While working on the sidelines, Melissa Stark has often talked about how surreal it feels, saying she has to “pinch” herself at the opportunity to cover the Super Bowl game millions of fans wait all year to watch. For fans at home, she remains the calm, authoritative voice from field level, delivering injury updates, player interviews, and that human touch you can’t get from the booth.

What is Melissa Stark’s net worth?

Melissa Stark’s net worth in 2026 is widely estimated in the $3–3.5 million range, reflecting her work in top-tier sports broadcasting. The total number isn’t just her game checks; it also factors in long-term network salaries, appearance fees around events like the NFL Draft and NFL Honors, and the kind of solid, conservative investing you’d expect from a veteran TV pro.

What are Melissa Stark’s contract details?

Melissa Stark’s exact NBC contract numbers aren’t public, but everything about her situation screams veteran, multi-year, top-of-market sideline deal. She rejoined NBC in 2022 as the full-time Sunday Night Football sideline reporter, replacing Michele Tafoya, which almost certainly came with a multi-year pact covering regular-season SNF, playoff games, and select Super Bowls.

What is Melissa Stark’s salary?

While NBC doesn’t publicly confirm Stark’s salary, industry reporting and bio sites give us a solid ballpark. Multiple outlets list her annual earnings at roughly $ 100,000–$ 105,700, tied to her long-running role with NBC’s Sunday Night Football. 

As she put it herself recently, the sideline job is to “be the eyes and the ears down the field and get you the access,” and NBC is clearly compensating her like someone who does that at an elite level.

What are Melissa Stark’s career earnings? 

Over the course of her career, Melissa Stark’s cumulative earnings comfortably sit in the multi-million-dollar range, matching that estimated net worth of about $3–3.5 million once taxes, expenses, and investments are accounted for. She’s been drawing television checks since the mid-1990s, climbing from local news and ESPN work to ABC’s Monday Night Football sideline gig in the early 2000s, then on to NBC News, NFL Network, and ultimately back to NBC as the face on the Sunday Night Football sideline. 

A look at Melissa Stark’s college and professional career

Melissa Stark’s path started at the University of Virginia, where she studied foreign affairs and Spanish. 

After school, she interned at CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and worked at WMAR-TV in Baltimore, building that on-air polish before landing at ESPN in the mid-’90s for shows like SportsCenter and NFL-focused programming. Her big national breakout came as ABC’s Monday Night Football sideline reporter from 2000 to 2003, including working Super Bowl XXXVII, which cemented her as one of the defining sideline voices of that era.

She later shifted to NBC News as a national correspondent on Today, then joined NFL Network, where pieces like NFL 360 boosted her reputation as a storyteller. When she returned to NBC in 2022 to take over Sunday Night Football’s sideline spot, she essentially completed the circle. 

As teams reload in free agency and the draft, expect Stark to be front and center at events like the NFL Draft red carpet and NFL Honors, keeping viewers plugged into the league’s biggest personalities before the next banner matchup kicks off under the lights.