Shannon Sharpe shared an intimate Instagram Live video with his 3.2 million followers on Wednesday afternoon, and the tasteless nature of it got it in front of far more than 6.4 million eyes. He initially claimed he had been hacked and therefore was not responsible for broadcasting offensive content, which was hard to believe. It also wasn’t true.
“Beware, my Instagram account @shannonsharpe84 was hacked this morning. My team and I are working hard to figure this out,” Sharpe said in a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the incident.
The Pro Football Hall of Famer and First attempt Analyst hours later explained what actually happened on an emergency episode of Nightcap.
“I threw my phone on the bed while I was busy doing an activity,” Sharpe said. “I didn’t know about IG Live. I’ve never turned on IG Live before, so I don’t know how it works, and suddenly my other phone started ringing.”
Sharpe deleted his initial comment on the situation and reached out to his employer to clear the air.
“My heart sank. I called my agent, I called the agency, I called ESPN and I (thought) I just have to tell them the truth. My phone wasn’t hacked, it wasn’t a prank, I was a healthy, active man.”
Sharpe left Undisputed last summer and has prevailed at First attemptwhere he is probably Stephen A. Smith’s most capable opponent. His podcast career is also on the rise. All of these factors together make him one of the biggest stars in sports media right now.
“Of course I’m embarrassed,” Sharpe said. “When someone is so extremely, extremely private and one of their most intimate details – the audio recording – is out there for the whole world to hear, I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons.”
It will be interesting to see if there are any further consequences, especially from ESPN, but the smartest bets are on no. While many people are comparing this scandal to what happened to Paul Pierce a few years ago, one of the nails in Pierce’s coffin was that he intentionally put his video out there, while Sharpe’s video seems very believably accidental.
