Why Olympians Are So Broke | Big Business

some olympians make millions of dollars [Applause] but a recent global study of 500 elite athletes found that nearly 60 percent did not consider themselves financially stable we're not sponsored athletes on cereal boxes and gatorade bottles i started driving for doordash i worked at panera a bank the financial strain is huge that's because unless they win a medal olympians don't get paid for competing at the games you see someone that's on television all the time and assume all olympic athletes are famous all you have to do is get a medal and you'll be rich and nothing can be further from the truth they also have a long list of expenses to train for their sport you also are responsible for your coach and making sure that they are paid and compensated accordingly massage therapist nutrition is something like a 250 000 earnings turns into 125 really quick so how do olympians make money and why isn't it enough unlike countries such as the uk or singapore american olympians don't get paid to attend the olympics if you're not going to be able to afford it and if you're not doing well there's like six other people waiting in line to have the opportunity we are the only major country in the world and one of very few countries period where the government does not get involved in funding its olympic team but there are three main ways they can make money for being an athlete the first stipends athletes can get stipends directly from the u.s olympic and paralympic committee or from the groups that run the olympic sports teams called the national governing bodies we pay to our very top average around four thousand dollars a month plus performance bonuses an olympic gold medal rower told usa today she receives two thousand dollars a month monica won bronze at the rio 2016 olympics we get a stipend and it is 300 a month how much funding an athlete gets depends on performance and their ability is to be able to earn medals so it's a tough kind of you know balancing act that the industries are doing to figure out how do we support the athletes that are up and coming but then also how do we make sure that those who are doing awesome right now are well cared for lauren williams competed in olympic track and field and bobsled she was the first american woman to win medals in both the summer and winter olympics the funding was quite different between the two so obviously is a much smaller olympic sport and so there's three medals that we can earn compare that to track and field where 128 american athletes are headed to the olympic games competing for 48 gold medals in swimming there's a lot of money gymnastics is a lot of money nba i mean we don't even have to cover that one it's a niche sports that really struggle the most athletes can also make money through sponsorships a company covers some of their athletes expenses in exchange for its logo on the athlete's uniform more often these sponsorships are performance based meaning an athlete has to win a certain number of competitions athleta now sponsors simone biles tyr sport sponsors katie ledecky for 7 million 2k sports at nike sponsor kevin durant who rakes in 40 million dollars in sponsorship money every year some of us as athletes have been really fortunate to gain individual sponsorships that's been hard to come by because people don't know water polo sponsorship deals among athletes are inconsistent ranging from hundreds of dollars to millions i've seen athletes get very upset because you know they've performed really well better than their competitor even but the competitor has a lot more sponsorship opportunities that's because sponsorships don't just depend on the sport they also depend on the athletes popularity when sponsors and brands are looking at athletes they're looking at marketability the return on investment that they're going to get it can literally be you have a huge following on instagram or you can just be so good that it's undeniable ultra chocolate nailing a coveted sponsorship is hard athletes have to go out and get their own sponsors finally athletes can win prize money competitions leading up to the olympics like the diamond league meets can have ten thousand dollar first place prizes for me when i get prize money i have to immediately disburse that to bills and savings and i also have to think about i can't lose or i can't come in a certain place because i have to make a certain amount of money to either break even or to gain a profit so always going into a race with that is an immense amount of pressure the international olympic committee doesn't award athletes cash prizes for medals but some countries do the united states is one of them you know the usopc has something called operation gold so if you earn a medal at the olympic games there's prize money for the top three places there in every sport the usopc awards a thirty seven thousand five hundred dollar medal bonus for gold twenty two thousand five hundred for silver and fifteen thousand dollars for bronze but the usa's metal bonuses are lower than what other nations offer it's a one-time payment and those bonuses are only up for grabs every four years when the olympics come around again so what kind of consistent salaries do athletes get well it's hard to say but we do know in 2012 half of the u.s track and field olympic team made 15 000 or less a year from the sport including stipends prize