The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes.
And indeed, they cannot be.
Only a select few have any leverage at all to bargain for more money (think Husain Bolt and others at his level).
But these select few are already profiting big-time from the Olympics via endorsements, etc.
So the last thing they want is to put the games at risk.
The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition.
And there's nothing wrong with that!
It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.
Stepping back a bit, there's no reason that anybody should be getting a salary simply because they are one of the very best at their chosen sport.
Sports stars command large salaries to the extent that they have dedicated fans.
If you compete in a fringe sport, you're not going to have many dedicated fans.
(This is why every top-tier athlete makes more from product endorsements than from their team salary.)
((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))
> Stepping back a bit, there's no reason that anybody should be getting a salary simply because they are one of the very best at their chosen sport.
Indeed. They should be getting a salary because they provide the extremely rare talent (developed through incredible effort and dedication) that makes the multi-billion dollar business that is the Olympics possible to begin with.
The reason they do not get it is very similar to what you see in other fields like science and art: because the sociopaths that run our society know very well how to take advantage of the love that talented people have for their respective fields.
That is all fine and dandy, except that what really makes the Olympics-as-media-circus possible is tax payer money.
Given that it is not a free market operation to being with, but rather a money extraction operation based on political pull, we could do without the supply and demand lessons.
It would be interesting to ask the tax payers if they think that executives deserve to take home all of their money while the athletes that they actually enjoy watching get none of it.
The IOC's revenue isn't tax revenue, it's sponsorship revenue[1] Same goes for Team US: as the article itself points out, one of the reasons the US Olympic athletes are so poor is because unlike many other countries the US teams' budget isn't topped up by the tax payer (but is topped up by a bunch of sponsorship salespeople who bring in more money than they get paid but expect close-to-market compensation in return). And yes, like any free market organization, the management and the salespeople are better compensated than the people who are just really, really glad to be there.
If everyone on the IOC executive worked for free without any access to their expense accounts there still would be barely anything left for each individual athlete just for competing, especially if like Team USA their local government wasn't prepared to subsidise things either. So it's really nothing to do with monopoly power either. Olympic athletes are poorly compensated because there are an awful lot of them, and most of them only get a few minutes (sometimes only a few seconds) exposure at the highest level per decade in front of audiences that enjoy watching other sports on a weekly basis
As for the athletes people enjoy watching well enough to know their name and buy their preferred hair gel, the free market means they're compensated pretty well for their brand in individual sponsorship deals. Trouble is, there aren't many Olympians that are household names, especially the ones that really need the money.
[1]sure, local taxpayers often end up underwriting an Olympics after the planners overspend on infrastructure, but that's nothing to do with what goes into the IOC president's expense account, or indeed what the athletes get
That's the story of a massive bribe [allegedly] paid to an individual rather than the source of the IOC's funding though. It was never likely to be directed to the part of the Olympic movement that most needed it.
Actually, I suspect that part of the justification for the IOC executives' lavish officially-sanctioned, sponsorship-funded expense accounts is to limit the ability of bidding nations to curry favour with less obviously corrupt "free hospitality" arrangements that apparently were common in the 90s. (You're less likely to feel obliged towards someone for the offer of free flights and a five star hotel for your fact finding mission if you could charge it to your Amex card anyway)
Whether it actually works is another question...
No, marketing machines need something to market; you can't sell pieces of shit to people no matter how many ads you run.
Over-estimating the power of marketing is a time-honored tradition among developers and engineers. Ironically, they also tend to view marketers as clods without any real skills. Weird divergence there. But I digress.
What is the marketing message of the Olympics? That the world's best athletes are competing against each other. If that is obviously and demonstrably not true, then the marketing fails. Contrary to popular belief, customers actually are not bad at sniffing out BS in their preferred products.
I've phrased this as, "Regardless of the increased salary in the NFL over the last 40 years, they're still only producing one super bowl winner every year. On a per team basis, production has actually gone down."
That's kind of the consensus modern psychology and trainers are coming to. Some kids just have a drive that others don't, and that is what determines how well they do.
The major difficulty with the idea of "natural talent" is that every time someone points to a skill/whatever and says, "this is natural talent" someone else finds a way to teach that skill. Here is one paper: http://talentdevelop.com/articles/ITROM.html
"Body shape" isn't what people usually mean by 'talent', and I doubt you define it that way either; but if you want to define talent to mean body shape, I will happily concede that talent is important.
Merriam Webster defines talent as a special ability that allows someone to do something well. I agree with that definition. Usain Bolt is a naturally talented runner.
You said
>The major difficulty with the idea of "natural talent" is that every time someone points to a skill/whatever and says, "this is natural talent" someone else finds a way to teach that skill.
Can anyone be trained to run as fast as Bolt or would they have to be naturally talented in the first place to be trainable?
Generally, the notion that people should accept less pay because they live their work is bullshit, and the lines of work that engage in and encourage this kind of reasoning are exploitative. Period.
We see this same dynamic in many lines of graduate education as well, a huge oversupply of students competing over a very long period of time for a tiny number of academic and research positions, and occasionally partying through the nose for the opportunity. And like the Olympics, the biggest payouts are for the management class, whose main tasks seem to be further commercializing the whole edifice. This commercialization happens to be synonymous with expanding exploitation of those lowest on the ladder (Mo labor Mo profits) and expanding the ranks of the managing class for their business school bros from the ivies.
(Pretty similar dynamics also appear in the non profit sector, fwiw.)
The IOC retains all the mind-share of the 'Olympic Spirit,' for lack of better terms. A curling competition on NBC will draw 0 viewers (and 0 money) ((estimating)). A curling event in the Olympics draws viewers because and only because it is 'The Olympics.' Take 'The Olympics' out of every esoteric event and you'll quickly see how little viewership it'll get.
I guess that depends on what sports your country enjoys. Here in Canada curling championships get a pretty wide viewership (but the money isn't great).
Olympics destroy the economies of the cities they play in. This article shows just the insane amount of salary at the top get. These are people who are literally the top of human form and athleticism. The Olympics entertain the planet and bring in insane amounts of money and have insane trademark enforcement.
