Alex Honnold risked his life live on Netflix, but was only paid a relatively pittance to do so.
Honnold had millions of folks feeling a mix of awe and panic when he climbed the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 building on Saturday. Despite getting a global audience to tune into their Netflix apps, Honnold was only paid $500,000 to take on his death-defying feat.
In the days leading up to the ascent, Honnold himself described the amount as “embarrassingly small” relative to what some of the world’s top athletes make.
“Actually, if you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount,” Honnold told the New York Times’ Adam Skolnick before the climb. “You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven’t even heard of and that nobody cares about.
Sports and business reporter Joe Pompliano published a report Tuesday shedding light on Honnold’s motivations for the climb. It boiled down to how Honnold viewed the climb. He reportedly “didn’t think the climb was that hard” and would have accomplished it for free had Netflix not given him a paycheck to do so.
Compared to Honnold’s famous ascent of El Capitan in 2017, the Taipei 101 climb was virtually a walk in the park for Honnold. But that still doesn’t take away the possibility of external factors playing a part in the event going awry. One faulty panel or a sudden change in weather could have impacted Honnold’s climb for the worse.
Imagine what Scott Boras or David Falk could’ve gotten coaxed out of Netflix had Honnold had the same mindset as some of the major sports’ top athletes.