money and sponsorships compare that to the salary of usa track and field ceo who earned 1.2 million dollars in 2018 plus there are also hefty costs associated with competing at this level 15 to 20 generally goes to your agent so that's money that's you know doesn't exist anymore and then you also have to pay taxes coaches can cost more than a hundred dollars an hour that bobsled lauren competed in costs about thirty thousand dollars if i got to get shoes every two to three months that's 200 300 there's the price of gym time massage and sports medicine appointments dietitians lots of healthy food you name it in 2012 u.s news and world report found it costs up to a hundred thousand dollars a year for athletes to be olympians during the course of my career i was really fortunate i never earned less than 250 000 but there's a lot of expenses associated with being an athlete because you are in fact the business and a business has overhead something like a 250 000 earnings turns into 125 really quick many athletes have turned to crowdsourcing to supplement their incomes monica started one to fund her way to tokyo it's now up to 30 000 aaron's gofundme helped finance his way to the olympic track and field trials in july in a matter of 22 hours i want to say it was i had all the money that i needed and it was such a wild moment for me but most athletes have to take on part-time work work in a part-time job at shields which is an all-sport store here in iowa city you know a lot of girls on our team are coaches i own a business and the pay gap among athletes has only worsened during the pandemic a lot of hourly jobs went away for a good period of time during copenhagen and then there was training facilities being shut down i would ref competitions here in new york city but all of them were canceled so i wasn't making money from that i mean i didn't even have ways of making money for rent i mean everything was shut down like even social media companies weren't even paying for us to be putting out different campaigns so it was definitely rough those meets that i thought i would be able to get in and clean up and you know make money i didn't have it really set me back financially it's left olympians and their families struggling to make ends meet i've been raised by a single mother since i'm eight years old so she definitely was funding everything when i was younger i mean she went to credit card debt because of me i feel like i am one of the best in america so if i can do that while i'm at one point working two jobs and door dashing and everything like that then i can imagine what i can do if i didn't have to do that there's times where i don't even have money in my bank account things have shifted a bit to help athletes at the 2018 games the usopc upped the metal bonuses by 50 percent they change the rule so athletes won't be taxed on their metal bonuses if they make under a million dollars annually u.s olympians used to have to pay as much as 8 900 in taxes on a gold medal bonus the ioc has recently eased rule 40 which prohibited athletes from making money off their image rights before during and after the olympics but now athlete sponsors can run certain ads during the rule 40 period and in 2020 the usopc launched the athlete marketing project which better connects athletes with sponsors but the moves haven't been sweeping enough phil thinks that some of the funding for team usa should come from the u.s government that money could ensure that our u.s olympic team are treated equally to the level of achievement are treated to a salary that is appropriate for them representing this country across america athletes are facing a decision is it all worth it 27 times over yes yes and yes even if it was half the income i don't think that i would regret for one moment having participated in sport i get to play the sport i love every single day that's wealth that's being rich but i wouldn't be upset if in the future we were able to make some more money and not necessarily have to have two jobs it kind of puts the chip on my shoulder to go even harder to compete at the best and compete with the best so that i can take myself out of this position that's my only like question of the next three years of do i continue another three years of being broke like i i want to go back i want to have the opportunity to win an individual medal but is it worth being broke again

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,639,377

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, Big Business, Tokyo Olympics, Olympics, Sports, Finance

Id: ZatBRfMnxUE

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Ammarm91k]

No body cares about sports in Pakistan. No parents here want their child to become a sportsman/sportswoman.

[u/Muaaz_the_Man]

Yes but atleast they're getting proper coaching and those sports are being taught at grass root level there

[u/Default_Rice_6414]

Some olympians have to sell their gold medals. Other stories, most olympians retire and get regular jobs. Funding is an issue everywhere and you're not an olympian from day 1, you only use the olympic training centre when you become someone that could possibly qualify for olympics. Before that, you spend your youth in a local club with your parents travelling around the country to take you to tournaments. It's really hard work and you have to spend a lot of money and lose a lot of your social aspects.