Dave Portnoy Reportedly Has 45 Million AmEx Points — Here’s What That Could Be Worth

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has never been afraid of online controversy, but he's now going viral for reasons that have nothing to do with his reputation on the internet.

In a Barstool Sports video, we learned that Dave has almost 45 million points on his American Express card.

The news that Dave has so many points on his card led many to wonder how he had gotten that many points, and what they might be worth. Here's what we know.

If the TikTok video is to be believed, then Dave really does have 44,403,931 American Express points. In the video, Dave explains that he has all these points because he doesn't ever use them.

The clip also shows a credit card terminal that tells him how many points he has as he appears to be buying some pizza. Most credit card terminals don't do that, but Dave even comments on how unusual it is in the video.

Dave doesn't provide any explanation in the video for having that many points other than the fact that he never uses them. Given how much he might use his card as he travels and his wealth, it's possible that he could have that many points saved up on his card. Although, as anyone who uses their points regularly might tell you, they aren't worth very much at all if you don't use them.

The value of Amex points is flexible, depending on what you use the points for. In general, though, the points are worth between one and two cents. They can be worth two cents, or even a little more, when applied to rewards like travel, and are worth just 0.6 cents when they are applied as cash back.

That means Dave could redeem between $270,000 and $900,000 in points.

That's a substantial sum, and one that most people probably wouldn't accumulate over the course of their lives. It's the kind of sum that suggests that Dave has put millions of dollars' worth of charges on his account over the time he's owned it.

Points accrue slowly, but getting to that many suggests that Dave probably only has one card that he uses for pretty much everything.

We don't know whether Dave has any intention of using those points, but if he used them on travel, it seems fair to say that he could take a couple of pretty nice vacations.

Of course, it's also possible that this was all staged somehow, but it does seem like it would be an oddly specific thing to stage.

The likelier explanation is that Dave really does use that card for just about everything, and he's accumulated a truly insane amount of points as a result. Hopefully they don't expire, and he can actually use them. That's what they're there for after all.