Report: Firing Anthony Cumia Could Cost SiriusXM $3 Million

SiriusXM punished Anthony Cumia for his racially tinged Tweets last week, canning the radio personality from his long-running Opie and Anthony show. Now, Cumia’s fans are fighting back. And it could cost the satellite radio company dearly.

The Daily Beast reports that fan outrage over the sacking already dented SiriusXM’s bottom line, and more damage could follow.

Hell is what Cumia’s former employer is getting. While no hard figures are available, it appears that the “Boycott Sirius” movement is gaining traction and potentially doing damage to the publicly traded company’s bottom line. As of this morning, more than 16,000 fans had signed the online petition to give Cumia his job back. Assuming they are current or former customers who either canceled or plan to cancel their SiriusXM subscriptions, that alone could mean a revenue loss of nearly $3 million a year.

An additional planned boycott of the satellite and online radio company’s advertising sponsors–which include such brands as McDonalds, Geico, General Motors, ExxonMobil and American Express–is hardly good news for SiriusXM’s stockholders, who have watched the share price on NASDAQ drop nearly 2 percent since Cumia’s firing was announced on Friday.

Cumia lost his job after firing off a series of Tweets following an altercation with a black woman in New York City. The radio star slammed the woman with a string of profanity, a tirade which included several black passers by who, according to Cumia, sided with the woman after the confrontation.