Dave Portnoy is feeling the pinch after the stock market continued to melt down on Monday, April 7. The Barstool Sports founder was live-streaming at the opening bell as the S&P 500 plunged 4% almost immediately. Fans knew he was already reaching his limits.
On April 4, Portnoy was clearly frustrated when he talked about how much his net worth was impacted by the White House tariff announcement.
“I’m down $7 Million [today]… Trump has put his tariffs all over the place… I’ve been trying to understand them - I don’t," he shared during the Friday livestream. " ... And everything is in the s***ter because of it.”
Things looked worse just three days later when Portnoy shared that his losses had hit eight digits.
"I went super viral when I said I lost $7 million," he explained on April 7. "I'd kill to be back losing $7 million. I haven't even looked. If I had to guess, I'm down these last three days... probably close to $20 [million]."
Portnoy wasn't done though. He added about his diminishing returns, "I don't know, 10-15% of my net worth. Poof! Even though he ranted and raved about his losses, he understood that was how "the game" was played — you win some, you lose some.
The 48-year-old podcast personality knows that he will be fine in the end, but he does have some concerns about the working class.
"This economy tanks. Our advertisers, who do business overseas and sell products and advertise with us. They sell less products," he continued. "It gets more expensive. What’s the first thing they cut? Ad budgets. Ad budgets that we get. Suddenly we’re not getting as much money. Suddenly, I have to fire Nate [Barstool personality Eric Nathan] and lay people off.”
Portnoy was only speaking about a hypothetical situation affecting Barstool Sports, but he definitely had money on his mind.
“That’s how it works,” he summed up. “The rich people are probably the least affected… It affects you whether you have money in the stock market or not.”
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