Fox stops running MyPillow ads after bills reportedly go unpaid

MyPillow founder and owner Mike Lindell is accusing Fox’s conservative commentary channel of “canceling” him after the network reportedly paused his ads due to unpaid bills.

According to The Daily Beast sources, Fox has told MyPillow’s advertising agency that it has paused its partnership with the company because Lindell’s company has an outstanding balance. 

Meanwhile, the network appeared to confirm the situation, with a spokesperson telling multiple outlets that “As soon as their account is paid, we would be happy to accept their advertising.”

It’s not clear how much Lindell might owe Fox or what terms the network offers advertisers such as Lindell as of Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.

In the past, Lindell has claimed he spent between $500,000 and $2 million per week with Fox touting his pillows and other products. 

According to sources, Lindell owes Fox for ads going back to August 2023. The Daily Beast’s source says that MyPillow has made some recent payments to Fox, but those were not enough to bring the account into good enough terms for the network to resume running the ads. 

Lindell, however, is claiming Fox actually stopped airing his ads because he recently hired former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs to host a show on his Lindell TV offering hosted on FrankSpeech.

Fox “has canceled MyPillow, and I don’t have the reasons why yet, I can only, you know, say well, the caucuses are coming on Monday, they know my brand is branded right with our great real president, Donald Trump,” Lindell said on Steve Bannon’s podcast Jan. 12.

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Dobbs new show — which appears to be a low-budget production shot in a library or den — debuted in early January 2024. It’s called “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” the same name of this Fox show.

For Fox’s part, the network and its related entities racked up $1.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2023. Lindell’s advertising fees are likely only a small fraction of that, and losing the account entirely would have little to no effect on the network’s financials, especially ahead of 2024 election ad spending. 

Lindell, meanwhile, appears to be in the midst of significant financial instability.

He’s facing a duo of $1 billion defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic (Fox, for its part, paid $787 million to Dominion to settle that company’s lawsuit in 2023. The Smartmatic suit is still pending and the network appeared unlikely to be considering settling even as the voting tech company may want even more than Dominion got).

Lindell’s entire legal team quit over his inability to pay his legal bills.

Meanwhile, Lindell has acknowledged that MyPillow sales have gone soft, something he largely blames on cancel culture. 

Lindell became a vocal supporter of Trump and the MAGA movement and has spent large amounts of money on efforts trying to prove the 2020 election was stolen — but so far has yet to offer any real evidence.