Several ESPN employees have lost their jobs. The layoffs are the network’s first major workforce reduction in three years. It came only months after the media company officially absorbed NFL Network as part of its broader agreement with the NFL. But as it began another round of job cuts, fresh attention turned to estimates suggesting ESPN has roughly $150 million annually tied to five of its biggest personalities. 

“So, #ESPN has $150 million PER YEAR tied into five on-air talents… * Pat McAfee: $60 million/year * Stephen A. Smith: $40 million/year * Troy Aikman: $18 million/year * Kirk Herbstreit: $16 million/year * Joe Buck: $15 million/year And just fired a dozen on-air hosts/analysts,” shared CJFWrites, an LSU alum covering sports for TigerBait.com, having previously written for the likes of CBS Sports and Newsweek. 

Pat McAfee is the biggest figure in that conversation. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported ESPN and McAfee’s representatives, Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, are negotiating an extension worth $60 million to $65 million annually, down from an initial $100 million ask, which would make him the highest-paid personality in the network’s history. However, nothing has been finalized yet.

It’s worth noting, though, that McAfee’s arrangement isn’t a standard talent contract, since ESPN licenses his show under a production agreement, meaning McAfee’s own take-home pay is smaller once the cost of running the show and paying his staff comes out of that number.

Then there’s Stephen A. Smith. His ESPN deal is worth around $20 million a year, but that’s only part of the picture. Add in his podcast, radio and other media work, and various estimates place his total annual earnings at $40 million. Then there’s the Monday Night Football crew. Troy Aikman jumped from Fox to ESPN in 2022 on a deal reportedly worth about $18 million a season. Sitting next to him, Joe Buck is believed to be making around $15 million annually under his five-year contract.

As for Kirk Herbstreit, between ESPN and Amazon Prime Video, he’s reportedly believed to pull in somewhere between $16 million and $18 million a year, with about $6 million coming from ESPN alone. Those figures suddenly became part of the conversation once word of the layoffs got out.

Some familiar faces didn’t survive the cuts. Ryan Clark was out. So were Cam Newton, Karl Ravech, Tom Pelissero, David Lloyd, Stephania Bell, Charles Davis, Bart Scott, Andreas Hale and ESPN.com writer Dan Hajducky. For viewers who watch ESPN every day, it was a surprisingly long list.

Ryan Clark’s departure landed the hardest. Reports say he found out while he was at work on NFL Live, after ESPN reportedly worried the news would leak before they could tell him themselves. Clark had been with the network for 11 years and had even posted about signing a new contract extension in 2024. Just over a year later, he was let go. 

To be clear, nobody, including ESPN, has said the star contracts caused these layoffs. In a memo obtained by Variety, chairman Jimmy Pitaro tied the cuts directly to integrating NFL Media staff, writing that the company had “carefully evaluated our collective teams, resources and organizational structure” following the merger, resulting in “difficult decisions about job impacts.”