Joe Buck has agreed to a six-year, roughly $108 million contract extension with ESPN that will keep him as the voice of “Monday Night Football” into the next decade and lock him in for two Super Bowls, The Athletic reported Wednesday.
The deal raises Buck’s annual pay from $15 million to about $18 million and replaces a five-year, $75 million contract that expires after this NFL season. Under the new terms, Buck will call ESPN’s first Super Bowl this February and the network’s next one in 2031. He will be 63 when the extension ends and will have called eight Super Bowls on television.
Buck, 57, is in his fifth season at ESPN after leaving Fox in March 2022.
He remains one of the NFL’s most recognizable broadcast voices and is now one of the network’s highest-paid on-air personalities. He still trails Stephen A. Smith, who makes about $21 million a year from ESPN, and sits well behind the kind of figure Pat McAfee is seeking. McAfee is in talks on an extension that could pay him roughly $60 million to $65 million annually, though that package is partly a production deal.
Whether Aikman is still beside Buck for the 2031 Super Bowl remains an open question.
The new contract could also reopen a path back to baseball. Buck was Fox’s lead World Series announcer for years and called a record 24 Fall Classics before concentrating on football at ESPN, aside from occasional one-off assignments. Fox holds World Series rights through 2028. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro has shown interest in bidding for the 2029 World Series and has told Buck he would like him on the call if ESPN lands the rights. There is no contractual guarantee that happens.
Five years ago, Buck and Aikman were central pieces of the most frantic NFL broadcasting market in recent memory, leaving Fox together for combined ESPN deals worth $165 million. Fox responded by promoting Kevin Burkhardt and signing Tom Brady. Buck’s new agreement now gives ESPN certainty on its lead play-by-play voice through the next Super Bowl window, even as the rest of the booth and the wider talent market remain unsettled.