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Travis Kelce Would Apparently Make the Big Bucks to Call NFL Games
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce may have played his last professional football game. Or he'll be right back where he's always been next fall when Kansas City attempts to put the pieces back together after a broken season. There is no shortage of speculation about Kelce's future and no real concrete details on which to base that speculation. His longtime coach Andy Reid tried to offer some perspective and point out that there's no huge rush for Kelce to make a decision but cooler heads never prevail in these types of situations.
If the future Hall of Famer does decide to hang up his cleats, many expect him to jump into a very lucrative and tailor-made career in media. He already has an extremely popular and profitable sports podcast. But there's belief that he'll drop into the player-to-announcer pipeline that has proven to be incredibly lucrative over the past few years.
The Athletic's Andrew Marchand, a trusted voice in the sports media world, foresees a big payday if that happens.
“I think Travis Kelce is one who, if he retires, definitely could do TV,” Marchand said on his latest podcast. “I think he wants to do games, so that’s one to watch.”
“He’s a guy who is only going to take a No. 1 job, to me,” Marchand added. “He’s going to get anywhere from $10 to 20 million (per year), because he’s Travis Kelce.”
That makes sense. It would be incredibly weird to see Kelce cutting his teeth as a member of the No. 4 booth. Like Tom Brady before him, he'll be given the most prominent position with hopes he can grow into it. And even then, it's worth wondering how much acumen even matters or if its the big name that does all the work anyway.
Also, $10-$20 million is still only a fraction of the 10-year, $375 million deal Brady got with Fox. And one could definitely argue that Kelce, right now and perhaps in the future, is a splashier name. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out or if Kelce just plays for the Chiefs again.
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Kyle Koster is an assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated covering the intersection of sports and media. He was formerly the editor in chief of The Big Lead, where he worked from 2011 to '24. Koster also did turns at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he created the Sports Pros(e) blog, and at Woven Digital.