why the NWSL’s “Call Her Daddy” partnership is worse than you think
a league-affiliated supporters group? with alex cooper? yikes.
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Correction: This post has been updated to correct the former workplaces of NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman and COO Sarah Jones Simmer.
Over the past two months, the National Women’s Soccer League has been rolling out details related to its partnership with Unwell Hydration, the new beverage from Call Her Daddy podcaster Alex Cooper’s Unwell brand.
According to a press release, Unwell is “a platform… to amplify the new generations of unique voices” (no, I don’t know what that means either). The drink is described as an “all-new functional beverage” and “your new best friend … with benefits.” The electrolyte-infused drink and “unapologetically authentic new beverage line… designed by women for women” is, according to Cooper’s Instagram, for “hungover bitches on their walk of shames1, the hot cunts who actually go to pilates every morning, the girlies grinding it out at their desks, and the superhuman moms working their asses off.”
There is so much happening here, you guys.
The NWSL also announced a “League Supporter Group” called “Unwell FC,” which will debut at this weekend’s Bay FC v. Angel City FC match. The initiative includes opportunities to meet Cooper, as well as samples of Unwell products and an Unwell hat. There has also been speculation that Unwell FC will have its own dedicated section at games. “They're apparently taking over three sections of seats right next to the actual supporter's section, which feels incredibly disrespectful,” one Bay FC fan wrote in a Reddit thread discussing the initiative.
For folks who aren’t familiar with NWSL fan culture, each team has Supporters Groups (known as SGs), which are independently run by fans and work to both support the team and its players, as well as hold them accountable for missteps or harmful actions. (This episode of the “Full Time” podcast does a great job of explaining it.) The details of this new partnership, as you might imagine, are not sitting well with these groups.
“The culture of independent supporters’ groups has existed long before this league; co-opting it for a brand is a terrible decision,” Meg Linehan recently wrote at The Athletic. I concur, and this brand in particular is one that the NWSL should think long and hard about platforming for a growing and inclusive audience.
Call Her Daddy finished 2024 ranked #2 on Spotify Wrapped’s top U.S. podcasts. It has featured a slew of high profile celebrity guests over the years, including many women athletes—a trend that has increased of late. Simone Biles, Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, and Kylie Kelce all appeared on recent episodes. The podcast made national headlines last fall when Cooper landed an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign. While Donald Trump was appearing on man-o-sphere podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience and Theo Von's This Past Weekend, Harris joined Cooper on what is essentially the female equivalent.
“If Rogan is the final boss of Trump-era masculinity in the podcast sphere, I’d dub Alex Cooper his less-intense feminine counterpart,”
recently put it. "The Barbie to his Ken, so to speak. Men join the Rogan fraternity, and women join the Daddy Gang sorority.”Call Her Daddy's close association with the man-o-sphere isn't an accident. It made its name as part of the Barstool Sports podcast network. And despite the fact that Cooper and Barstool parted ways in 2021, Cooper has not distanced herself from the brand at all. In fact, she’s continued to praise Barstool and its founder and CEO, Dave Portnoy.
Cooper’s move into the women’s sports space while still closely aligning herself with a brand built on bullying and misogyny is worrying. The NWSL’s willingness to sign onto the “Daddy” brand also reinforces something I’ve been concerned about for a while: that commissioner Jessica Berman is not equipped to steer the league through this time of intense growth and scrutiny.
Call Her Daddy began in 2018 as a sex and relationship advice podcast, hosted by Cooper and her then-roommate Sofia Franklyn. The podcast took off almost immediately, and Barstool Sports acquired it the same year it launched. The duo was known for their casual and frank discussions of sexuality, priding themselves on talking about sex the same way dudes would. The show often trafficked in the same misogynist tropes as men, encouraging their young female listeners to accept shitty treatment from men by encouraging them to “play the game.” They often ranked women on a 1-10 scale of attractiveness and said that women could behave differently based on how hot they were.
“They tell their listeners to ‘cheat or be cheated on,’ and that ‘boys love the crazy,’” Jasmine Wang wrote at
. “They tell listeners to make their hookups feel insecure. They play into the stereotypes that girls are crazy and manipulative, and that boys are liars and cheaters. These are prime examples of toxic dating and hookup advice and honestly serve no purpose other than to reinforce the twisted power dynamics that are already established in modern relationships.”The content of the podcast often crossed the line into offensive territory. In a now-deleted episode from 2020, Cooper and Franklyn discuss Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, calling the pair “disgusting,” mocking Chopra’s body, and questioning her sexuality.
In early 2020, new episodes of Call Her Daddy abruptly stopped posting amid a contract dispute with Barstool. According to reporting at the New York Times by
, Cooper had agreed to terms with Barstool but Franklyn did not. Franklyn left the show and Cooper began recording solo episodes in May of that year. In 2021, she signed a deal with Spotify worth $60 million and left the Barstool Sports platform. In 2024, she signed a $125 million deal with SiriusXM.Here it’s important to know why an affiliation with Barstool is not just a red flag, but potentially dangerous to a women’s sports audience. Created by Dave Portnoy in 2003 with some seed money from his parents, Barstool began as a gambling-centric and Boston-only print publication. It moved online in 2007 and was penned almost exclusively by Portnoy, then expanded over the years. The version of Barstool that exists today is a defanged version of its original form. Nominally billed as a comedy blog, it also trafficked in misogynist takes about women, referring to them with terms like “hot sluts,” “smokeshows,” “ugly bitches,” or “fat dykes.” The site regularly made light of sex crimes—a fact especially onerous in light of the multiple sexual assault allegations made against Portnoy.