If I make over $100k for sitting on my ass all day writing software, then certainly these people deserve far more than they're getting. They shouldn't need to depend on additional endorsements/advertising money. Just by making it to the Olympics, they should get a decent amount, and those bastards at the top can afford to get a little less...shaving a few $100k here and there and distribute it.
eh..a little off topic, but I still want to comment on it. :-P Star Trek's utopia has a couple of major important technologies:
* Removal of energy scarcity - dilitium is mined off planets, by robots and provides cheap limitless energy
* Replicators - Controlling the atom to the point where we can make exact duplicates. If everyone can replicate a Rembrandt, the original no longer has its insane value. There's no wait to authenticate if something is "real" or "original" Some people prefer "real" food, even realizing the difference is pretty much all in their heads. All basic things can be copied and only the very complex can't be duplicated (like Lt Commander Data's brain).
So in such a universe, an athlete gets everything a regular earth citizen gets, and visa-versa. It doesn't matter if you're in Star Fleet or choose to bus tables in a restaurant, you get the same type of living accommodation, and you can live or work anywhere thanks to transporters and limitless energy. People choose the jobs they want. Star Fleet isn't a military operation and you can resign at any time. In this world, a lot of useless jobs would go away .. Olympic committee trademark enforces for example.
The whole thing breaks down terrible in some episodes. In DS9, Sisko's dad owns a restaurant with a bus boy. Someone chooses to be that bus boy .. for no money. Maybe if the writers used a robot bus boy?
It breaks down further than that. Get a transporter lock on the uneaten food and dirty dishes and just de-replicate it from a distance. The "robot" busboy is never seen, except as transporter-effect vanishings of plates and leftovers.
But if consistency is your thing, you could retcon the whole thing by making the busboy an in-restaurant hologram. It would be like the emergency hologram doctor, except the hologram busboy would just be an artistic feature. In the Star Trek economy, you are paid in public appreciation for your talents. The richest person in the Federation is the one who has the most fans and followers.
So without scarcity, a lot of people would give away their holographic models and software, for the prestige of "holographic restaurant busboy reaches one million downloads!" It wouldn't really be any more complicated than visiting Nexusmods to get a modded Fallout or Skyrim NPC companion with full dialogue and bonus companion quest.
If the busboy is a character that also interacts outside the restaurant, that was just the guy who scanned his own likeness and programmed a facsimile of his own personality to make the busboy hologram. His real job isn't bussing tables, it's making it look like restaurant tables are being bussed instead of serviced remotely by transporter/replicator/hologram technology.
Does that make you feel better about the guy who does menial labor in a scarcity-free economy?
Maybe there's some system of kudos that isn't addressed in canon. Like in The Algebraist. Working as a bus boy ups your rep and makes it more likely you get to run a restaurant or viewed highly. Perhaps there's a large contingent of "NEETs" that just hang out in holodecks all day. But society frowns on that and encourages doing _something_. Perhaps there's lots of places with robo bus boys, but it's far more prestigious
Also, at one point, there's mention of "teleporter credits" as an explanation of why going off to academy caused homesickness -- couldn't teleport on demand. Even in the Culture, citizens had to show their capability quite a bit to design a part of an orbital. They couldn't even get their own ships on demand.
Trademark enforcement would probably be one of the things kept in a post scarcity society, if there was any system of reputation left! Being an X(TM) athlete comes with prestige so you wouldn't want someone else to be able to endow that prestige at will.
I think the whole thing breaks down with holodecks. Why would anyone put up with reality with virtual reality is so real? The propaganda budget must be huge, to convince people that there is value in serving real-life society (and the Federation) to prevent society from being wiped out by an external force.
From what I know of nerds, the Federation would need to have an entire corps of cops that specifically watch out for self-replicating replicators and home-made holodecks built without "safety" interlocks or content restrictions.
The Starfleet holodecks are just scarce because the operating code and hardware has to be formally validated and certified as safe for use in Starfleet vessels and installations. It's like how a GPS device is really cheap, until you want one permanently installed in an aircraft cockpit. Even then, malicious code (Moriarty, if I recall correctly) could break out of the holodeck sandbox and compromise connected systems.
Seriously, have you even looked at the economics? There are 10,200 people at the Olympics. Cutting a handful of overpaid executives on Team USA isn't even going to begin to scratch the surface of paying them a decent living, never mind the many who don't make it.
Let's assume that the total revenue (not profit) for a 4 year Olympics stretch is 4 billion US dollars. The article shows that the annual revenue is 1.375 billion, but we'll drop the 375 million dollars as expenses (and to make the math easier), and we'll consider a 4 year stretch since some years are going to be lower revenue than others.
Now let's say that they give 50% of that to athletes. That's 2 billion US dollars @ 500 million US dollars per year. Split between the 10,200 people, that you quoted above, gives about $200k per 4 years, or about $50k per year.
So no, cutting the salary of a handful of executives is not going to help, but that's not really the whole story.
Sure, your maths leaves $50k per athlete that actually competes in the Summer Olympics. But four years out, you're not certain who makes the team[1], so that money ends up split between the pool of athletes competing for each slot, which is quite a bit larger, particularly if your Olympic organization is trying to subsidise teenagers that might be the next generation of Olympians out of that same budget, and probably Winter Olympians as well[2]. So the idea that stipends to athletes might max out at $20k (as the article highlights for the US) starts to look quite reasonable even before we talk about the cost of sports coaches (lots of specialists and one-to-one coaching) and sports scientists, physios, masseurs, velodromes and other highly specialist venues, training camps, competitive trials, flights etc. On that basis, just as well that many national Olympic teams can top up their meagre Olympic allowances with sponsorship revenue, revenue from their own sporting events and government and lottery money.
[1]the ones you are sure will make the team barring serious injury are probably the ones most likely to have a decent sponsorship deal and not need the money so badly
[2]Not sure whether the Winter Olympians factor into the article's revenue numbers or what their competitor numbers are like, but they're surely even more expensive sports to properly train for...
I'm not sure the IOC should be responsible for any potential competitors vs actual competitors. Even if it's only limited to those actually competing in the games, and only given out after competing, then that's a lump sum of $200k which they weren't getting before.
