Dave Portnoy has debunked the viral rumor that Alex Cooper and Alix Earle’s “beef” stems from a Carl’s Jr. commercial Earle allegedly landed over Cooper last year.
The Barstool Sports founder weighed in on the pair’s ongoing feud during Monday’s episode of the “Chicks in the Office” podcast.
“Now, where I was wrong, I said in the video I heard it was all Carl’s Jr. Have you heard that?” Portnoy, 49, asked co-hosts Ria Ciuffo and Fran Mariano while referencing his latest “Tea by the Sea” video.
“I think that there’s a bunch of stories going around that people thought that the other one was jealous of the other one for getting in the Adam Sandler movie or the Super Bowl commercial,” Ciuffo responded. “So, the Carl’s Jr. commercial, there was a lot of that.”
Besides starring in a 2025 Super Bowl ad for the popular burger chain, as well as another in July 2025 with Paris Hilton, Earle also made a cameo in Sandler’s 2025 Netflix flick, “Happy Gilmore 2.”
However, Portnoy went on to tell Ciuffo and Mariano that Cooper wouldn’t have done the Carl’s Jr. commercial even if she had been offered $10 million. He also noted that the pair had shared the same publicist, Cait Bailey.
“If I had a gun to my head and $10 million in a bag, I would not have done that Carl’s Jr. ad,” the “Call Her Daddy” podcast host said, according to Portnoy.
“So, maybe it wasn’t the Carl’s Jr. ad,” he added, regarding the source of Cooper and Earle’s feud.
After debunking the Carl Jr.’s commercial rumor, the Barstool Sports founder speculated that the true source of the pair’s fight was a “contract issue” with Earle’s “Hot Mess” podcast and Cooper’s Unwell Network.
Although Earle signed with Unwell in 2023, she was dropped by Cooper two years later amid reports of tension and creative differences between the pair.
“I don’t know what the contract looked like,” Portnoy said of Earle and Cooper’s Unwell deal. “I know Alex Cooper, one time I saw her, was like, ‘I want to apologize for the way we were with ‘Call Her Daddy.’ Now that I’m managing talent, I see how hard it can be.’”
Cooper’s hit “Call Her Daddy” podcast initially launched under Portnoy’s Barstool Sports in 2018.
But following a dispute over intellectual property rights, co-founder Sofia Franklyn left the show. Cooper ultimately left Barstool for Spotify in 2021.
“And that to me was like, ‘All right, I’m having Alex Earle issues,’” Portnoy continued. “Like she’s huge. It’s like all this money is coming in, but it goes maybe to the network. There’s going to be tension.”
Reps for Cooper and Earle did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
The “Call Her Daddy” and “Hot Mess” hosts’ rumored feud kicked back up earlier this month when Earle, 25, re-posted a scorching TikTok video comparing Cooper, 31, to an “ambulance chaser” and “grim reaper.”
Cooper addressed the feud rumors on Monday by urging Earle to “stop hiding behind other people” in a TikTok video of her own.
“Just say it yourself,” the Golden Globe-nominated podcast host said. “Because I’m really tired of waking up and seeing you using this fake drama to distract from other s–t going on.”
She added, “I know what happened, and so do you, so talk.”
Earle then took to the comments of Cooper’s video to say, “Okay on it!”
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