Former professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek has been running it up for years on MTV, and now the numbers are finally out.
The man behind Ridiculousness has been getting paid crazy money, pulling in at least $32 million every year from the network.
According to reports, court papers show MTV was cutting Dyrdek checks for a wild amount of episodes, more than 300 every year, keeping him on screen nonstop. Between his producer money and his on-camera pay, he was stacking more than most people in the whole network combined.
His contract even had him covered with a $200 million life insurance policy, just in case. That’s how serious they were about him.
As we previously reported, MTV is done filming new episodes and ended the show after 14 years. Hence, Ridiculousness is still everywhere.
Old seasons are looping on MTV every day and will stay streaming on Paramount+ for a while. So even with the show canceled, Dyrdek is still making money while most people are just watching reruns of him clowning around with viral clips.
The numbers came out after Superjacket Productions, Dyrdek’s company that helped make Ridiculousness, went bankrupt. Court documents broke down just how deep the bag went. Dyrdek was getting $21,000 per episode as a producer and $61,000 each time he was on camera.
And that number was supposed to go up to more than a hundred grand per episode near the end of his deal.
On top of that, MTV was paying for everything that went into the show, from the cast to the crew. Dyrdek also had a bonus clause that gave him an extra $2.5 million every time MTV ordered a new batch of 168 episodes.
And if the company behind the show ever went above $210 million in value, he was getting another twelve percent of that.
So while some folks were clowning the network for running Ridiculousness 24/7, Dyrdek was quietly building an empire out of it. What started back in 2011 as a simple idea to remix America’s Funniest Home Videos turned into a money-printing machine.
Superjacket and its parent company may be going through it financially, but Dyrdek already got his bag. MTV might have moved on to new ideas, but the man behind Ridiculousness made sure to cash in before the cameras stopped rolling.
Rob Dyrdek showed that sometimes you don’t need a new show every year to stay rich. You just need one that never stops playing.