As for the stipends given out by USOC for Team USA, those are specifically for the US, and there appears to be no information on how much of that stipend originates from the IOC as compared to sponsorships obtained by from the USOC directly. Even then, most countries do not pay stipends that come even close to $20k US dollars. In many places, if the athletes got a full $200k for participating in the games, it would set them up for a very long time (if not for life).
As for the cost of sports coaches, training locales, etc, there's a whole 50% of revenue left over specifically to help pay for those costs (on top of local OC's). As noted in the article, professional US-based organizations, such as the NFL, generally share 50% of the revenue with athletes. Those organizations also have many of the same types of costs, but still are able to maintain an approximate 50/50 ratio.
More to the point, "have you even looked at the economics?". Yes. The conclusion that I have is that there is huge gulf between, (and using the USOC specifically here), USOC's claimed 90% spending and the article's "6 percent in cash payments" to athletes. So it's not clear cut that direct benefits to athlete's couldn't be raised, and substantially.
If you deign to consider the possibility that providing the infrastructure and training to 10,200 people in dozens of sports in 200 countries on a 1bn annual budget might actually result in a higher level of overheads per competitor than training ~100 footballers at a single club with a $2bn annual budget, it becomes a bit more obvious why athletes get a smaller share of the pie in cash payments than participants in high profile team sports, even without the whole amateur ethos.
Funnily enough, a good friend of my brother's did spend 6-8 years of his life dedicating himself to getting ready for his first Olympics, going into debt in order to do so. Upon gaining a bronze medal he used the sponsorship windfall to cancel his debts and buy a house. I suspect if I suggested to him that the British Olympic team should have cut back on facilities or charged him for training and pushed him deeper into debt in order to ensure there was a moderate-sized lump sum waiting for him in the year he finally started being able to get money from commercial sources, I'd get a very weird look.
((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))
I agree with much of your post, but it seems to me that NBA players make the highest salaries because the structure of the game and the level of competition put them in such high demand relative to supply.
NBA rosters are small, and only 5 players are on the court for each team at any time. There's also a huge drop-off in competitive performance[1] as you move down the bench from the elite players. Unlike the NFL, which has a substantial reserve of "replacement level" talent from college ball, there aren't that many folks who could play basketball at an NBA level and not be totally exposed. That's similar to baseball players, who are also among the most highly paid, even though there are more positions and rosters are bigger: There just aren't that many athletes out there who can bat above .200 against Major League-class pitching.
Basketball is pretty unique, in that essentially relies on abnormally tall people. When you put that as a requirement in front of the many others you need to be successful in the NBA, it becomes clear why the field is so thin.
You see a few other places with similar fields though, like the absolute bleeding edge of traditional ballet, or some gymnastic events.
The classic case I always hear is jockeys too. It's not that odd, every sport is getting very specialized in athlete selection, in fact there's a great TED by David Epstein[0] talk about this kind of thing.
Gymnasts as well have similar size limitations in some cases. I know my one friend growing up was pretty much devastated when she grew to 5'8" (~170cm if my head conversion is close)
She said that being too tall made the balance beam harder as you had more chance to hit your head. I think been a while so anyone can correct me.
Jockeys are an interesting example, because women compete successfully alongside men, at very high levels. In that sense horse racing is among the least sexist of professional sports.
Sure, but the salary cap (or lack thereof) isn't decreed from on high, it's the result of a nominally market-based negotiation between each players union and the corresponding league. If NFL players thought they could push the salary cap to $200M without killing the golden goose, they'd do it.
I have a hard time calling the result of negotiations between the single cartel of teams and the single (probably less-skilled) cartel of players a market.
> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.
> The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.
This line of argument is what enables corporations, advertisers and governments to exploit athletes and the tax-payers of host countries to the tune of billions every year. Same as how the NCAA exploits college athletics.
> ((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))
NBA players aren't on that list because their contracts are limited to 5 years, and to a maximum salary.
And the truly elite players sign short contracts, because the max salary goes up over time.
Mean NBA salary is ~$6M, compared to ~$4M for MLB - despite league revenue per player being roughly equal.
> The highest salaries among U.S. athletes are earned by baseball players, and it's not even close
If you sort by average per year it isn't quite as clear cut as that. Excluding the first 3 outliers (2 Ferrari F1 drivers and Floyd Mayweather) the next 10 highest paid athletes per year are split roughly 50-50 baseball and basketball.
There are more baseball players on the list in total than basketball players, but I'd argue it is because there are ~750 total MBA players and only ~450 NBA players.
I think you probably have to account for the relative sizes of basketball arenas and baseball stadiums (>2x) reducing the overall ticket revenue for NBA. TV rights might be comparable among the major sports, but revenue share breaks down on the number of seats and that can't be compensated by ticket prices (NBA avg: ~1.2x MLB).
TL;DR : Imagine if you had a non-profit soup kitchen but charged the homeless to buy your soup. That is a sports NGO.
The salary of the Executive Director of USA Swimming is $1-millon-plus dollars a year from an organization that pulls in about $41-million annually from donations and otherwise.
The salary for a USA Olympic Swimmer, if they sign on to do fund raising events and make appearances for the organization is about $70,000 — About 55-swimmers are chosen for the Olympic team every four years. They are not paid that salary when they are not on the national team.
Though the athletes love the sports they do sport NGOs are making tranches of money of the backs of children and athletic teams who are force to "pay tribute" and competition fees just so they can get a chance to realize a dream that is harder to obtain than becoming an Academy Award winning actor or a CEO of a billion dollar company.
I agree that, for a majority of the athletes, it is about the spirit of competition. But if the Olympics are about the spirit of competition for some, it should be the same for all. And when I say "for all", I really mean for the executive who sits back and get a large salary from the municipal/advertisement money pumped into Olympics.
> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.
I really don't buy this argument. Why should anyone ever deserve less than his or her fair share? This might make sense if there really weren't much revenue being generated, and the executives were not lining their pockets with millions, but in this case it is simple exploitation.
> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.
Once you started allowing pro players into the Olympics, that went out the window (although calling any Olympic athlete an "amateur" is kind of a misnomer ...).
While people didn't like seeing "amateur" US teams lose to "professional" Soviet teams, allowing pro players into the Olympics robs people of the emotional impact of things like "The Miracle on Ice".
I'm pretty surprised at the HN comments and sentiment here of "if the athletes don't like it don't participate." It is a clear monopoly by the IOC. The IOC is a business. The athletes are the talent.
