Shannon Sharpe is easily one of the highest-paid NFL podcasters/broadcasters in the business. His ability to read and diagnose team and player drama sets him apart from other sports analysts. However, if he had trusted his instincts in investing the way he does in sports commentary, he might not have needed to work as much after his playing career. Sharpe himself believes that he “wouldn’t be working” today if he had made smarter investment decisions.
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Sharpe said in a recent sit-down interview with Mark Cuban that he was interested in investing in Google when the company went public in 2004, a year after he hung up the cleats. The former tight end recalled that shares opened at $115, and he had enough money to invest $300K. However, a financial advisor close to him advised against it, claiming the shares were overpriced. According to the consultant, $85 would have been a better entry point.
Flash forward to today, and Google is worth over $2 trillion. If Sharpe had trusted his instincts, he’d still be earning money today, as Google has become one of the biggest staple companies in the world. Not only that, but Sharpe thinks he’d be a billionaire from that investment (not true), making the $14 million he earned over his 14-year NFL career look like chump change.
It’s something Cuban let the former tight end jokingly know he messed up on.
“I’d have been a billionaire,” Sharpe told Cuban.
“You f*cked up,” Cuban joked.
“I did, I f*cked up bad!” Sharpe agreed. “I had the money to do it, but I let somebody talk me out of it.”
Setting aside the disappointment, Sharpe would have actually made a little over $7.4 million from his investment if he had bought Google shares for $115 in 2004 and sold them at their high of $2,960 in 2021. But no one sells at the absolute peak unless they’re a mathematical genius. Even still, he would have made enough money to call it a very good investment.
It’s not the first time Sharpe has admitted to regretting not investing money, either. On his latest episode of Nightcap, he told his co-host, Chad Johnson, that if he had invested in Bitcoin when it came out there’d be no podcast of the two.
“I’m looking back now, I could have taken $800,000 and bought me some bitcoin,” Sharpe said. “If I bought 800,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2015, Ocho, I ain’t even gonna lie to you, I wouldn’t be working. There would have been no Unc & Ocho.”
To be fair, lots of people wish they had invested in cryptocurrency back then. However, Bitcoin is a skeptical investment that relies on other people using it to gain value. It’s essentially a “popularity” stock with not much real-world utility. The value of the stock is only tangential to the number of people online buying it, making it a risky investment at the time and still to this day.
However, the lack of investment was another miss in Sharpe’s portfolio. At its lowest value today, he could’ve cashed out at one point with $27 million, but now he’s left wondering what could have been if he had taken advantage of the opportunity.
It seems as though Sharpe doesn’t need any financial advice. The two companies he’s wanted to invest in historically have turned out to be wildly successful. What he needs is someone egging him on to risk the money and make the investment. Like sports, Sharpe seems to have his finger on the pulse when it comes to reading and diagnosing future company success—he just needs to start putting his money where his mouth is.
