Dave Portnoy turned down a $10million offer to attend a boxing match in Saudi Arabia, according to popular Barstool personality ‘Big Cat’.
According to ‘Big Cat’ – real name Dan Katz – Saudi chiefs reached out and sent over the lucrative offer however the Barstool stars felt it didn’t meet their price.
Speaking on Barstool Yak, Katz said: ‘By the way, I’m not judging this one either, because Dave and I were once offered and they just didn’t reach our price, but we were gonna go.
‘There was a boxing match… for the two of us to attend and we talked on the phone and we were like, cause it was a s*** load of travel.
‘And we were like, Give us like $15 million and we’ll do it.’ And they were like, ‘We can do 10 [million)’ and we were like, ‘No.’
It remains unclear which boxing event that Katz was referring to.
Dave Portnoy reportedly turned down $10million to attend a boxing event in Saudi Arabia
Saudi boxing chief Turki Alalshikh often invites celebrities to their Riyadh Season events
Amid Saudi Arabia’s growing control over the boxing landscape, more and more celebrities are being spotted in attendance at Riyadh Season events.
Riyadh Season is the annual festival of cultural and sporting events organized as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 campaign to promote economic, social and cultural diversity both inside and outside the Middle Eastern country.
Just last week, prior to Terence Crawford’s historic unanimous-decision victory at Allegiant Stadium, boxing legend Mike Tyson and video gamer MrBeast were enlisted by promoter Turki Al-Sheikh to hype the bout on social media.
‘Tyson is about to punch me, because thanks to Riyadh Season, Canelo-Crawford is about to happen,’ MrBeast (real name: James Donaldson) said alongside Tyson and Al-Sheikh. ‘It literally starts in an hour. So, after this, you need to go watch it.’
As expected, the punch landed like a bomb, sending MrBeast toppling over as Tyson erupted in laughter – before the incident went viral on social media.
Perhaps, had negotiations gone differently, it could have been Portnoy on the end of Tyson’s punch.
The Barstool Sports boss, however, will have other concerns at present – such as the declining views on their brand new morning show; ‘Wake Up Barstool’.
The show aired in the same timeslot as the now-defunct FS1 staple ‘Undisputed’ but their first week ratings were alarmingly low. However, week two was even worse.
Portnoy and Barstool star ‘Big Cat’ reportedly asked for $15million in order to attend the event
The week of its Monday debut, the shows from Tuesday-Friday maxxed out at 20,000 views.
But in its second week of airing, the shows from Monday-Friday averaged only 12,000 viewers and sank as low as an anemic 7,000 total viewers on Tuesday.
The shows on Wednesday and Friday were not much better, drawing just 8,000 views.
Portnoy has even admitted he’s not too satisfied with the product he’s putting out on air in his Monday appearances.
But the good news for him is that Monday appears to be the best days for viewers. The bad news is that only 23,000 viewers tuned in for Monday of Week Two.
