Debunking the Myth: Carrie Underwood's Sunday Night Football Earnings
As the NFL season kicks off, a familiar question resurfaces: How much does Carrie Underwood earn for her role in Sunday Night Football? The country music star, 42, is known for her electrifying rendition of “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” which she performs before each broadcast on NBC, including the recent season opener featuring the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens.
While fans enjoy Underwood’s powerful vocals, a rumor about her alleged earnings has gained traction on social media. A post from the popular account MLFootball, which has over 360,000 followers on X, claimed, “🚨BREAKING: Carrie Underwood is paid ONE MILLION DOLLARS EACH WEEK to do the Sunday Night Football theme song. She films all of it in one day & got paid 18 million dollars for that, per reports.” This post, originally shared in October 2024, has garnered over 35,000 likes and resurfaced during the recent game.
However, Underwood previously addressed this speculation during a May 2023 interview with Howard Stern. When Stern inquired about the rumored $18 million annual salary, Underwood replied, “For me?! No! It’s pretty pro-bono.” She added with a hint of humor, “I wish! That’d be great.”
The exact figure of Underwood’s salary for her Sunday Night Football performances remains undisclosed. Interestingly, when the show first launched in 2006, she was offered the opportunity to perform the theme song but turned it down. “At that time in my life there was so much going on,” she explained to Yahoo Entertainment in September 2024. The offer came shortly after her victory on American Idol in May 2005 and the release of her debut album, Some Hearts, later that year.
Initially, Pink took on the Sunday Night Football theme for one season before Faith Hill stepped in and held the role for six years. After Hill announced her departure, Underwood was approached again for the position, and this time, she accepted. “I feel like they do such a great job year after year of reinventing and reinvigorating the open,” Underwood noted in her 2024 interview. “People know it’s very comforting to see the open and kind of have a general idea of what it’s gonna feel like. But the way that they go in every year and do what they do to keep it fresh is really cool.”
As fans continue to enjoy Underwood's performances each week, the myth surrounding her paycheck serves as a reminder of how quickly misinformation can spread in the age of social media.
