Pro Football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe faces a $50 million lawsuit filed earlier this week in Nevada, accusing him of sexual assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The plaintiff, only identified as “Jane Doe,” alleges she met Sharpe in 2023 at a Los Angeles gym when she was 19. According to the lawsuit, the two then entered a “rocky consensual relationship” that lasted nearly two years.
The court filing, obtained by ProFootballTalk, claims the 56-year-old Sharpe sexually assaulted her twice, in October 2024 and January 2025, ignoring her pleas to stop, and engaged in controlling and threatening behavior.
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The threatening behavior allegedly included threats to kill her.
The woman further claims that Sharpe recorded their sexual encounters without consent and shared the footage with others.
Shannon Sharpe Denies the Claims
Shannon Sharpe’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, denies all allegations, calling the lawsuit a “blatant and cynical attempt to shake down Mr. Sharpe for millions” and an act of blackmail.
Sharpe’s legal team is arguing that his relationship with the much younger woman was consensual and that any video of them engaging in sexual activity had been distorted to create an alternative narrative.
“It is filled with lies, distortions, and misrepresentations and it will not succeed. In her effort to extract a large financial settlement, [plaintiff] presented Mr. Sharpe with a secretly recorded video of a consensual sexual encounter,” Davis said.
“We believe the video has been heavily edited and taken entirely out of context, crafted to falsely portray a consensual act as non-consensual.”
The woman’s legal team countered that while they may have had a consensual relationship at times, the incidents in question were not consensual.
“A woman can say ‘yes’ to consensual sexual relations with a man ninety-nine times, but when she says ‘no’ even once, that ‘no’ means no,” the complaint reads. “Defendant Shannon Sharpe, a man who is accustomed to getting what he wants, completely fails to understand this basic concept.”
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Sharpe’s IG Live Sex Scandal
Shannon Sharpe accidentally posted audio to his Instagram Live account this past September that caught the three-time Super Bowl champion having an intimate encounter.
The ESPN personality initially denied that it was him at first—you know, the ol’ ‘I was hacked’ bit. But then he faced the music.
“I threw my phone on the bed, engaged in an activity,” he explained of the accidental posting. “I did not know IG live. I’ve never turned IG live on so I don’t know how it works and all of sudden my other phone started going off.”
“After a thought, I was like, I just got — I just tell them the truth,” Sharpe said. “I said, ‘I just got to tell them the truth. My phone wasn’t hacked, uh, it wasn’t an —wasn’t a prank. It was me being a healthy, active male.”
According to Larry Brown Sports, at one point in the Instagram Live, a male voice seemed to say, “That’s my Michelle. “
Following the video (or rather, audio) scandal, ESPN decided not to punish Shannon Sharpe over the incident.
