Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne Deny Investing In Carlos Watson’s Ozy Media: “He’s Insane”

This past week, the internet media has been consumed with the strange story of Ozy, a digital media company that has been using some, ahem, unconventional tactics to attract money. Earlier this week, the New York Times published an exposé that included an absolutely wild story about Ozy COO Samir Rao jumping on a conference call with a team of potential Goldman Sachs investors, electronically altering his voice and claiming that he was actually a YouTube exec. Since then, Ozy advertisers have suspended campaigns, execs have stepped down, and the whole institution looks like one pathetically flimsy house of cards. And now Ozzy Osbourne is involved, too!

As CNBC points out, Ozy founder Carlos Watson was on their network two years ago, claiming that Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne had invested in his company. Watson claimed that he’s become friends with the Osbournes after a legal issue, revolving around Ozy’s OzyFest event having a name way too similar to OzzFest. On the network, Watson said, “Fun fact: Our friends Ozzy and Sharon sued us briefly, and then we decided to be friends and now they’re investors in Ozy. They’re part of the family.” Now, two years later, Sharon Osbourne is like: What? No.

The Osbournes did sue Ozy in 2017, but this did not lead to them becoming investors. Talking to CNBC, Sharon Osbourne says, “This guy is the biggest shyster I have ever seen in my life… We’re not ever, ever a friend, and we don’t have any interest in his company… You must be joking. No way did we invest in anything… He’s insane.”

Sharon Osbourne says that she settled the lawsuit with Ozy in 2018 and that part of the settlement was that Watson had to get her approval for OzyFest lineups: “He couldn’t have the sort of artists that we have on our bill, so he couldn’t have any rock artists or alternative artists on his bill. Because he was starting to take rap artists, and we’ve had a few rap artists on. So I’m like, ‘This is getting ridiculous now.’ So he had to approve the bills with me, and he had to approve the advertising with me.”

Sharon says claims that Watson tried to intimidate her to prevent the lawsuit, claiming that Ozy had tons of financial backing and that a court battle would get expensive. She also says that Watson offered to make her an investor: “To be honest, he did say, ‘Well, we’ll give you shares in the company.’ But I said, ‘Your company is worth nothing.’ He said, ‘We have all this backing. All these billionaire people. And you know we can keep on suing you, and I can give you some shares.’ But I’m like, ‘Shares in what? What do you do?’”

So this is what it’s like to side with Sharon Osbourne! Weird!