Stephen A. Smith is undeniably one of the faces of sports media today.
He's consistently on ESPN airwaves as the fixture of "First Take" on weekday mornings, but is also on during some primetime NBA games or weekend spots.
Aside from using the platform of the WorldWide Leader, he's also began to build out his own brand, creating "The Stephen A. Smith Show," for which he's already gained over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube, and created his own media company, Mr. SAS Productions.
Smith's versatility both inside and outside of ESPN has been a subject of conversation in the sports media space. He's not the first to be associated with a major network as ESPN colleagues like Pat McAfee and Shannon Sharpe, as well as FS1's Colin Cowherd, have done similar moves.
These details have made the coverage of the sports media landscape similar to the leagues they speak about, with free agents personalities building up buzz that people want to follow, even people within the space like Dan Le Batard.
One of the biggest media outlets following Smith is Awful Announcing, and it published a story on March 11 quoting Smith, who spoke at a panel at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, talking about how his role at ESPN.
Awful Announcing headlined the story with a lead quote from Smith's monologue: "Stephen A. Smith: ‘I am not a prisoner to the ESPN/Walt Disney Family.'"
The story added a few more quotes from Smith explaining his goal to be the "greatest sports commentator that ever lived."
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However, Smith seemed to take offense to the story that was published, as he spoke on "The Stephen A. Smith Show" from the same festival to address the quotes. He said that he wished that there was more context to the story.
"If you're gonna quote me, A. quote me accurately and, B. contextualize me in a proper way," Smith said. "I spoke for about an hour and ten minutes. I elaborated on this particular question for about 20 minutes, and you pick out the quote, which by the way itself was accurate, but it was taken out of context."
Smith said that Awful Announcing left out the parts where Smith praised the network.
"You said that because that's the news you want to make," Smith said. "They just left out how I have this podcast because ESPN allowed me to negotiate and carve out a segment in my contract to be allowed to do it. They left out how grateful I am to the network. They left out how happy I am to be a part of the network, and you're giving an impression that I'm trying to do something as opposed to highlighting me pointing out my ability to do things that normal folks in this business cannot do."
Smith recognized that the reason that he's being covered this way — or why he believes the story was framed that way — is because of his contract with ESPN, which he confirmed is set to expire in June 2025. The contract he signed in 2019 was worth $12 million annually, according to The New York Post, which is now much less than the reported $17 million annually of McAfee, who signed with ESPN in 2023.
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Coincidentally, or perhaps hilariously, Smith also gave Awful Announcing the same praise before calling the company out.
"Let me call them out by saying first they do good work a lot of times," Smith said prior to any of the criticism of Awful Announcing's story on him.
Awful Announcing's owner and editor Ben Koo responded to Smith's comments with a statement to TheStreet, disagreeing with Smith's critic and saying that Smith's future in the industry will continue to be a topic that his company will cover.
"I don't think we've written about anyone in the history of Awful Announcing as much as Stephen A Smith and this is really the first and only time I can recall him taking issue of any of that coverage," Koo told TheStreet in a statement. "I do agree with Mr. Smith that we do good work, quoted him accurately, but disagree in that I believe we did provide proper context about his work outside of ESPN and his relationship with the network. With his contract up in 2025, and his growing ambitions and success outside of Disney/ESPN, we will continue to cover Mr. Smith's comments as the next phase of his career draws closer."
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