{"id":194261,"date":"2021-03-04T22:11:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T19:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/skip-bayless-gets-32m-from-fox-sports-after-espn-pursuit\/"},"modified":"2021-03-04T22:11:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T19:11:40","slug":"skip-bayless-gets-32m-from-fox-sports-after-espn-pursuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/skip-bayless-gets-32m-from-fox-sports-after-espn-pursuit\/","title":{"rendered":"#Skip Bayless gets $32M from Fox Sports after ESPN pursuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Skip Bayless gets $32M from Fox Sports after ESPN pursuit<\/strong>”
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ESPN made a full-court press to reunite Skip Bayless with Stephen A. Smith, The Post has learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The duo would have done a daily ESPN+ show together, while being splashed over ESPN, including weekly spots on \u201cMonday Night Football\u2019s\u201d halftime show.<\/p>\n

After lengthy negotiations, it culminated in Fox Sports retaining Bayless with a four-year, $32 million contract, according to sources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of the agreement, Bayless, a professional provocateur, continues to do his daily morning sports debate show on FS1\u2019s \u201cUndisputed\u201d with Shannon Sharpe. Bayless and FS1 are in the early planning stage of a potential second daily show for the afternoons. At this point, Bayless is expected to be a solo act for the program.<\/p>\n

Smith, who makes close to $8 million per year, was a driving force in ESPN\u2019s recruitment of Bayless. The long negotiations went over several months and did not conclude until late fall.<\/p>\n

In August, ESPN offered the 69-year-old Bayless a four-year deal in the $30 million range. There is disagreement among sources of ESPN\u2019s best offer, as some officials had it as high as $31 million and others had it as low as $26.5 million. The desire, though, was unquestioned.<\/p>\n

The emphasis of the move was not to put the \u201cFirst Take\u201d band back together, but rather to bolster the network\u2019s burgeoning new subscript<\/a>ion platform, ESPN+.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The duo would have appeared on ESPN on a variety of programs in an effort to drive viewers to watch and subscribe to ESPN+.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smith and Bayless have had a kinship, dating back two decades. The two have remained close since Bayless left ESPN five years ago, with Smith making it a point to meet up with Bayless and his wife, Ernestine, whenever he was in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cStephen A Smith is even more of a brother to me than my real brother,\u201d Bayless told The Post. \u201cI love the man, as you know, on and off the air. Since I left \u2018First Take\u2019 for \u2018Undisputed\u2019 back in June of 2016, Stephen A. and I have remained in close touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bayless expressed an appreciation for both the leadership at Fox Sports and ESPN. He also lauded his relationship with Sharpe, saying the two get along great, even though it is not the family-like bond that he and Smith have forged. Bayless declined to go too deep into the finer points of the deal.<\/p>\n

Fox Sports and ESPN declined comment.<\/p>\n

When Smith left ESPN for Fox Sports five years ago, there was a boilerplate matching clause included in his four year, $24 million deal. In these negotiations, Fox Sports used that, while adding a $1 million sweetener, to top the ESPN offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story did not end there.<\/p>\n

Even when Fox Sports had an agreement with Bayless to stay, ESPN was still determined to add a Smith and Bayless show to ESPN+. This is the area that Disney, ESPN\u2019s parent company, is focused on and looks at as its future.<\/p>\n

ESPN executives broached the idea of having Bayless stay on FS1 in the mornings, debating on \u201cUndisputed\u201d with Sharpe, while Smith continued on ESPN\u2019s \u201cFirst Take\u201d in the mornings with Max Kellerman.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, in a rare cross-pollination between ESPN and Fox Sports broadcasters, Smith and Bayless would still team up for their ESPN+ program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, there were too many hurdles to make such a cross corporation setup feasible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Smith has started a solo ESPN+ program called \u201cStephen A\u2019s World,\u201d which is said to be doing well.<\/p>\n

ESPN\u2019s aggressive push for Bayless happened amid planning for layoffs, which complicated matters. In November, ESPN eliminated 500 positions, letting go of 300 people in the process.<\/p>\n

There was optimism at some points that the deal would happen, as the setup for Smith was being planned. Smith, 53, would have had a bi-coastal arrangement, where he would be in New York for \u201cFirst Take\u201d some weeks and in Los Angeles on others to be in person with Bayless.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Smith and Bayless did not reunite. But their friendship remains strong and Bayless did say he has no plans for this to be his final contract.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Skip Bayless gets $32M from Fox Sports after ESPN pursuit” ESPN made a full-court press to reunite Skip Bayless with Stephen A. Smith, The Post has learned.\u00a0 The duo would have done a daily ESPN+ show together, while being splashed over ESPN, including weekly spots on \u201cMonday Night Football\u2019s\u201d halftime show. After lengthy negotiations, it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/Skip-Bayless-32-million-Fox-Sports-ESPN.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[96147,2837,80999,96220,70433,67643],"class_list":["post-194261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-4-21","tag-espn","tag-fox-sports","tag-skip-bayless","tag-sports-media","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}