Dave Portnoy has revealed he was offered a job in the Trump administration’s Department of Commerce, but turned it down as it meant he would have to stop running his sports, gambling and pop-culture media company.
The founder and owner of Barstool Sports, who has been a vocal supporter of Trump, posted a video on X on Tuesday in which he claimed to have received a call about working under Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“I got a call, I dunno, a couple of months ago… and it was like ‘Hey would you have any interest, Dave, in joining the dept of commerce… and they were like ‘but a caveat of joining the government is somebody would have to run Barstool.’”
He did not provide further details of the job he had been offered.
In the clip, Portnoy also questioned how Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk was able to manage his multiple companies while still heading up the Department of Government Efficiency – though he said he backed the cost-cutting initiative, saying he was “pro-DOGE.”
“How do you run Tesla when you’re working on DOGE 24-7?” he said. “I guess Elon doesn’t have a specific title, but you kind of want your CEO with the eye on the ball, right?”
Portnoy added that, despite the call and offer of employment, the government had “never followed up.” “It was weird,” he said.
Portnoy founded Barstool Sports back in 2002, eventually selling a majority of the company to The Chernin Group in 2016, though 100 percent of the ownership was sold to casino and online gambling operator Penn Entertainment in 2023 for $550 million.
Months later, however, Penn Entertainment decided to part ways with the company and sold it back to Portnoy for just $1.
Following the buy-bac,k Portnoy said: “We underestimated just how tough it is for myself and Barstool to operate in a regulated world… We got denied [gambling] licenses because of me. So the regulated industry [is] probably not the best place for Barstool Sports and the type of content we make.”
The businessman is an outspoken supporter of Trump and interviewed him in 2020 at the White House at the end of his first term in office.