Look at any comparable business and the talent makes a way bigger % of the money, actors in the movie industry, musicians in the music industry, professional athletes in NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA etc. These are all "jobs" that people would gladly do for low pay just like the Olympics if that was their only choice. Does that mean that the other industries are overpaying their talent? No imo. It's reasonable to expect that the people that provide the talent and a large part of the value to the industry deserve a large portion of the rewards.
Professional athletes and hollywood have strong unions to fight for fair pay(they used to be exploited for low pay), the music industry is a semimonopoly and does screw artists, but at least there is some level of competition. If you don't like one record company you can always switch labels.
The problem with the Olympics and what makes them so valuable to begin with is their rarity. They only come around once every four years. A top tier athlete may only make one Olympics in his/her lifetime and perhaps as many as ~three. Are you really going to organize and "holdout" for a whole Olympic games with your fellow athletes to maybe better the financial position for all your fellow Olympians? It's one thing to sit out a season when your expected career is 10 seasons and you may only have to sit out 1/3 of one season, it's entirely different when you may have to sit out your entire career. The athletes are being exploited because
1. IOC is a monopoly
2. Their careers are short
3. It's too risky to organize because the risk of not competing is too high. They've trained so hard to get there, to not compete is not really an option.
4. Olympics only happen once every four years.
It's a very similar situation as the NCAA except for #4. If you want to make it "not about the money" that's fine by me, make tickets to attend these events cheap or free, let any network cover the games(why does NBC get a coverage monopoly?), get rid of the endorsements and ads, make all the IOC "volunteer" administrators unpaid, but it's never going to happen. When coaches and administrators are making millions and the talent is making close to zero, the talent is clearly being exploited.
I'm not sure there is really any comparable business. I mean, if you look at the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA then (i) the executives make orders of magnitude more (ii) the expenses are spread around a much smaller pool of people and training facilities and (iii) the sportspeople play more than once every four years and the second and third tier players are much more widely recognised.
The thing is, you could take away the president of the IOC's not-exactly-FIFA-esque expense account featured in this article and you've got just enough money to pay stipends - the meagre stipends the article complains about - for 10-12 more Olympic hopefuls. And there are 10,200 athletes competing in Rio, and for every athlete that made it, there are several more that devoted years of their time and their local federation's expense budget to trying to get there. Even if the IOC and the Olympic organizing committees had no costs at all and simply passed on all its 1.4bn per annum income on to local federations, there's really not that much to share between training and developing 50k athletes that might make the cut in facilities in 200 countries; certainly not enough to give them proper cash salaries after expenses.
Sure, some executives might be overpaid, but that's really not why most Olympians are poor or indebted until they medal or break into the media and most of them aren't rich afterwards. [It doesn't help that the article conflates the IOC with how the individual US sporting associations choose to divvy up their cash, which I'm sure is more favourable to the senior executives and less favourable to the athletes than the vast majority of national associations.] It's not the monopoly that's keeping athletes from earning an adequate living from Olympic revenue, it's that there's simply not enough money to go around, unless governments or individual sponsors decide to chip in to pay athletes on top of that. Needless to say, athletes already living on the breadline aren't going to be very enamoured with the suggestion of getting rid of the endorsements and ads so they have to pay all their training costs too.
> Look at any comparable business and the talent makes a way bigger % of the money, actors in the movie industry, musicians in the music industry, professional athletes in NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA etc.
Actors or musicians have a very narrow slice at the top that makes decent money compared to that that is taken by industry machinery, and a lot of lesser "professionals" that make very little compared to the middle men. Same with athletes; the major enterprises you refer to are the top tier within their sports, with a lot of lesser venues underneath.
The Olympics is kind of weird, because it includes lots of sports that don't generate the interest of major sports, and large numbers of teams -- many from areas that aren't major media markets for the sport in question -- for all of the sports, even ones that are major in at least some corner of the globe. By doing that, it effectively is, from a marketing perspective, like a combination of the major and minor leagues together -- the ability to make money is influenced, to the extent its influenced by the athletes at all, only by a very small subset of them, and mostly by the ability of third-parties to weave narratives around the aggregate of the competitions.
You could make an "Olympics" that would support a distribution of pay more like the NFL, but you'd need to kill most of the sports, and many of the teams in most of the remaining sports, to do that. And it wouldn't look much like the Olympics.
It really is "If you don't like it don't attend." Go promote your archery competition on ESPN and see how many viewers tune in and how much money you earn.
The IOC gets the money because they bring the value to the table. All these same athletes are competing all year, every year. Which event does everyone watch?
A javelin thrower isn't making much money? I'm sorry, but I have all the javelin throwers in my life that I need. Not that I would have seen him on tv anyway since it isn't gymnastics, swimming, men's basketball or a track final with an American contending for gold.
Sure this level of performance is amazing, it's just not valuable.
I have all the basketball forwards I need, but Channing Frye isn't living on food stamps. He's not the one people come to see, but he helps keep a competitive organization running so that there's a platform for LeBron (who people do come to see). Your personal interest in a mid-range competitor doesn't determine their value, because they're helping to enable the higher-profit performers.
If the Olympic competition isn't a value generator, then the coaches and functionaries enabling the athletes are even less valuable than the athletes themselves. God knows the spectacle and ceremony part of the Olympics isn't a money-maker, that's why cities aggressively resist having it come to town.
The assumption that any of this is a function of market forces is funny to me. Sponsorships are probably the only free-market aspect of the whole program (or they would be if they weren't exclusive and determined above the athlete level) - the IOC operates as a 'charity' drawing money from national governments. As a result they're completely un-accountable to market forces, and athletes can't make any effort to collect their value. The highest-profile competition in the world is funded by donations, and they can't escape it.
Jack Warner and his ilk at FIFA weren't making a fortune because they were so efficient and talented, they were making money because principal-agent problems and regulatory capture are real. If the people raising player funding are also deciding how to spend it, they're likely to declare themselves invaluable and keep it all at the top.
> because they're helping to enable the higher-profit performers.
But it's the other way around in GP's example. The basketball/running/whatever athletes are enabling the javelin athletes to even have a venue of this magnitude in the first place. If javelin/archery/whatever was cut from the olympic roster, would the Olympics have substantially fewer viewers?
