Alex Honnold Says He Got Paid an 'Embarrassingly Small Amount' to Climb 1,700Foot Skyscraper Without a Harness Maria PasquiniJanuary 27, 2026 at 3:04 AM 0 Alex Honnold Corey Rich for Netflix Alex Honnold told The New York Times that he was getting "an embarrassingly small amount," at least in the context of what other athletes get paid these days, for Netflix's Skyscraper Live Honnold successfully summited Taipei 101 over the weekend without a rope or harness He said that he would have climbed the building for free — and that the paycheck was really to cover his participation in the "spectacle...
- - Alex Honnold Says He Got Paid an 'Embarrassingly Small Amount' to Climb 1,700-Foot Skyscraper Without a Harness
Maria PasquiniJanuary 27, 2026 at 3:04 AM
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Alex Honnold
Corey Rich for Netflix
Alex Honnold told The New York Times that he was getting "an embarrassingly small amount," at least in the context of what other athletes get paid these days, for Netflix's Skyscraper Live
Honnold successfully summited Taipei 101 over the weekend without a rope or harness
He said that he would have climbed the building for free — and that the paycheck was really to cover his participation in the "spectacle" of it all
Alex Honnold says that when it came to climbing Taipei 101 this weekend on live TV without ropes or harnesses, he didn't agree to take on the risk for an especially large lump of money.
Speaking with The New York Times ahead of the event, the famed climber said that while it "maybe" represented his biggest payday to date, it was "less than my agent aspired to."
Honnold, a 40-year-old father of two, went on to call it "an embarrassing amount," at least compared to what other prominent athletes are getting paid these days, he said.
"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," he said.
Although he never got into any direct figures — all he said was that it was less than $10 million — the Times reported that his paycheck was in the "mid-six figures," or around $500,000, citing two people with direct knowledge.
Reps for Netflix and Honnold did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
As for if he'd still get the full amount even if he didn't finish the climb, Honnold said he didn't know and "honestly, I don't care."
"If I'm bailing for some reason, it's because I need to bail, and then it doesn't matter what a contract says," he continued.
Honnold, who has mentioned in numerous interviews that free soloing a skyscraper was a lifelong dream of his — and that he had wanted to climb this particular building for about a decade — also mentioned that money was, in a way, irrelevant because "I would do it for free."
"If there was no TV program and the building gave me permission to go do the thing, I would do the thing because I know I can, and it'd be amazing," he said.
"I mean, just sitting by yourself on the very top of the spire is insane," he continued. "And so, you know, if there wasn't the whole spectacle around it, and I just had the opportunity to go do it by myself, I'd be fine with that."
In his mind, he said that what he was really getting paid for was the "spectacle" of the live event.
"I'm climbing the building for free," he said.
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In the end, it took Honnold just over an hour and a half to scale the massive 1,700-foot skyscraper in its entirety, even pausing at the tippy top to take a few selfies.
As for how he celebrated afterward, he previously told Netflix's Tudum that he planned to "take the elevator down, I'll see my wife, we'll be psyched."
"We'll eat at the buffet that night — it's a really nice buffet — it'll be great," he said, "and that will be the day. Then I'll go home, and I'll go back to my climbing practice."
Skyscraper Live aired on Netflix.
on People
Source: "AOL Sports"
Source: Sports
Published: January 26, 2026 at 09:27PM on Source: RED MAG
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