ESPN reportedly won’t punish Shannon Sharpe for Instagram Live sex

Shannon Sharpe’s Wednesday afternoon delight won’t prevent him from joining Stephen A. Smith on First Take Monday morning.

TMZ Sports is reporting Sharpe won’t face any disciplinary action from ESPN for accidentally allowing America to listen in on him having sex, citing an unnamed source at the network. According to the source, Sharpe is expected to be part of his regularly scheduled programming on First Take next Monday and Tuesday.

Sharpe’s first-ever Instagram Live appearance was a memorable one, with it occurring during a sexual encounter Wednesday afternoon. His more than three million Instagram viewers couldn’t see anything from the encounter, but they were able to hear a lot. Screen recordings of the Instagram Live session quickly spread across social media, prompting someone from Sharpe’s team to shut down the stream and post a message claiming he was hacked.

Later Wednesday, Sharpe went on Nightcap with co-host Chad Johnson and admitted he wasn’t hacked, meaning those sex noises you heard were coming from the Pro Football Hall of Famer. Sharpe said the Instagram Live event was an accident, claiming he didn’t know how it happened.

During his tell-all on Nightcap, Sharpe also said he quickly called executives at ESPN and The Volume to tell them what happened, insinuating those professional relationships would remain intact. TMZ Sports has now all but confirmed that by reporting Sharpe won’t receive any sort of punishment from ESPN.

While the NFL star turned media mogul was able to comfortably know his audio-only sex tape wouldn’t hurt his massively growing podcast platform, Sharpe had to have at least some concern over the way ESPN might respond. In 2021, ESPN fired Paul Pierce after he went on Instagram Live while drinking and smoking as exotic dancers performed in the background. Despite that precedent being set, ESPN can lean on Pierce’s Instagram Live controversy being intentional, while Sharpe’s was seemingly a mistake.

Sharpe joined ESPN as a First Take contributor last year following his public split with Skip Bayless and FS1. And after two short “prove-it” deals during the NFL and NBA seasons, Sharpe signed a four-year contract to remain with ESPN in June.

[TMZ Sports]