoy Was Involved
Alex Cooper, Sofia Franklyn, and Dave Portnoy. Getty Images (3)

The Contract Drama Begins

According to Portnoy, the contract drama began in 2019 after Cooper and Franklyn appeared on Logan Paul’s podcast. They started to “show their growing dissatisfaction” with being tied to Barstool, he claimed, and by the end of that year, lawyers were involved for contract negotiations.

By 2020, however, things got even rockier when the contract drama went public. In May of that year, Cooper told “Call Her Daddy” listeners that she and Frankyn had signed a three-year deal with Barstool, making $75,000 their first year, $85,000 the second year and $100,000 the third. They both got a raise during their first year because of how well the podcast was performing. Cooper, who handled the production side of the podcast, got an extra bump.

Behind the scenes, Franklyn’s then-boyfriend started shopping the show around to other networks. Portnoy got wind of this.

The Rooftop Meeting

This led to the infamous “rooftop meeting” in 2020 where Portnoy offered Cooper and Franklyn $500,000 along with “3.5 percent each of all merch they sold,” according to Portnoy’s book. “At the end of their term, they would own all their merch sales,” he explained. It also “cut six months off their contract so they would have to do the podcast with us for only one more year,” he wrote, noting that after the year ended, Barstool would “relinquish full ownership of the intellectual property.”

Cooper Accepts the Deal

Cooper had her own meeting with Portnoy and eventually accepted the deal.

“Alex left our meeting saying that she wanted to accept the deal. She also said that Sofia hated my guts, which came as a surprise,” he wrote. “The whole time I had believed that Alex was the one who didn’t like me, but I thought that I had a solid relationship with Sofia.”

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