Javelin perhaps not, although track and field as a whole is one of the most watched part of the Olympics.
But I'm not sure these are conflicting narratives - without LeBron less popular basketball players wouldn't get viewers, but without a base of less talented players LeBron wouldn't have a platform. Javelin's contribution to Olympic popularity is less direct than, say, a weak sprinter who races against Usain Bolt, but it's nonzero.
Bringing so many sports and athletes together is part of what helps the Olympics maintain reputation compared to other narrower events like international track races or swim meets. Phelps competed far more places than the Olympics, but that was still the contest that earned him the most attention and sponsorship.
More broadly, though: even the star performers are getting underpaid unless they get outside-the-Olympics sponsorships. IOC funds don't trickle down anywhere near as much as revenue does for other sports, so Olympians big and small are relying on external revenue to make a living.
> The IOC gets the money because they bring the value to the table
What value is that to me, exactly? I watch the Olympics and willingly tolerate the ads to see the Olympians, not to watch the IOC. The only stand-alone revenue generating value in this equation is the athletes' performances, that is the main attraction. The IOC organizes and captures that value, some of it for it's own benefit, but what value do they bring to the table?
> Sure this level of performance is amazing, it's just not valuable.
If it had no value, why do you think it is included in the Olympics at all? You seem to suggest that because you don't like javelin, then nobody should. You're confusing less popular with zero attraction, and the logical conclusion to that is the the Olympics should consist of exactly one sport and no more. But, obviously there are lots of Olympic sports, and all but one of them are less popular than something else. The fact of the matter is that every single one of them is valuable as an Olympic sport, every single one of them generates value and has sponsors and has competitors who train to be the best in that sport every single day.
Or at the very least allow sponsors to highlight their athletes. (See the story about IOC copyright takedown notice to Oiselle highlighting Kate Grace's Olympic trials.)
In the most market/libertarian sense you are right: athletes in highly visible sports do seem to make a lot more than those in not-visible sports. Market forces at work.
However, the salaries of the brass are made up off money made in television deals and other promotions. Network effects do have an impact on the size of the pie. So even the javelin matters if only for the size of the pie. It wouldn't be the Olympics with only soccer, it would be the World Cup.
I'm serious. I despise the olympics, but they are the only reason that a lot of these sports have any visibility at all.
I'm a big fan of an obscure sport: wrestling. I have attended events, bought t-shirts and otherwise supported US wrestlers directly or indirectly.
And yet, the Olympics is still the biggest stage for these guys because having that gold is a level of prestige that can't be earned anywhere else. It's an all or nothing gambit for the athletes, but the Olympics is the only group offering up even that much.
If people really want the javelin guy and the trampoline dude to make a living, they should attend/watch events other than the olympics.
tl;dnr -- There is virtually no value in a swimming event. There is a large value in an olympic swimming event. The athletes are the same in both. The venue brings the value.
There is also no value in an olympic swimming event without any athletes. They both bring value to the table, why is the IOC walking away with all the money?
Replace one set of unknown athletes with another set of unknowns and it's the same event to the large majority of viewers.
Replace the olympics with the world championships and suddenly nobody is watching (in most of these sports). You remember how great that 2015 world championship in swimming was, right? It was all over tv, right?
People care about the olympics far more than they care about the athletes.
Yes I know men's basketball and a few others are exceptions, but they're also the ones nobody is worried about being paid.
>Replace the olympics with the world championships and suddenly nobody is watching (in most of these sports). You remember how great that 2015 world championship in swimming was, right? It was all over tv, right?
Don't make the mistake of confusing, olympics - the event with the organizers. Swap the organizers of the Olympics with that of the World Championship and no one is going to notice any difference. Swap Usain Bolt with some other guy and the race becomes meaningless. Swap any executive with another and no one gives a shit. The Olympics are primarily about the athletes and nominally about the executive officers. Nobody gives a shit about them - I can understand officials making 50K$ the year of the Olympics but I don't understand why they need to be paid any more than that. They have organized terribly in Rio and one exec can be swapped for another and no one would care.
> > Replace the olympics with the world championships and suddenly nobody is watching (in most of these sports). You remember how great that 2015 world championship in swimming was, right? It was all over tv, right?
> Don't make the mistake of confusing, olympics - the event with the organizers. Swap the organizers of the Olympics with that of the World Championship and no one is going to notice any difference. Swap Usain Bolt with some other guy and the race becomes meaningless. Swap any executive with another and no one gives a shit.
Er, the World Championships of any sport that is also in the Olympics generally consists of the same pool of athletes, and the same bureaucrats in the sport-specific governing body. What differs is: (1) The Olympics also have Olympic bureaucrats, (2) Scheduling, (3) Name of the event ("Olympics" vs. "World Championship").
According to the article the IOC gets $1.375bn per year in revenues, before costs, and will see about 10,200 athletes competing in the next Olympics
Floyd Mayweather made a quarter of that by himself last year... after everyone else including his opponents, the venues, the promoters and the administrators had taken their cut.
Floyd Mayweather didn't make all this money because boxing doesn't have its share of pimps. He made it because his performance is hugely more valuable (and more effectively commercially exploited[1]) than any individual Olympic sport, including the Olympic boxing he used to participate in.
[1]not entirely the IOC's fault: I can't see pay-per-view Olympics working out profitably for Usain Bolt, never mind the participants in the sailing or archery heats
The purse for the Mayweather - Pacquiao fight was $230 million. That's one fight.
I assume you're not seriously suggesting the main reason individual Olympic events don't realise anywhere close to that much revenue is more down to the quality of the promoters than the commercial appeal of the individual event.
All these executives organizing all year, every year. Which executive does everyone care about?
I have seen all the executives in my life that I need.
Sure this level of organizational failure at Rio is awful and can be easily improved by firing the executives and hiring cheaper executives that can organize events better. I just don't see what value the executives bring to the table.
Your comment is directly contradicting itself. The value of the Olympics and their fundraisers is because of the athletes. Would Nike pay hundreds of millions to put their logos on TV with no athletes? Take away the athletes and you're left with a bunch of old white men who have connections to marketers at large multinationals. Not very valuable.
