Kevin Harlan is the son of former Green Bay Packers executive Bob Harlan and a sports announcer for American television and radio. He covers NBA games for TNT and CBS, as well as NFL and college basketball games for the latter.
He will do NFL play-by-play for the 38th consecutive season in 2022, in addition to broadcasting the NBA for 37 years. He has twice been named National Sportscaster of the Year.
He has provided play-by-play commentary for one of the four major sports for the third-most network sports broadcasts ever.
Harlan has been named The Athletic’s 2019 Sports Broadcaster of the Year for his consistent excellence across all of his weekly assignments at three different media outlets.
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Quick facts:Â
Name | Kevin Harlan |
Age | 62 years (born on July 21, 1960) |
Parents | Bob And Madeline Harlan |
Wife | Ann Harlan (m. 1987) |
Children | Olivia And Robert Harlan |
Net Worth | $1 Million |
Salary | $400,000 |
Kevin Harlan’s $1,000,000 net worth as a sports announcer
An American sports broadcaster for television and radio has a $1 million net worth from his decades-long career in the sports industry, according to Celebrity net worth.
He began his broadcasting career in 1982 as the TV and radio voice of the NBA’s Kansas City Kings.
Until 2008, Harlan was the voice of Westwood One Radio’s Final Four coverage. In 2010, he began working as Westwood One’s lead commentator for Monday Night Football after calling Super Bowl XLV.
He has covered Super Bowls XLV-LVI for Westwood One in a 12-game streak, the longest in television and radio network history.
In addition, Harlan broadcast the Super Bowl XXXV HD stream from CBS in 2001. Since 2003, he has also called preseason games for his hometown Packers on the team’s statewide television network.
In 2017 and 2019, he was named National Sportscaster of the Year by his colleagues. Harlan has covered five Final Fours and 13 Super Bowls.
He is one of only three sportscasters who, along with Dick Stockton and Marv Albert, have appeared on over 3,000 national network broadcasts during their careers.
Harlan earns $400,000 per year as a sportscaster
Harlan earns $400,000 per year as a sportscaster, according to Clutchpoint.
Kevin Harlan is well-known as the permanent voice of Monday Night Football and for his Super Bowl analysis. Harlan is currently the play-by-play announcer for the NFL and NCAA Men’s Basketball tournaments for CBS Sports.
Furthermore, he could have made a good living as a Tuner Sports broadcaster, where Charles Barkley, another NBA pundit, reportedly makes around $1.5 million per year.
Even if Kevin did not earn as much as Barkley, his salary and earnings could be close to a million dollars.
Barkley’s career, on the other hand, is a series of incredible accomplishments and a natural testament to his work ethic on and off the court. He went from being an award-winning professional basketball player to becoming a well-known NBA analyst.
Harlan Begun His Early Broadcasting Career at His High School Radio Station
As a teenager, Harlan began calling play-by-play for the school’s boys’ basketball, football, and ice hockey teams on WGBP-FM, Our Lady of Premontre High School’s high school radio network. He was recently inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.
Harlan worked as a ball boy for the Green Bay Packers when his father, Bob Harlan, was a front-office executive.
Kevin had planned to study communications or mass media at the University of Notre Dame or the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but broadcaster Gary Bender persuaded his father, Bob, to attend the University of Kansas and its School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
When Harlan met Tom Hedrick, the Jayhawks’ primary basketball play-by-play announcer, he recognised his passion for sports broadcasting and saw potential in the young man.
In his first year, Hedrick assigned Harlan to the sidelines before elevating him to the role of his assistant and stand-in announcer on days when he had other obligations. Similarly, Harlan earned a degree in broadcast journalism in 1982.
The Radio-Sports Announcer Became The Kansas City Kings’ Voice
Harlan joined the Kansas City Kings’ (now the Sacramento Kings’) television and radio broadcast team in 1982, shortly after graduating from college, at the age of 22.
After a year of calling basketball games for his alma mater, the University of Kansas, he spent several years as an undergraduate hosting and producing pre- and post-game programming. From 1985 to 1993, he called games for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League.
Len Dawson in Arrowhead, with Bill Grigsby and Kevin Harlan, in Berlin.
