Despite the incident, Sharpe is expected to return to his usual role on ESPN’s sports debate show “First Take” on Monday.
Hours after audio of an apparent s*x act streamed on the Instagram Live of ESPN analyst Shannon Sharpe, the NFL Hall of Famer acknowledged its veracity and apologized for the inadvertent s*x tape.
“Obviously, I’m embarrassed,” Sharpe said. “To have one of your most intimate details — the audio heard for the entire world to hear — I’m embarrassed for a number of reasons. … There are a lot of people that count on Shannon to be professional at all times and I always try to be professional at all times, even when I’m behind closed doors.”
Clips of the stream, which spread beyond Sharpe’s 3.2 million Instagram followers, went viral Wednesday afternoon. In those clips, no faces are seen, but two voices are heard breathing and moaning.
After the video was taken down, Sharpe’s account posted a message that said: “Beware my @shannonsharpe84 Instagram was hacked this morning, my team and I are working vigorously to figure this out.”
On Wednesday night, Sharpe appeared on an “emergency” episode of his Nightcap podcast, which he co-hosts with former NFL star Chad Ochocinco Johnson, and said he unknowingly streamed the video. He said he was disappointed in himself, “not for the act” but for the audio broadcasting publicly. He blamed his lack of technical know-how for the error.
“This was not staged,” Sharpe said. “[I] came in, I threw my phone on the bed, engaged in an activity. I’ve never been on IG Live. I’ve never turned IG Live on. So, I don’t know how it works. And so all of a sudden my other phone is going off.”