What caught my attention in the article is where the high pay seems to be going. The first example of the president making 250k+high class living actually seemed _low_ if we compare to top executive compensation across the board, and actually made me raise an eyebrow at their whole argument. However, the low pay for athletes seemed both supported and reminiscent of the attitudes around college sports in the US. Later in the article additional points supported this, e.g. Nike sponsorship money. Converse incentives between execs and employees (athletes) should be something very familiar to those of us in tech, and I'd imagine an athlete has as little or less bargaining power than we do (citing many recent HN discussions on the topic) unless they are a rock star among rock stars, so I can appreciate that scenario.
I'm not sure if I had a point in this, but to try and wrap up the ramble: I think there's some interesting "lemma" in that the money is accumulating "in the middle" so to speak that someone smarter than me might make, and also that there seems to be a universal pattern for employee taking-advantage-of in situations of misaligned incentives.
You presume there is a functional market for executives.
An alternative explanation would be that poor governance leads to organizations spending more for qualifications that are defensible if a mistake is made.
Part of me really wonders why, considering all of the controversies with the Olympics and IOC over the years, why we haven't seen an alternative multi-category world athletic competition gain some support. Though I do understand it would be very, very hard to compete with the marketing of the official Olympics. But if the Rio Olympics end up being as terrible as some people fear, maybe that could be a catalyst for a new competition.
Most of the sports represented in the Olympics have their own World Championships independent of the IOC. As you've mentioned, they aren't multi-category though, so they don't have the same concentrated appeal.
Anybody interested in any sport is already watching the world championship for that sport.
Journalists keeping track of the number of medals won by each country tells me that the Olympics is all about nationalism and has very little yo do with sports.
Not really. I dislike most events but I tune in for those that I like. All the marketing in the world isn't going to make me watch weightlifting, women's wrestling, dressage, synchronized swimming, etc. The Olympics works because its so varied. Single event tournaments don't remotely compare.
I'd be curious myself, but the argument against this type of competition is that it creates enormous pressure on competitors to do things that could have serious negative impacts on their long-term health for the sake of winning. Even if participants are adults of sound mind, it seems unethical to create a situation where people are encouraged to risk crippling or killing themselves in pursuit of fame, no?
This "enormous pressure...crippling or killing themselves".. guess what? It already happens normally. More than a couple athletes are seriously injured or die while training for the olympics. Usually in the more dangerous sports like gymnastics. Anyhow, I think it would be great because science thru support by capitalism and prestige would actually apply positive pressure to discovery of safer and more effective anabolic steroids and other muscle growth agents. Instead of just dumb grunt sport, we would have a scientific aspect that actively is pushing humanity forward and upward onto a new plateau. The everyday person would benefit. Disabled and physically/mentally handicapped children and adults could get huge gains in their treatment efficacy because many of the agents that enhance mental acuity or muscle strength also repair or cure deficiencies.
That is exactly what they are doing now. So what is the point. With free for all doping I think it could be at least as safe for them as the current situation.
If you think that weightlifting leaves your joints intact ...
NBA, NFL, MBA, UFC.... all make loot while only paying lip service to doping controls.
UFC has only recently brought in WADA, and NBA, NFL and MBA all have strong enough players unions that actually protect the athletes desire to use PEDs. There is some testing in the major US professional sporting leagues, but IMHO it is only there to constrain the guys from going buck wild with the steroids.
Most high level athletes in sports that fall under IOC umbrella are enrolled in the biological passport program and have many, many, annoying, out of competition doping controls where they take urine, blood and hair samples. Think of being woken up at 5 am for a blood test while on vacation. They have to supply there exact whereabouts for months in advance and if they can't be found they will suffer a suspension equal to a failed doping control. Vastly different than Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds.
>But think of the millions you could make! Donald Trump could be the host! Make sports great again!
Well, if athletes are going to cheat with steroids, I say we let Hillary host. Make sports crooked again. Imagine the amount of money that can made at the crippling expense of other people.
The more technology creeps into sports performance the less interested I become. There's a spectrum that goes from nutrition and fabric technology at one end to transhumanism at the other.
I don't really mind performance being increased by advances in nutrition or training methods. I start to get a little turned off by drag reducing suits that let you swim faster, because the apples to apples comparisons get murkier. Once we get into doping and prosthetic limbs that outperform natural ones you just lose me entirely. If it's a competition for cyborgs, then say so.
Cyborg competition is going to be more or less entertaining depending upon the sport.
For many events in the Olympics, I'd completely agree with you. Human variation adds a lot of drama. If every sprinter were to run on the same Footech XYZ-4 Hamstring, etc., it's hard to imagine there would be many differences between those sprinters. It'd be boring without other changes to the sport.
On the other hand, doping and augmentation could allow entirely new types of sport. Diving from 500 meters. Sprinters with pit crews like race cars. American football players with their brains removed. I might be interested to watch some of that.
Whats wrong with voluntary death for entertainment? The gladiators in colloseums were heralded even more so than royalty. But we can all agree that slavery isn't right. That doesn't change the fact that the coloseums were very entertaining, a consensus among the population. So why should we not let bikers voluntarily augment themselves. Sports are all about entertainment. The athlete is like a biblical lamb to the slaughter. Self sacrifice for pride, glory, cash, and kingship. Football has a risk of MS. Definite brain damage over time. Same thing with boxing. I dont think drugs are much different. They probably can be done a lot safer than some of these sports are to begin with
Because we've as a society determined that blood for sport creates a perverse set of incentives. I take it people who believe in your sentiment aren't the ones doing the dying.
That's the system we already have for a few decades. And national IOC executives get about 20% of the athletes winning fees to support suppressing the various doping reports. Just look at the numbers.
There would be a lot of heart attacks and cancers due the doping abuse. Not to mention the ethics. I'm not sure who would like to sponsor a such environment/event. Maybe the pharmaceutical industry but even for them would become damaging at some point.
I think the better phrase is "they were created when Ted Turner saw an opportunity to get into the market because the USA boycotted the Moscow Olympics".
It's a shame that the article doesn't provide any info on what percentage of USOC income ends up going to the athletes, especially since the author(s) probably have that information.
