Stephen A. Smith: Pat McAfee ‘earned’ looming record deal, questions if opportunity would’ve come to a Black host first

Stephen A. Smith praised Pat McAfee’s looming ESPN contract as deserved, while questioning whether a Black personality in the same position would have ever been offered the same path to it.

McAfee is reportedly in talks with ESPN on an extension worth $60 million to $65 million per year, which would make him the highest-paid personality in sports media history on paper. The structure of the deal carries an asterisk, though, as ESPN licenses The Pat McAfee Show under a production agreement rather than a standard talent contract, so McAfee’s own compensation ends up smaller once the cost of running the show and paying his staff gets factored out of that headline number. Whether the price tag makes sense for ESPN at all has already been argued both ways, with McAfee’s linear ratings trailing those of lead-in shows like First Take, even as his digital reach and access to top-tier guests give ESPN something it can’t produce in-house.

“First of all, I’m happy for him. He’s earned it, and I truly mean that,” Smith said during Barrett Media’s Audio Summit this week. “I do believe, even though it makes people uncomfortable, as a Black man, that I don’t believe that’s an opportunity that would ever come to us first. In our society, we can say that’s fortunate or unfortunate. But the reality is that there usually has to be a precedent set before somebody is in a position to capitalize off of that.”

Smith has his own experience landing a nine-figure ESPN contract, having signed a five-year deal worth more than $100 million last spring after crediting McAfee’s arrival and the salary ceiling his deal pushed upward with clearing the path for his own number. The two were reportedly involved in an off-air blowup in 2024 over creative differences on a Smith-produced project. Smith addressed it days later on his own show, calling McAfee a trailblazer he felt gratitude toward, not someone he had friction with. When reports of lingering tension resurfaced that November, Smith dismissed them as “a flat-out lie,” even though McAfee hasn’t made a weekly First Take appearance since, a rotation he’d kept up throughout his first year at the network.

The two have built very different businesses under the same ESPN roof, as Smith’s contract locked him into hosting First Take on ESPN’s linear schedule while freeing him up for outside ventures, including a SiriusXM show and his own eponymous podcast. McAfee built the reverse model, licensing a show ESPN doesn’t own outright and leaning on digital reach the network’s own programming can’t match.

“I’m certainly positioned to capitalize off of that. Make no mistake. I will be. But I definitely think along those lines, business is business,” Smith said. “He’s earned it with a multitude of things that he has done. I’ve been incredibly successful in linear. He’s incredibly successful in streaming. The future is there, and I think that’s incredibly important.”

McAfee’s deal hasn’t closed. His representatives, TKO/Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, according to The Athletic, opened negotiations above $100 million per year before talks settled into the current range.