Stephen A. Smith, the most famous analyst on the biggest sports network in the world, believes he is not immune to massive job cuts expected at ESPN in the near future.
In February, ESPN’s parent company Disney announced plans for some massive cost-cutting measures coming to the entertainment giant in the coming months. During a quarterly earnings call, CEO Bob Iger revealed that the company planned to slash over $5 billion in costs during a major restructuring of the company.
However, beyond cutting content costs, the company was planning to eliminate as many as 7,000 jobs from its workforce, which includes over 220,000 employees. ESPN is one of the major brands owned by Disney and some of those job cuts are likely to come from the network.
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Despite being one of the most valuable talents at ESPN, long-time analyst Stephen A. Smith revealed recently that he would not be shocked if he was selected as one of the massive contracts the network chose to cut.
On a new edition of his “K[no]w Mercy” podcast, the 55-year-old spoke in-depth on the reports and the precarious situation many ESPN employees will be in over the weeks and months ahead.
“Have you all been paying attention to the business landscape? Disney itself announced that over 7,000 employees are going to be let go. ESPN is under the Disney umbrella. They’re going to have cuts coming. Hell, for all I know, I might be one of them. Now, I doubt that. But it’s possible. No one knows.”
– Stephen A. Smith (h/t Front Office Sports)
Sources told Front Office Sports that ESPN is “bracing for painful layoffs in the coming weeks.” Stephen A. Smith is reportedly the network’s second highest-paid talent, as his $13 million annual salary is only behind NFL broadcaster Troy Aikman’s $18 million salary. While it is unlikely, slashing his contract would certainly save the network a huge sum of many and many jobs.
This would not be the first round of cuts for the network in recent years after laying off 300 employees in 2015 and 2021 each.