If it's 10%, then you could probably easily make an argument that they really are underpaid relative to the revenue of the organization as a whole. OTOH, if it's 90%, then you can't credibly claim they're significantly underpaid unless you can also show that the IOC and/or USOC could charge more, which you would think they would already be incentivized to do.
In major American sports leagues — such as the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA — management typically shares about 50 percent of the revenue with the athletes. In promotional materials, the USOC advertises that more than 90 percent of its spending goes to “areas that support U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes.” That same 2012 study by former athletes found that just 6 percent of USOC spending actually goes to athletes as cash payments.
Most athletes don't exactly need a lot in the way of individual infrastructure to train. A marathon takes a lot of space for the event, but training is just some place to run. Further, the host city's pay for the actual Olympic infrastructure.
The real issue is each sport may have thousands of hopefuls and there is no way to support them all. However, if they did open the way for discrete individual branding that could go a long way to cover the most competitive athletes. As it stands you get the occasional Phelps who is set, and a lot of broke hopefuls.
Most athletes don't exactly need a lot in the way of infrastructure to train. A marathon takes a lot of space for the event, but training is just some place to run.
Professional athletes work with sports science labs to measure every aspect of their movement and breathing, dieticians to perfect their energy intake, materials science labs for better clothing and footwear, etc to improve their performance. There's a lot more required to get to, and stay at, world class level than just running a lot.
Completely agree, but that is mostly shared infrastructure. Top football players and top rowers can go to the same place to check cardio vascular fitness. Motion studies don't cost a lot extra for the 100th athlete to do them.
Things like the 'shark suit' really don't advance the sport in any way which is also why it was limited in scope.
I think you underestimate the amount of technology and manpower rich countries invest in modern athletes, certainly in the "non-game sports" (things with a start and a finish, plus events such as the long jump or archery, where one competes more against oneself than against the competition, and where the optimal motion sequence can be trained for) and the manpower needed to evaluate measurements.
Fitness and motion analysis are not something they do every few weeks. Endurance athletes have their heart rate measured almost full time, and have lactate measurements taken between set pieces; top sprinters and swimmers have an expert look at video of their starts, turning points, etc. _every training_ so that progress can be tracked and regressions can be caught early; cyclists measure their heart rate and the force they exert on the pedals all the time.
Cameras are cheap nowadays; labor is not. The second athlete may be cheaper than the first, but that curve levels off very quickly. That's why, typically, the big sports have their own training centers, but the smaller sports share infrastructure (if your rowing section has ten persons, sharing infrastructure with canoeists probably is a win; if there are a hundred, that's no longer the case; the canoeists will want slightly different setups for their weight lifting, etc.)
There are ~10,000 athletes going to the Olympics and perhaps 5-10 times as many serious competitors that that did not make the cut for one reason or another. Most of them are not on that kind of a regimen outside of a few national programs or exceptional edge cases.
PS: I have spoken to people in that outer pool from the US it's really dependent on sport and country of origin. But, in the US most people outside of the very top in popular sports have very little backing.
The higher profile athletes already do discreet individual branding, it's just not on their uniform. Given they can build social media profiles nowadays, it's getting better in that respect. Problem is, as you point out, there are a lot of hopefuls on the fringes of making an Olympic team that have minimal appeal to potential sponsors unless and until they break into the big time.
Paying costs those fringe athletes can't possibly manage themselves is where a lot of the federations' money that doesn't filter down to cash payments to the athletes is going.
I was mostly quoting for the last sentence, which seems to directly answer the GP's question. I agree that training facilities and such should certainly be included in that number. However, from a couple paragraphs down, it seems like the USOC interpretation might be a bit broader still:
> The reason there’s a large disparity between what the USOC says it spends on “areas that support athletes” and what the USOC actually pays athletes, Blackmun explained, is because the USOC includes the salaries of many of its employees who work with athletes or raise money for the organization in the larger figure.
The article does point out: "Not many members of Team USA actually train there. In 2012, a study by the Athletes’ Advisory Council — a group of current and former athletes — found that just 13 percent of Olympic Training Center usage went to U.S. Olympians."
That doesn't actually say how much the Olympians use the facilities, but if we accept that relatively few do then the money isn't going where it's intended even when it is spent on infrastructure.
Olympic games were originally for amateurs, but the concept of "full-time amateur athlete" as developed in Eastern Block starting 1950's made this completely ridiculous by 1970's.
Since 1988, the international federations of each sport have been allowed to set the rules for professional participation. For instance, in the largest of global sports, football (soccer), the players can be professionals, but they have to be under 23 years old, with just three over-age players allowed.
this a relatively recent change, 1992. from the basketball "dream team" wiki:
In 1989 FIBA modified its rules allowing professional athletes, such as NBA players, to compete internationally.[8] FIBA agreed in April 1989 to allow professionals to play in the Olympics, despite American and Russian votes against the proposal. USA Basketball asked the NBA to supply players for its 1992 roster;
if 24 years is recent. I just realized that I'm an old man now.
Amateurs, except for the tennis players, the football players, and the bicycle riders. All of which are the big name stars who get paid to compete in other dedicated tournaments. I'm sure there are others too but those are the most promoted sports.
I don't think the ones above get paid for the Olympics though.
There are lots of professionals in other Olympic sports. Track and field, volleyball, swimmers, basketball, sailing, handball, etc. Usain Bolt is definitely a professional athlete (a sprinter) and so is Marina Alabau (a sailor) or Zhang Jike (a table tennis player).
Regarding compensation, it depends on the country, but I think many will get a bonus payment for medals or good performance. But anyway, the real money lies in advertising deals that athletes can get once they become big names (except for countries that have other types of compensation systems, e.g. North Korea).
Why so? The Olympic Games is the main event for professional track and field athletes, for instance, and if you're interested in professional sports - or any sports of absolutely leading edge competition, even when semi-amateur - then Olympics is the big event.
Oh many reasons. It is the most colossal waste of money. It is a horrible IP abuser. Almost everything surrounding it is massively corrupt. Some sports don't deserve to be in because they are not about (or less about) individual athletic performance.
Even if you like the competition those seem like strong reasons not to watch.
I personally think that if you are going to allow finely engineered shoes, poles, javelins, boats, balls, bicycles, then you should allow finely engineered bodies.
