Ryan Kavanaugh knew that Ethan Klein was going to cause problems for him when he announced the terms of a lawsuit with Triller to his millions of podcast followers. Triller is a social media app sharing company Kavanaugh co-founded. One of the company’s sports divisions, Triller Fight Group, became embroiled in a legal battle with Klein and his company, H3 Productions, over online piracy that resulted in lost revenue for Triller.
Triller Sports Group Obtains Rights to Broadcast Boxing Match on Pay Per View Channel
Kavanaugh worked with Triller Sports Group to procure the rights to broadcast a boxing match between Jake Paul and Ben Askren last April. The work to make this broadcast a reality began months before. After having spent tens of million dollars to advertise the April 17, 2021, broadcast, Triller was set to earn record profits from viewers who paid $49.99 each to watch the fight. Ethan Klein would throw a wrench in these plans by pirating more than four million unique views.
After learning that Klein had cost Triller Fight Club more than $100 million in lost revenue, company executives filed a lawsuit against Ethan Klein, his wife, Hila, and H3 Productions at the end of April last year. Rather than attempt to settle the lawsuit out of court, Klein announced it on his podcast and told intentional lies to swing public sympathy in his favor. Unfortunately for Ryan Kavanaugh and Triller, falsifying information about what actually happened on April 17, 2021, was only the beginning of Klein’s illegal and troublesome behavior.
Ethan Klein Engages in Deliberate Attempts to Destroy Kavanaugh’s Reputation
With millions of supportive followers ready to do whatever he asked, Klein jumped into action trying to ruin the professional reputation of Kavanaugh. His next action was to post at least eight videos personally attacking him and Triller to a lesser extent. Kavanaugh is quick to point out that the two have never met and that he is a co-founder and shareholder of Triller, not its CEO. He originally had no intention of suing Klein personally, but the attacks only escalated over the next several months.
Klein’s next move was to invest in manipulative search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns to redirect online traffic to his own videos anytime someone searched Ryan Kavanaugh’s name. He also created a website for the sole purpose of slandering Kavanaugh, comparing him to the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Klein then convinced thousands of his followers to upvote negative comments about Kavanaugh on social media sites and to leave untrue feedback on Kavanaugh’s sites.
As destructive as these actions were, perhaps the most damaging action Klein committed against Kavanaugh was to post a newspaper article that made an indirect comparison between his companies and Ponzi schemes. Klein posted the misleading newspaper article 30 times, despite knowing that it debunked the claim and that all parties interviewed for the story denied fraud allegations.
Klein appears ready to stop at nothing to smear Kavanaugh, even going so far as to claim he does not pay his employees nor his family’s nanny. Ryan Kavanaugh has responded the only way he could at this point by filing a personal lawsuit against Ethan Klein and H3 Productions on November 30, 2021.