Stephen A. Smith’s Wildly High Yearly Salary Revealed

Shouting is profitable.

Stephen A. Smith has multiple streams of income. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Stephen A. Smith probably makes more than you thought. Andrew Marchand of The Athletic has revealed Smith's full combined salary and it's eye-popping.

In addition to the five-year, $100 million deal he signed with ESPN earlier this year, Smith makes approximately $12 million annually from Sirius XM where he recently signed a three-year, $36 million deal to do his daily Stephen A. Smith Show on Mad Dog Sports Radio. And on top of that he's making another $7 million a year from his podcast, which is also cleverly titled The Stephen A. Smith Show.

(First Take remains the unofficial Stephen A. Smith show for now, even following the abrupt resignation of Molly Qerim.)

For those of you without a calculator, that particular combination of the numbers above is $39 million annually.

It's an eye-popping total for what appears to be about six hours of talking Monday through Friday, but when you consider how much attention Smith garners, it's probably a bargain for ESPN. For now he remains ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, even when he's podcasting or doing satellite radio.

Though that could change. According to Marchand the political Stephen A. Smith era begins tonight. He has delved into politics and appeared on political programs previously, but he is now launching a political radio show called Straight Shooter with Stephen A. on SiriusXM's POTUS (“Politics Of The United States”) channel.

That $39 million may sound like a lot to most people, but Smith continues to wade deeper into the really big money of politics. Who knows what that figure could be in a few years.

---

More on Sports Illustrated

feed