One Barstool Sports personality is not on the team any longer.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy announced Wednesday that popular host Ben Mintz had to be fired from the company after he blurted out a racial slur while reading rap lyrics on a live stream earlier this week.
In a released video, Portnoy said the decision was made by Barstool’s parent company, Penn Entertainment, despite him not wanting to do it.
Mintz rapped the song “1st of Tha Month” by Bone Thugz-N-Harmony when he said the word.
“This morning, I made an unforgivable mistake slipping on air while reading a song lyric,” Mintz tweeted Monday morning after reading the slur aloud during his show “Wake Up Mintzy.”
“I meant no harm & have never felt worse about anything. I apologize for my actions. I am truly sorry & ashamed of myself.”
His apology was simply not enough.
Penn acquired 36 percent of Barstool Sports from The Chernin Group for $163 million in early 2020, and bought the remainder of the company for an additional $388 million earlier this year.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral General stories via Google! Follow Us
“Bad news – this sucks. Today, we had to fire Ben Mintz,” Portnoy said. “… He turned white as a ghost. You can tell instantly he was like, ‘Oh my god. What did I do?’ It was like a Ron Burgundy moment. He read it. He knew he f—ed up.”
Penn also operates 43 brick-and-mortar casinos in 20 states under the brands Ameristar, Boomtown, and Hollywood Casino.
“They believe there’s a legitimate chance lots of states could pull their licenses because of this,” said Portnoy.
“Penn’s a multi-billion dollar company. Without their licenses, they are a zero-dollar company. Investors, families, employees, thousands of people — they believe it’s their job to protect all of this and the only answer is to fire Ben Mintz.
“I still disagreed with it, and maybe I’m naive, but I’m like, ‘There is just no way anybody can look at the clip and think the punishment fits the crime.’ It makes my skin crawl thinking a guy would lose their job on an innocent mistake. Yes, horrible, but clearly no intent … It’s everything I’ve stood against for 20 years.”
It’s unfortunate that the decision had to be made, but we are living in different times where a mistake can cost you everything you worked for. Hopefully, Mintz can land on his feet elsewhere and his fans just might follow him to that destination.
