Stephen A. Smith recently lambasted all his critics who questioned his earnings and owning a private jet. He confirmed that he paid for all of his outings on private jets from his $12,000,000 paycheck that he draws annually from ESPN. Furthermore, Smith also slammed all critics and denied allegations of $50,000,000,000 brand ESPN sponsoring his travel on a private jet, in a recent episode of his YouTube podcast, The Stephen A. Smith Show.
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Over the years, Stephen A. Smith has garnered massive popularity, which explains the $12,000,000 paycheck that ESPN pays him annually. However, many of SAS’s critics and colleagues in the industry have tried pulling him down by making outrageous claims about his earnings. As SAS clarified himself in his podcast, he does not seem to care about the hate and the earnings of other analysts, namely Pat McAfee.
Stephen A. Smith addresses rumors of ESPN paying for his private jet flights
In a recent episode of his podcast, Stephen A. Smith addressed the alleged rumors of $50,000,000,000 brand ESPN paying for his private jet flights. Promptly slamming those rumors, SAS highlighted the hypocrisy that people inculcate while discussing his earnings and salary.
Though many question his $12,000,000 earnings from ESPN, SAS thinks people readily assume that ESPN pays all of his travel and outing expenses. Slamming all such rumors, Smith argued that it’s him who pays for all his travel, including private jet expenses from his earnings.
“I was told by some confidantes within the walls of ESPN that people were actually calling because they wanted to know when did ESPN start flying me on private jets, because ESPN is supposedly doing so. Ladies and gentlemen, you see how people are full of s**t sometimes? So you can brag, you can go and you report as breaking news what my salary is. You’re almost never right. But you can talk about my salary, you can talk about this money that Stephen A is making. But you’re going to say that ESPN pays for my private jets! Damn it, I did. I paid for it, out of my own money. My own bank account. Because I can afford it for the moment. ESPN does not pay for people to fly on private jets, I promise you that. The hours that I purchased, I purchased that. Once again, you’re gonna see people lying, because that creates clicks….We ain’t got a lie to create clicks. All we gotta do is put me in front of the camera and microphone and it does the job.”
Seems like Stephen A. Smith was not done with slamming all of his critics in one go. There were several who compared him for earning less than Pat McAfee, despite being part of ESPN longer.
Last month, McAfee announced his highly successful podcast and YouTube show would be moving to ESPN, effectively earning him $17,000,000 annually. Hearing about this, SAS explained how his situation and deal with ESPN was much more different than McAfee’s. And most importantly, SAS reiterated that he doesn’t give a ‘damn.’
Former ESPN analyst JaMarr John Johnson criticized Stephen A.’s earnings based on questionable viewership
Former ESPN analyst criticized ESPN for grossly overpaying their analysts, despite questionable viewership. He highlighted how Stephen A. Smith was earning more than $10,000,000, despite garnering only about 400k views per episode of First Take. To explain this further, he took the example of Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
Carlson was earning only about double of SAS’s salary, despite garnering almost 3,000,000 views per episode. Through this, Johnson tried emphasizing how Smith and other sports analysts are living in a fantasy land with their money earned.
Though Smith has started creating content for his YouTube channel as well, Johnson believes this might as well be a ‘wake-up call’ for the ESPN analyst.
