Barstool Sports has been sold, bought back and priced to the last cent, yet the woman who knew Dave Portnoy in the hamburger years still has the run of his bank account.
Of all the questions about Dave Portnoy’s money, the one that refuses to go away has nothing to do with who owns Barstool Sports. Renee, the woman he married in 2009, can still get into his bank account. He has said so on air at least twice and explained his reasons. When Shannon Sharpe told him on his own podcast to put a stop to it, Portnoy declined.
Our rule here is to quote Portnoy only from named shows, to take Barstool’s prices from Penn Entertainment’s own filings wherever a filing exists, and to treat “ex-wife” as the headline’s word for Renee, since it is not always his.
He told Shannon Sharpe she still has access
The line comes from Club Shay Shay, 14 May 2025. It was the second of two Portnoy episodes released that day, and Sharpe, a three-time Super Bowl champion and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was the one asking. Portnoy confirmed that Renee still has access, telling Sharpe, “I trust her implicitly.” Then he removed any doubt about what access means in practice. He told Sharpe that “if she wanted to take it, she could”, a sentence the second Portnoy episode of Club Shay Shay preserves for anyone who suspects the clip was trimmed to sound worse. He traced the loyalty back to the years when a hamburger was beyond the budget. Everyone remembers that detail, and it explains the rest. The internet did what it does with a sentence like that. A clip was on X by 18 May, and by the following day a YouTube cut was circulating under the title “Ex-Wife Still Has Access To Bank Account”, a headline with nothing left to add.
Sharpe told him to cut her off
Sharpe gave him the advice a friend with a calculator would give, and told Portnoy he needed to cut her off. Portnoy’s reply was that he would not even notice if anything were gone. Very few people can say that sentence truthfully, and fewer still say it with a camera running. He then turned the question round, asking why Renee should not get to enjoy any of it, and answered it himself: “To me, that’s not right.” The logic is a founder’s logic applied to a marriage. She was there for the lean years, so in his view she is entitled to the good ones, and he has chosen the bluntest possible way of sharing them. DDW’s reading is that this is less sentimental than it sounds. An open account is a standing decision. It is renewed every day it is not revoked, and Portnoy renewed it in public while a Hall of Famer sat opposite him advising the opposite.
He has described it at least twice
By our count Portnoy has described the arrangement in public at least twice. The earlier occasion was The Sage Steele Show in late 2024, the later the Sharpe interview, about six months on, and in between he had ample time to think better of it. He did not. Once on air can be put down to a mood. Twice, to different interviewers, with half a year to reconsider, amounts to a policy, and people return to a policy to check whether it still stands. He talks for a living, so the count may yet rise. These are the two occasions with a programme’s name and a date attached, and the second carries the version of his reasoning that everyone quotes.
He has called them technically still married
The word “ex-wife” comes from Sharpe’s framing and from the headlines. Portnoy’s own description, on The Sage Steele Show, was that the two of them are technically still married. Their separation was announced in January 2017 on Barstool Sports itself, which is one way of telling your readers and your relatives in a single post. What is public is the outline: married in 2009, separated in full view of the readership in 2017, and still close enough in 2025 for one of them to have access to the other’s account. Beyond his own description, the legal position belongs to the two people in it.
The marriage predates every Barstool deal
Barstool began in 2003 as a free sports and gambling newspaper. Portnoy married Renee in 2009. The Chernin Group, Peter Chernin’s firm, took a majority stake in 2016, at a valuation Portnoy himself put at $10m to $15m. Forbes, in a July 2017 piece by Mark J. Burns, quoted him as saying the deal “was not my cash out moment”, and the filings that followed proved him right. DDW’s reading of the hamburger years comes down to dates. Renee had been married to Portnoy for seven years before the first outside investor arrived, which places her on the far side of every valuation that followed. In his telling she is part of the founding, and founders do not usually check one another’s withdrawals. That chronology is what makes his answer to Sharpe readable. The money came later, and so, in his account, she has a claim on it that no later partner, investor or buyer could have.
Penn Entertainment bought Barstool in two stages
The bigger money came from a gaming company. In January 2020 Penn National Gaming agreed a 36 per cent stake for $163m in cash and stock. The deal closed the following month, and current and former employees, Portnoy among them, were left holding about 28 per cent. The agreement gave existing shareholders the right to sell to Penn from three years after closing, and the timetable ran almost to the month. On 17 February 2023 Penn, by then Penn Entertainment and led by Jay Snowden, completed the purchase of every Barstool share it did not already own for about $388m, before expenses, debt repayment and other adjustments. For a company that had started as a free newspaper, it was a considerable distance from the hamburger budget, and it was reached in two orderly steps that a filing clerk could follow.
Penn sold Barstool back to Portnoy
The return journey was quicker. In August 2023, the week Penn agreed with ESPN to rebrand its sportsbook from Barstool Sportsbook to ESPN Bet, Variety reported that Penn’s quarterly filing recorded the sale of all of Barstool’s shares to Portnoy for $1 in cash, together with non-compete and other restrictive covenants. The Hollywood Reporter added a condition. Portnoy agreed to give Penn half of the proceeds of any future sale of Barstool Sports. So he got his company back with a former owner entitled to half of any exit, which is a long way from getting it back free and clear. That is the right frame for what he told Sharpe. Inside seven years, Barstool was valued by a media investor, bought in two stages by a gaming company and handed back to its founder for loose change, which has given Portnoy more reason than most people to think about what things are worth. On the question of Renee’s access, he has decided that the right price is no price at all.
Renee still has access, on his last public account of it, given to Sharpe in May 2025, and he left a Hall of Famer in no doubt that he means to keep it that way. Barstool has carried a price four times since 2016. The account has never had one.
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