Alex Honnold has accomplished something that sounds like science fiction: he’s made the free solo climb of Taipei 101, a 1,667-foot skyscraper. This makes him the first man to ever climb the tallest urban structure without ropes. The climb itself was broadcast live on Netflix as “Skyscraper Live.” It’s one of the most incredible moments ever captured in the sport. But what’s perhaps more surprising than the accomplishment itself is the payday. Honnold made less than 1 million dollars for the event.
According to Variety, Honnold made mid-six figures for the event. This is, of course, a relatively small sum when you look at the paydays of many sports stars. Honnold himself made sure to note that this is the case. In mainstream sports, stars are signing deals worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Compared to this, Honnold’s payday is nothing.
Alex Honnold’s free solo stuns world, but payday pales
“It’s less than my agent aspired to,” Honnold said. “Actually, if you put it in the context of mainstream sports, it’s an embarrassingly small amount. You know, Major League Baseball players get like $170 million contracts. Like, someone you haven’t even heard of and that nobody cares about.”
But the thing that fans need to remember is that this money has never been the point. Honnold has said that if the owners of the building simply granted him permission to climb, he would have done so regardless of whether or not cameras and crowds were present. In fact, Honnold said that Netflix wasn’t paying him to climb the building. They were paying him to be there. The act of climbing itself would have been something that Honnold would have done for free. He would have done it simply because he could.
Still, Skyscraper Live did push Honnold out of his comfort zone in that it wasn’t like his other climbs, in that he was climbing in front of thousands on the ground and millions more watching worldwide. Honnold admitted that the noise and attention from the audience initially unsettled him. Free solo climbing is an extremely personal and internalized act.
It speaks to just how much Honnold’s life has changed since the release of Free Solo, which catapulted him to fame and fortune and gave him the freedom to live his life entirely around his love of climbing.
To Honnold, Skyscraper Live is part and parcel of that bigger picture, in that he wasn’t climbing for the money or to break a record for the sake of the publicity that comes with it. He was climbing something significant, challenging, and inspirational, and sharing that with the world.
