One day after announcing his four-and-a-half-year retirement tour, Dan Patrick announced that he signed a contract extension with iHeart and Fox Sports Radio.
Four more years! Patrick still plans on retiring at the end of 2027, but his next four years on the radio will be under a freshly signed contract, a contract he failed to disclose when discussing a retirement tour so long that it will top Mike Francesa’s two-year celebration. Thursday morning, Patrick offered the new update near the beginning of his show.
“I got phone calls yesterday. I got text messages,” Patrick said. “My wife said, ‘Are you retiring?’ I go ‘in four and a half years!’ She goes, ‘Well, why would you announce that?’ I said, ‘I was announcing a contract extension.’ I signed a new contract with iHeartRadio, Fox Sports Radio, and Peacock.”
“Did you say that yesterday?” asked producer and long-time Danette Seton O’Connor.
No, he didn’t. During a show conversation about winning the $1 billion Powerball jackpot and splitting it amongst the show, Patrick said, “But we’re all going to continue working.” The jackpot caveat prompted the question, how much longer does Patrick plan on working?
“Four more years,” Patrick said definitively. Upon being pressed further on the topic, Patrick reiterated four more years and referred to his looming retirement as breaking news.
“Here is the breaking news. So, four more years in December, that’s how long I’m gonna do this for,” Patrick said. “Four and a half years, I’m gonna do this…by January of 2028 I will be on The Golden Bachelor. That’s it. That’s all I’m doing. That’s when the microphone gets turned off for the final time.”
We could have reasonably assumed the four-year retirement tour announcement meant Patrick recently signed a new contract. It would have been unlikely that he was in the middle of a five or six-year radio deal. And had Patrick been unsigned, he probably wouldn’t have felt so strongly about four more years.
“But the way you delivered it yesterday was much more like, ‘I’m announcing that this show and your career is going to end, as a radio host at least, in four-and-a-half years.’ You could have turned it in a positive direction,” executive producer Paul Pabst noted. “Like, ‘Guys, four-and-a-half more years! Let’s go!’ And people would have covered it completely differently.”
After recently signing Patrick to a long-term contract extension by radio standards, his employers were probably confused by the rash of retirement headlines that circulated the internet on Wednesday. But now that the announcement has been amended, we can officially congratulate Patrick on simultaneously signing a contract and launching his retirement tour.
It may be long, but it apparently has the potential to be an exciting retirement tour. Patrick acknowledged the retirement headlines generated some enticing offers and unique ways of celebrating his final four years on radio.
“Some people reached out with very generous offers,” Patrick said. “That if we wanted to go certain places at certain times and do certain things.”
We look forward to Patrick taking part in things like the running of the bulls, skydiving, broadcasting from the top of Mt. Everest, and challenging former Danette Andrew Perloff to a peanut butter-eating contest in the next four years.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com