Adam Lefkoe: Pat McAfee ‘helped out a lot of people’ with ESPN licensing deal

Adam Lefkoe recognizes what Pat McAfee has done for sports media. Or at least what he’s done for some people in it.

McAfee’s five-year, $85 million licensing deal with ESPN changed how networks think about independent content creators. Instead of hiring him as one of its highest-paid employees, ESPN pays $17 million a year to license The Pat McAfee Show, letting him keep full ownership of his brand while delivering the network a younger audience it might’ve struggled to reach on its own.

The deal has worked so well that ESPN reportedly turns a profit on the show. Other networks have noticed, which is why everyone’s now trying to find “their own McAfee.”

“I don’t talk about other people’s money,” Lefkoe said on The Sports Media Podcast. “I want everybody to get paid a lot of money. But I do think that Pat McAfee helped out a lot of people with the deal that he struck at ESPN, in terms of you’re licensing this media. It’s kind of been a starter for a lot of other media. When he’s up, because he busts his ass, and he works so hard. And he’s done so much for them that I’m curious what he gets back.”

Before ESPN, McAfee already had a four-year, $120 million deal with FanDuel, proving that independent creators could land massive partnerships without ceding control. The ESPN deal just made it mainstream, showing networks that licensing established brands might be more valuable than building stars from scratch.

But Lefkoe’s real question is what McAfee gets back from ESPN. He works his ass off for them and has done so much to boost their programming, but what is ESPN doing for him beyond that $17 million check?

It’s a legitimate question. McAfee has certainly helped ESPN’s midday numbers and brought in the viewers they needed. But the licensing model means he’s also shouldering most of the responsibility for keeping the show successful while ESPN benefits from the partnership without having to do much of the actual work.

Lefkoe seems to be wondering whether that arrangement is as mutually beneficial as it looks on paper, or if one side is getting a better deal than the other.

McAfee’s deal opened doors for everyone else trying to make it in sports media. Whether that was worth it for McAfee himself is a different question entirely.