Media CEOs ranked: How much bang for all the bucks?

BY Hal Crawford

March 14, 2025 11:02

Media CEOs ranked: How much bang for all the bucks?

A comparison of CEO maximum pay shows that newly appointed Nine boss Matt Stanton is on a good wicket, out-earning all his predecessors and publicly owned competitors.

Mumbrella has put together a leaderboard of the maximum possible annual pay coming to the bosses of Nine, Seven, Ooh Media, ARN, and Southern Cross Austereo (SCA).

We have also ranked CEOs in terms of market cap value for every dollar they stand to earn.

The results are intriguing.

Total remuneration includes base pay (which includes super), short term bonuses (known as short-term incentives, STI) and long term bonuses (LTI).

Base pay is guaranteed, but STIs and LTIs are contingent on performance. Typically STIs rest on annual tactical targets and have a large cash component, while LTIs concern company financial health, are delayed in terms of payment date, and involve equity (company shares).

As seen in the graph above, Nine’s bosses get paid the most. We have included the current CEO Stanton and his predecessors Mike Sneesby and Hugh Marks. Marks has now become the Managing Director of the ABC (we don’t yet know what he’s paid there).

One observation that leaps out of the data is that Nine’s CEOs have been paid more as their company’s value slides.

This doesn’t mean, however, they are less cost-effective than their competitor CEOs. Our “CEO value index” below shows that, in terms of market cap value for every dollar spent (or theoretically spent) on the boss, Nine still outperforms its rivals.

This is because the pay of Nine CEOs is proportionate to NEC’s size: as the Unmade Index regularly reports, NEC is several times larger than its local competitors, with a current market cap of $2.5b. Seven West Media, by comparison, is valued by the market at just $223m.

Hugh Marks stands out as the star of the value index. When he resigned in 2021, Nine’s market cap was almost $5b. We also calculated Mike Sneesby’s score based on his leaving date, while the other contenders are rated on value as of today. Seven’s Jeff Howard comes out with the lowest pay-to-market cap ratio.

Note that our methodology here has been to look at maximum possible pay, including stretch targets. In the current media climate, it seems unlikely the bosses in the graphs above will be receiving all of their long-term bonuses.