Bob Costas Wasn’t the Best at Sports, Made Millions Broadcasting

Bob Costas’s name is synonymous with sports, and few people in the sports broadcast industry can match his accomplishments. He’s a 29-time Emmy award winner, a multiple National Sportscaster of the Year Award winner, and has plenty of other awards to back his experience. Throughout his illustrious career, Bob Costas has built a solid net worth.

Having covered 11 Olympic games, Costas was the most well-known sports broadcaster for NBC Sports for decades. That would all change when the sportscaster left the network in 2019. He also left millions of dollars on the table. Regardless, Costas is still a prominent figure in the sports media industry given the new roles he has taken on.

Want to know what Costas is up to these days and what his annual salary looks like? Keep reading for all the details.

If you're considering becoming a sportscaster, Costas's career should certainly give you some hope. After all, Costas has grown his net worth to an impressive $50 million and he collects an annual salary of $7 million (not bad), as per Celebrity Net Worth.

When the sports broadcaster isn't contributing to a CNN program, you can catch him delivering a play-by-play or touching on other sports-related matters on MLB network segments.

While much of Costas's net worth is likely tied to the work he did at NBC Sports, his current roles and HBO shows also added some padding to his fortune. In 2001, HBO and NBC aired On the Record with Bob Costas, a program that ran for four seasons. Then, in 2021, HBO revived Costas' show with Back on the Record with Bob Costas.

Although the "sequel" to Costas's show didn't last quite as long as the first, it did carry on for two seasons.

Costas got into the sports industry nearly 50 years ago, when he was a sportscaster at Syracuse University in 1973 while attending the school. He graduated with a degree in communications in 1974, taking a completely different career path than his father, who was an electrical engineer. Costas credits a lot of his success as a broadcaster to his father.

Costas has publicly expressed how his father had a gambling addiction, and it caused their relationship to be rocky at times. However, he has also said that he built his impressive knowledge of sports by having to memorize the scores and other information of various sporting events for his father’s bets on certain ones. Although this would prepare Costas to be the star sportscaster he is now, his father passed away before his broadcasting career started.

The multiple Emmy award winner started off his career covering minor league hockey, but his passion has always been baseball — so much so that he has been carrying a baseball card in his pocket since he was 18. He would be able to cover what he loved when he was offered a play-by-play announcer role with KMOX Radio, one of the most prominent radio stations in the country.

Costas’s career continued to skyrocket as he joined NBC Sports in 1979 and continued to work with NBC for over 40 years until 2019. The announcer covered a variety of sports including baseball, football, basketball, hockey, boxing, golf, and NASCAR.

In January 2019, Costas stepped down from his roles at NBC Sports, telling ESPN in an interview that he was dropped from covering the Super Bowl that season for his views on the NFL and concussions. Costas has been an advocate for player safety in the NFL, citing the dangers of head injuries that can occur. The announcer had two years left on his contract with NBC.

Costas became a household name when he began to cover or contribute to multiple Super Bowls, World Series, NBA finals, and Olympics. And because of it, he has been able to enjoy receiving multiple million-dollar contracts. Despite how active Costas has been in sports, he wasn't exactly cut out to participate in sporting events.

In a piece published by Medium, a high school classmate wrote, “Bob was the most knowledgeable person about baseball, both the game itself and its history. But he was not physically gifted.”