In addition, Harlan split his time between calling basketball and football games at the University of Missouri (1986-89) and working as an NBA play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Timberwolves for nine seasons (1989–98).
Harlan called NFL football for NBC in 1991, college football for ESPN from 1992 to 1993, and NFL football for Fox from 1994 to 1997.
In 2020, he plans to open his basement broadcast studio
Kevin Harlan spent a lot of time in his furnished basement in 2020, during the COVID epidemic.
Rather than being courtside at venues such as the American Airlines Arena in Miami or the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Harlan announced NBA games from the basement of his century-old home in Mission Hills, Kansas. The studio measures 15×8 feet.
According to the Athletic, there was an eight-foot “NBA on TNT” banner behind Harlan when he was calling games.
Then there were two 32-inch monitors on a rectangular folding table in front of Harlan, who was sitting in a Pottery Barn chair that his wife Ann had bought for a basement table previously.
During games, a laptop computer was placed in front of Harlan, from which he could access the official real-time scoring of his match directly from the arena.
The Sportscaster’s Century-Old Mission Hills Home
During the COVID epidemic, Harlan already had a home office set up for his work on the NBA 2K video game series, according to The Athletic.
He arranges his recording gear, which includes laptop computers and gaming consoles, in the back of a large closet outside the main bedroom. As he records, he can see Doris Burke and Clark Kellogg, two other game announcers.
However, the Harlans realised that Turner’s ambitions would necessitate much more than a closet.
In addition, two members of CNN’s multimedia field engineering team travelled in from Atlanta to set up Harlan’s home studio over four exhausting days. Harlan claimed to have two field engineers in his basement when he called his first preseason game.
The 62-year-old was Marv Albert’s replacement at Turner Sports
According to Sports Business Journal, Kevin Harlan replaced Marv Albert as the play-by-play announcer for the NBA Western Conference Finals on Turner Sports.
In 1996, he joined Turner Sports to broadcast NBA playoff games. He began calling games for the entire season in 1997, and he still does so today.
With five Final Four broadcasts and 13 Super Bowl radio calls under his belt, Harlan has “verbally constructed scenes for viewers and listeners on sports’ biggest stages.”
Moreover, despite having a “great collaboration and rapport” with Reggie Miller, Harlan was “thrilled by the acquisition” of Stan Van Gundy.
The Harlan Family’s Earnings And Career Are Centered On The Sports Industry
Kevin comes from a sporting family, as his father was the Sports Information Director at Marquette University for several years. His daughter Olivia, on the other hand, works as a sideline reporter and her husband, Sam Dekker, plays basketball.
Her husband, Samuel Thomas Dekker, is a professional basketball player for the London Lions of the British Basketball League (BBL) and the EuroCup.
She has also worked as a sideline reporter for Packers TV Network preseason games and has covered SEC and ACC football for FOX Sports South and Raycom. Olivia has also co-hosted a daily web series focusing on the Green Bay Packers’ training camp.
The Harlans were the first father-daughter team to call an NFL game, with Olivia as a sideline reporter and Kevin as the announcer.
His father is the owner of the Green Bay Packers
Robert E. Harlan was previously the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Green Bay Packers, an American professional football team.
Harlan joined the Green Bay Packers as an assistant general manager in 1971.
Over the next 18 years, he was promoted three times: first to corporate general manager in 1975, then to assistant to the president in 1981, and finally to executive vice president of administration in 1988.
During his presidency, he became one of the “most influential—and successful—presidents in franchise history,” with “some of the largest changes in franchise history.”
The Madeline and Robert Harlan Humanitarian Fund was established by the Harlans
According to the Journal Sentinel, Bob Harlan and his wife Madeline have lived in Green Bay since the early 1960s and are active members of the community.
The Harlans established the Madeline and Robert Harlan Humanitarian Fund to assist cancer patients who do not have insurance. The discovery of Harlan’s melanoma and subsequent treatment in 2003 prompted the establishment of this fund.
They also actively participated in fundraising drives for the emergency rooms and cancer treatment centres at St. Mary’s and St. Vincent’s hospitals, as well as serving on several boards and committees for both institutions. Madeline Harlan was honored with a plaza at St. Mary’s.
Moreover, she attended nursing school, and throughout her clinical rotations at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, she worked alongside sisters who shared her commitment to patient care.