Pat McAfee’s next ESPN deal could make him the highest-paid personality in sports media history.
According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, ESPN and McAfee’s representatives are discussing an extension in the range of $60 to $65 million per year, with an expanded role at the network — including potentially more NFL coverage — a possibility if a deal comes together. McAfee currently has two years remaining on his existing arrangement, which pays him in the neighborhood of $30 million per year, per Marchand, when combining his production deal for The Pat McAfee Show and his separate contracts for College GameDay and other appearances.
Front Office Sports first reported on extension talks earlier this month, noting the two sides were in early discussions.
The structure of the new deal would reportedly be similar to what’s already in place. ESPN licenses The Pat McAfee Show under a production agreement rather than a traditional talent contract, meaning McAfee retains ownership of the program, pays his own staff and contributors, and covers his own production costs, so his actual take-home is lower than his headline number. His daily show, which runs from noon to 2 p.m. ET on ESPN with a third hour on YouTube, is currently worth over $17 million per year on its own. His GameDay and other contributions make up the rest.
The Athletic also reports that McAfee’s representatives — TKO/Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, who also represent McAfee in Hollywood as he prepares to appear in director Peter Berg’s upcoming World War II film — opened negotiations with a $100 million per year ask.
If a deal gets done, it would be the first time in McAfee’s career that he’s stayed put at a platform for an extended run. He left the final two years of his Colts playing contract to join Barstool in 2017, then moved through WWE, DAZN, SiriusXM, Westwood One, and a reported four-year, $120 million FanDuel deal that the sportsbook let him out of early before he landed at ESPN in 2023.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.