Stephen A. Smith is reportedly in contract negotiations with ESPN ahead of the expiration of his deal next year, according to John Ourand of Puck. Ourand reported that Smith had been presented with an initial offer of $18 million per year for five years at the network, making him the highest-paid talent at ESPN.
Smith, however, is reportedly looking for $25 million per year, and his agents replied by asking the network to look at the deal Pat McAfee received that pays him nearly $30 million per year with his eponymous program, The Pat McAfee Show, and appearing on College GameDay. Another comparison that Ourand reports was made is the nine-year multiplatform media rights extension between ESPN and Omaha Productions worth $700 million, which includes the continuation of Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli and expanded original content collaboration.
Dan Le Batard discussed the report on Smith and the contract negotiations on Friday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, prefacing his opinion by stating that show contributor JuJu Gotti had informed him that no one wanted to hear how much money those in the media were making. Le Batard finds it interesting though that Smith is reportedly being offered the highest salary in the history of the network for a talent.
“It used to be for Jon Gruden at $6.5 million, but the explosion of everything that’s happened has made everyone realize, ‘Oh, all these talent are super undervalued,’” Le Batard explained, “even though everyone listening to this would say, ‘It’s ridiculous for anybody to be making the kind of money doing this nonsense that people can make.’”
As he continued, Le Batard conveyed that Monday Night Football play-by-play announcer Joe Buck is currently the highest-paid employee at ESPN (although reportedly Troy Aikman is paid more than Buck), but he does not have to do as much as Smith. Aside from reportedly looking for $25 million per year, Le Batard believes there is more than just money involved in the negotiations.
“He’s going to want power and a bunch of other things because he is the modern-day Howard Cosell whether you like it or not, and beyond sports, he’s got conquering ambitions because he is casting a wide net going on FOX, making sure the audience is as large as it can be as he heads into the leverage of negotiations because he can do this for $18 million a year on his own. He doesn’t need ESPN.”
Smith is the executive producer and a featured commentator on ESPN’s First Take, the morning debate show that has garnered 22 consecutive months of year-over-year growth. He also recently completed his second season on NBA Countdown on which he covered several marquee matchups during the year, including the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks. Outside of ESPN though, Smith has built Mr. SAS Productions, through which he recently produced a docuseries on debate-format television and also hosts his own program, The Stephen A. Smith Show, at least three times per week. Smith joined the iHeartPodcast Network this past February within a distribution deal for his independent program after initially working with Audacy’s Cadence13.
“He sets a table for all the rights that [ESPN has] unless it’s the Stanley Cup,” producer Mike Ryan said, “so what I would do if I’m ESPN is I would pay him $10 million for every sport he can actually cover because the daytime programming on [Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final,] a game that they have – their coverage was Mike Greenberg asking Udonis Haslem about what he thought about tonight.”
Ryan emphasized that when the United States hosts the World Cup in 2026, it is more likely that the ESPN show will be discussing quarterback Dak Prescott than the international soccer tournament. As a steadfast Florida Panthers fan with a keen interest in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, he opined that the network needs to follow the model it has in growing other entities. For example, Ryan stated that Smith has shown everyone what he can do with the National Football League and that Pat McAfee has discussed the National Hockey League on his program.
“What has happened with hockey and the ratings with ESPN now engaged has been an explosion of people realizing how wonderful these playoffs actually are because elsewhere on the network, they are better partners to hockey than they are to baseball by a lot,” Le Batard said. “The baseball people are dying at ESPN because they clearly do not care about the sport, but they care about hockey more and believe in the future of hockey more and spend as if they believe in the future of hockey more, but the morning shows aren’t equipped to talk about this well.”