Fans of the site, known as Stoolies, have a history of harassing women and marginalized people online, regularly doxxing them. In 2021, some professional women’s hockey players advocated for Barstool to get involved with the National Women’s Hockey League (the precursor to the PWHL). After fans pushed back and cited criticism of Barstool’s culture and content, Barstool’s then-CEO Erica Nardini (who referred to herself as the “token” because whenever Barstool was accused of misogyny or sexism, they would trot out their female CEO) posted a video attacking the “haters,” which included screenshots of tweets from women journalists who covered the league. As a result, those journalists were targeted and mercilessly harassed by Stoolies, and the league had to put out a statement that any formal application for team ownership from Barstool would be rejected.
None of this would be much of an issue if, amid Cooper’s split from Barstool, she had attempted to distance herself from her former employer. People grow and learn throughout their lives, and I always want to keep room for that potential. If Cooper had ever acknowledged the harm that Barstool has inflicted over the years and taken responsibility for the ways Call Her Daddy’s was complicit by affiliation, I probably wouldn’t be writing this piece. But that’s not what has happened.
In fact, since splitting with Barstool in 2021, Cooper has remained friendly with Portnoy and Barstool, both publicly and professionally. In addition to having Portnoy appear on her podcast and join her for live tapings of the show as recently as last year, she has expressed gratitude to Portnoy for the career she has built. “The minute I sign a new deal, every time, I text Dave Portnoy a little thank-you,” she told the Hollywood Reporter last October.
Cooper is also hiring Barstool employees to join her Unwell Network, announcing in December that Grace O’Malley would be leaving Barstool to work for her. (Portnoy also can’t stop himself from weighing in on any drama that may be happening at Unwell, and is finding opportunities to take jabs at Cooper, of course.)
While I understand that Portnoy is a bad enemy to have, he’s also not someone whose brand is conducive to partnerships in the women’s sports space. If Cooper is trying to rebrand into a girlboss empire of empowerment, her continued affiliation with Barstool tarnishes any claims about wanting to uplift women.
More troubling, however, is the NWSL’s willingness to align themselves and their brand with a woman who got her start with Barstool Sports and has not done anything to denounce them.
The NWSL is attempting to re-brand following their harrowing sexual abuse scandal and ongoing workplace harassment crisis. Bay FC, the team hosting the first Unwell FC activation, recently hired a scout who has faced abuse allegations. “[Commissioner] Jessica Berman was charged with reforming the NWSL’s culture,” a 2024 report from SportsPro explains. Berman joined the league in 2022 and comes from the world of men’s sports, having previously worked for the NHL. Last year, she hired COO Sarah Jones Simmer, a former Bumble executive who also spent two-and-a-half years as the CEO of Found, a weight loss start up. “Under Berman’s leadership,” SportsPro continued, “the NWSL has become a sporting beacon of social and political activism.”
But it’s hard for me to understand how hiring the ultimate girlboss could ever result in a league that could be heralded as “a beacon of social and political activism” and celebrated for its “community impact.” And that’s not just because Berman and Co. clearly thought that teaming up with Call Her Daddy for a campaign that would also co-opt the idea of Supporters Groups, potentially defanging any of the influence that fan-led SGs have by creating a league-affiliated SG led by Cooper (an official league partner)... was the move.
This move comes among Berman’s failure to adequately address the transphobia and harassment that players like Barbra Banda, who is cis, have been facing all season amid the rising anti-trans sentiments in women’s sports. The most support she could muster was a tepid statement to Linehan at The Athletic, promising that the NWSL was “going to continually live by our values and support everyone in our ecosystem.”
In fact, it’s those existing Supporters Groups that have stepped up to insist that the NWSL is a league that stands against transphobia. All 15 team SGs launched the “Trans People Belong” campaign last week, which involves in-stadium displays by supporters and a forthcoming educational component in partnership with Athlete Ally, in addition to selling shirts to benefit the Transgender Law Center. Nowhere in those press releases was Unwell FC mentioned. Even if Cooper wanted her Unwell FC to be involved, how can a league-sponsored SG take part in a campaign that essentially criticizes the league for its inaction?
Being an NWSL SG involves more than just a big name and a brand activation—it means a commitment to the players on the pitch and the fans in the stands who have invested in this league from the beginning. And while Cooper is a former D1 soccer player, she has yet to demonstrate an investment in the NWSL that doesn’t line her own pockets. So it makes sense that fans would be skeptical of this new initiative.
“Or maybe you could listen to your fans and the SGs that already exist,” one fan wrote on Bluesky. “Supporter groups are not marketing tools. Full stop.”
This newsletter was edited by Louis Bien.
My friend Theo texted me a full 24 hours after I sent them this post to say, “Still thinking about this and it should be walks of shame.”
Geez, in an effort to expand all these womens sports leagues are hellbent on alienating their existing fans as much as possible. This sucks more than I thought possible.
Any time I see someone come out with a supplement line, I immediately hear that "is it a scam? Yup!" guy in my head. Selling magic potions, basically, and fleecing people.