Why Olympians Are So Broke | Big Business

Some Olympic athletes make millions of dollars, but a recent global study of 500 elite athletes found that nearly 60 percent did not consider themselves financially stable. We are not sponsored athletes with boxes of cereal and bottles of Gatorade. I started driving for Doordash. I worked at Panera. a bank The financial pressure is enormous because unless they win a medal, Olympic athletes don't get paid to compete in the games, you see someone who is on TV all the time and assume that all Olympic athletes are famous , all you have to do is get a medal and they will be rich and nothing could be further from the truth.

They also have a long list of expenses to train for their sport. You are also responsible for your coach and make sure to be paid and compensated accordingly. Massage Therapist nutrition is something like 250,000. earnings become 125 very quickly, so how do olympic athletes make money and why is it not enough? Unlike countries like the United Kingdom or Singapore, American Olympic athletes are not paid to attend the Olympics if they will not be able to afford it. and if you're not doing it right, there are six other people waiting in line for the chance. We are the only major country in the world and one of the few countries where the government is not involved in funding their Olympic team, but there are three main ways you can earn 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 Olympic sports teams, called national governing bodies. We pay at our highest average. four thousand dollars a month plus performance bonuses an olympic gold medalist told the USA today she receives two thousand dollars a month monica won bronze at the 2016 rio olympic games we receive a stipend and it is 300 a month The amount of funding an athlete receives depends on performance and their ability to win medals, so it's a difficult balancing act that industries are doing to figure out how we support athletes who are on the rise, but also how we make sure that those who are doing wonderfully right now.

They 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 it's obviously a much smaller Olympic event. sport, then there are three medals we can win compared to athletics, where 128 American athletes are heading to the olympics competing for 48 gold medals in swimming, there is a lot of money, gymnastics is a lot of money, the NBA, I mean, I don't even have to cover that one, it's a niche sport that really struggles for most athletes.

They can also earn money through sponsorships. A company covers some of its athletes' expenses in exchange for its logo on the athlete's uniform. More often, these sponsorships are based on performance, i.e. an athlete. has to win a certain amount of competitions athlete now sponsors simone biles tyr sports sponsors katie ledecky for 7 million sports 2k on nike sponsor kevin durant who raises 40 million dollars in sponsorship money each year some of us as athletes have been very lucky to win individual sponsorships that have been hard to come by because people don't know that water polo sponsorship deals between athletes are inconsistent and range from hundreds of dollars to millions.

I have seen athletes get very angry because you know they performed very well better than their competitor. even, but the competitor has many more sponsorship opportunities, that is because sponsorships not only depend on the sport, but also depend on the popularity of the athletes. When sponsors and brands look at athletes, they look at marketability, the return on investment they are getting. You're going to make it, literally, you may have a huge following on Instagram or you may simply be so good that it's undeniable that ultra chocolate lands a coveted sponsorship. It's hard for athletes to have to go out and get their own sponsors.

Finally, athletes can win cash prizes. Even the Olympics, like the Diamond League competitions, can have first place prizes of ten thousand dollars for me. When I receive the prize money, I have to immediately spend it on bills and savings and I also have to think about what I can't lose or what I can. I don't come to a certain place because I have to make a certain amount of money to break even or make a profit, so always going into a race with that is immense pressure. The International Olympic Committee does not award cash prizes to athletes. for medals, but some countries do it, the United States is one of them.

You know, the USOPC has something called Operation Gold, so if you win a medal at the Olympics, there are prize money for the first three places in each sport, the USOPC awards thirty-seven. Medal bonus of fifteen hundred dollars for gold, twenty-two thousand five hundred for silver and fifteen thousand dollars for bronze, but the US metal bonuses are lower than those offered by other nations, it is a one-time payment and those bonuses only They are available every four years. When the Olympics return, it's hard to say what kind of consistent salaries athletes receive, but we do know that in 2012 half of the US Olympic track and field team made $15,000 or less a year from the sport, including stipends, Prize money and sponsorships compare to the salary of the CEO of USA Track and Field, who earned $1.2 million in 2018, plus there are also considerable costs associated with competing at this level. 15 to 20 usually goes to your agent, so it's money that you know no longer exists. and then you also have to pay taxes.

Coaches can cost over a hundred dollars an hour on the sled Lauren competed on. She costs about thirty thousand dollars. If I get shoes every two or three months, that's 200,300. There is the price of the massage at the gym. sports medicine quotes dietitians lots of healthy food, whatever In 2012, a US news and world report found that it costs athletes up to a hundred thousand dollars a year to be an Olympian over the course of my career. I was very lucky to never make less than 250,000, but there are a lot of expenses associated with being an athlete because, in fact, you are the

business

and a

business

has overheads: something like 250,000 profits turns into 125 very quickly, Many athletes have turned to crowdsourcing to supplement their income, Monica started one to fund. her way to Tokyo now costs 30,000.

Aaron's gofundme helped finance her way to the Olympic track and field trials in July in a matter of 22 hours. I mean he had all the money he needed and it was a great experience. It was a wild time for me, but most athletes have to work part-time at Shields, which is a sports-only store here in Iowa City. You know, a lot of girls on our team are coaches. I have a business. and the pay gap between athletes only got worse during the pandemic, with many hourly jobs disappearing for a good period of time during Copenhagen and then training facilities being closed.

I would referee competitions here in New York City, but they were all closed. canceled so I wasn't making money from it I mean I didn't even have ways to make money for rent I mean everything was shut down like not even social media companies were paying for us to put up different campaigns so It was definitely tough those competitions where I thought I could go in and clean and, you know, make money, I didn't have it, it really set me back financially, left the Olympians and their families struggling to make ends meet. They raised me. by a single mom since I was eight, so she was definitely financing everything when I was younger, I mean she went into credit card debt because of me, I feel like I'm one of the best in America, so If I can do that while at one point I'm working two jobs and running doors and all that, then I can imagine what I could do if I didn't have to do that.

There are times when I don't even have money in my bank account. Things have changed. a little to help athletes in the 2018 games, the USOPC increased metal bonuses by 50 percent, they changed the rule so that athletes do not have to pay taxes on their metal bonuses if they earn less than a million dollars a year. American Olympians used to have to pay that much. like 8,900 in taxes on the bonus for a gold medal, the IOC has recently relaxed rule 40 that prohibited athletes from making money from their image rights before, during and after the Olympic games, but now the athletes' sponsors They can run certain ads during the Rule 40 period and in 2020 UsoPC launched the Athlete Marketing Project that better connects athletes with sponsors, but the moves haven't been broad enough.

Phil believes that some of the funding for Team USA should come from the US government, that money could ensure that our US Olympic team is treated the same as the level of achievement receives a salary appropriate for them, representing this country throughout the United States, athletes are faced with a decision: is it worth 27 times more? Yes, yes, yes, even if it were half the income, I don't think I would regret for a moment participating in a sport. I get to play the sport I love every day. That's wealth, that's being rich, but I wouldn't be mad if in the future we could make a little more money and not necessarily have to have it. two jobs, it puts the chip on my shoulder to work even harder to compete with the best and compete with the best to get out of this position.

That's my only question for the next three years: Will I continue with another one? Three years of being

broke

as if he wanted to come back. I want a chance to win an individual medal, but is it worth being

broke

again?