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America’s most loved business reality show Shark Tank premiered on ABC on August 9th, 2009. Shark Tank has been able to win the Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding structured reality program from 2014 to 2015, among other nominations.
Mark Burnett created and produced The Shark Tank. The show was derived from Japan's Tiger of Money which first aired in 2004 and UK’s Dragon’s Den which first aired in 2005.
As of 2023, Shark Tank is in its 14th season and has just a little over 300 episodes. Basically, the drift of Shark Tank is where entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of investors by making an aligned presentation of their products and services to the panel.
The panel then, therefore, asks further questions and decided whether to invest in the entrepreneur's business idea or not. For this reason, investors usually go with the best of the best business to always have a guarantee to make a profit in their investments.
How Much Do The Sharks Earn Per Episode?
The panel of investors featured on the show are referred to as Sharks. Just to be clear. These Sharks include the likes of Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, and Kevin O’Leary.
In times when people prefer to start and manage their businesses, shows like Shark Tank act as a motivation. Not only is Shark Tank's popularity limited to the American audience, but the show has crossed borders inspiring other countries to come about with their rendition of the show.
Without a doubt, Shark Tank's judges are paid a hefty amount of money to be featured on the show. Even though the amount of their salary per episode has not been verified, according to Variety, it is believed that each of the Sharks makes an estimated amount of $50,000 per episode as per claims put out in 2016.
Additionally, if a season has 24 episodes, each of the panels would take to the bank $1.2 million a year. Chances are the sharks could be making more money from the show though.
These Are The Three Richest Sharks To Be Featured On Shark Tank
It is without a shadow of a doubt that to be a Shark, one must have an enormous amount of money in the bank to be considered. There's a great gap between the richest to the poorest Sharks. With that said the richest Shark Tank investor is Mark Cuban with a whopping net worth of $4.5 billion.
Mark joined Shark Tank as a guest Shark in the 2nd season and has been featured ever since.
The second richest on the list is Daniel Lubetzky who has a net worth of $2.2 billion. Daniel was a guest Shark on the show’s 11th season.
Last but not least of the top 3 richest Sharks to be ever featured on Shark Tank is Kevin Harrington. Kevin's net worth is 400 million He was only on the show for 2 seasons but has made a huge impact regardless.
Do The Sharks Lose Money On Their Deals?
So apart from the Shark's personal successful businesses, we know that over the years, the Sharks have accumulated a massive amount of wealth through the reality show, Shark Tank. And also through some of the pitches presented by the entrepreneur that they found appealing rather than crazy.
According to Business Insider, not all handshakes that are done on Shark Tank lead to fruition.
In fact, Daymond John revealed that on the 7th season of Shark Tank, almost 80% of the deals made on camera, closed.
Furthermore, Forbes spoke to some of the business owners that made deals in recent seasons of Shark Tank, seasons 8 through 13, precisely 112 of them. They discovered that 51% of those entrepreneurs who made deals on the show, didn’t close the deal.
A few business owners admitted that they only went on TV to gain publicity for their businesses. And with that, came tremendous growth in their businesses and ideas. Others said that it was a mutual decision for them and their Sharks to part ways.
In addition, when Forbes asked the Sharks why deals don’t fall through, Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, and Daymond John said that sometimes deals don’t go through mainly because of what happens during the due diligence process after filming.
As expected, not all the deals that the Sharks sign up to turn out to be profitable. According to CNBC Make It, Mark Cuban admitted to saying that he didn’t understand why he signed up for some deals, that's because about 25 percent of the deals he made were flops.
Mark admitted that after 13 seasons, he’s had as many ‘hits as misses’. He went on to explain that the risk of investment is to expect both wins and losses. “Some onscreen deals have worked out great. Others not so much.”
Mark Cuban continued to tell CNBC Make It, that he had no regrets about his deals whatsoever.
To add, according to Failory, from seasons 5 to 9 of Shark Tank, it turns out that only 6% of the participants aren’t in business anymore and 20% are still operational but not making a profit. So according to Failory’s calculation, Shark Tank’s success rate hovers around 94%.
Additionally, according to CNBC Make It, Kevin O’Leary lost about half a million dollars on an investment he termed ‘the worst investment ever.’ Kevin has made investments in roughly 40 companies since the beginning of the show. His investments add up to roughly more than $8.5 million.
Barbara Corcoran on the other hand went on to tell Forbes that the worst investment she ever made on the Shark Tank Deal was ‘investing in a fast-talking cowboy selling exercise equipment who needed to lose 50 pounds.’ We’d like to assume Barbara might have lost a lot of money on this deal.
Now it's obvious that as the show goes on, the Sharks will invest more wisely, likely dodging regrets.