I think you have a different idea about what a reward is than athletes do. Being among the best athletes in the world, and being able to just perform their favorite sport is probably the reward to them, otherwise they wouldn't have made it there anyway.
For the same reason a techie might work for a low bug bounty. Or go to a hack-a-thon. Neither pays well, relative to time invested, but the experience itself has value. And there is the prestige earned, which may translate into future earnings. For an athlete, those future earnings could come in the form of future coaching opportunities, etc.
That, and world class athletes are just wired differently than you or me. In addition to the obvious physical gifts, they must share some of the personality traits with politicians and executives - incredible competitiveness, large ego, etc.
> That aside honestly I don't see why anyone would bother to even do it for such low pay.
Aren't athletes routinely given room, board, gear, and free coaching from their governments? Aren't many events mainly for upper-class types anyway (events with horses or expensive winter gear, for example)?
If making a living isn't a concern, prestige is a really nice job perk.
Yeah its not like they are inventing or discovering new science to help humanity. Its just low brow entertainment plus a small benefit for almamacs if you spin it as record breaking.
Im sure coaching / private lessons pay a lot more. Fuck the prestige, its just ego boosting with vampire scum sucker execs really winning anyhow.
"Reward" doesn't always equal money. Yes, of course, receiving money for what one does allows comfortable living, but there are plenty of professions and things people do that are not centered around accumulating money.
The Olympics is just a venue. Its not an employer. Its your home country that would pay you any salary. Often a base salary plus whatever bonus for getting a medal.
From the point of view of what the Olympics were supposed to be about (independently-wealthy amateur athletes competing to be the best amateurs in the world), this actually makes perfect sense: none of the athletes needed to make money, and it is perfectly fine to give a volunteer executive travel expenses commensurate with his station in life.
Given what the Olympics have become, it makes no sense. The sooner they are dropped for good, the better.
That's horrible considering the sacrifices these people have made essentially their entire lives. Training to be Olympic level, basically means giving up your ENTIRE youth to it.
Just because someone sacrifices their lives to do something doesn't inherently make that valuable - there is no society in the world where that is true.
There's a significant argument to be made that the Olympics were originally setup to demonstrate who was the greatest in the activities of the day, and the activities now are no longer relevant.
Classic Olympic events are not much more than stylized version of military training for Hoplite warriors. We may not do the Hoplitodromos[1] any more, but the running, jumping, throwing, lifting events go straight back to infantry training in antiquity.
I understand what you're saying. However for the Olympics, in which you're representing an entire country, with tons of money flooding in, should the athletes not see some of that? I don't see this as any different than professional sports. You could easily argue that Olympic level is above Professional, and a FAR greater commmitment.
The answer is simple: Don't take the deal. Do something else with your life. Until enough people do that, nothing will change.
I see it as a lot like "game programming"; the reason why game programming is the cesspit of our industry is that too many programmers become interested in programming because they played a lot of games and want to make them, thinking that making games is somehow more fun than other sorts of programming. Consequently whereas most people trying to hire programmers report having a hard time finding candidates, the big games companies have people busting down the doors to get in. Whereever you get gross labor oversupply like that, you're going to get the same treatment of labor.
The truth is that the athletes are replaceable cogs. Entire countries can drop out of the Olympics and the Olympics just go on anyhow. Athletes have even less leverage. Find a different dream, or pay the price. There's not much alternative; the odds of the Olympics being changed to pay athletes even a living wage are very, very long. The economics just don't favor it.
This isn't special to the Olympics; this is a general life principle. You get a set of options in life, with probability distributions over the costs & benefits... you don't have all that much power to change the choices. (Sometimes you can "make your own", in some sense, but you don't get much power to change the existing ones. Not... quite... none... but I wouldn't bet much on that.) You need to deal with that, because nobody is going to rescue if you choose a choice that involves costs you didn't really want to pay.
The only thing you're doing is redirecting blame to the athletes, which is the reason this article was written. Clearly athletes know they aren't getting into this to get rich, but I don't think it's unreasonable to provide some type of standard pay that is more than what a kid can make mowing lawns. Farm team players for baseball get paid six figures, and there are a zillion people below them that would play for half.
Sure, they are replaceable, but so are you and most everyone else on this planet. That type of attitude is why things like labor unions were created. To protect themselves from shortsighted remarks like that. Also I don't think there is a "gross labor oversupply" of Olympic level athletes in the world.
The "no one is forcing you to do anything" argument is completely tiring. You hear this for just about everything now, especially in the gaming industry, where companies are finding new ways to release half the product, for twice the price. People are allowed to complain, that's how things change. You don't just go around saying WELL THEN DON'T BUY IT. Maybe we WANT to buy it, but the circumstances are terrible, thus the complaints. But I suppose you've never complained about anything in your entire life. You just accept what you're given, because no one is forcing you to do it.
"But I suppose you've never complained about anything in your entire life. You just accept what you're given, because no one is forcing you to do it."
No, I lived my advice. When I was in high school, I took a sober look at my "dream job" of somehow composing music professionally, realized my talents and skills didn't put me in the requisite top .001% or so to make a decent living at, and switched to something that still brings me great satisfaction, while also letting me make a living. Everything about the subsequent 20 years has convinced me that was a great decision.
The problem with your post is that while you're collecting the emotional feel-goodz of saying something you think virtuous and enjoying the brief frisson of attacking me for saying the badthink, you're offloading the costs of that rather brief and fleeting pleasure onto the Olympic athletes and their significant privations so you can say that. I find it morally abhorrent for people to take brief pleasure in saying things and feeling morally good about it at the cost of other people having to pay the costs of living good chunks of their life in poverty. (See also advocating college while sneering at the idea that one should obtain a marketable skill from it.)
Stop idolizing the Olympics, and people will stop sacrificing their lives to it.
And think about what you're really asking people to do before spouting mindless rah-rah "Follow your dreams!" stuff. It's not consequence-free.
Trust me when I say this, I do not idolize the Olympics, in fact I hate everything about sports in general. I'm looking at this purely as an outsider, and what should be a reasonable compensation for any line of work. Yes, this IS a job for these people.
That's fine that you didn't even attempt to pursue your dreams, but these people ARE the top .001% who made it, and they still DO NOT make a decent living at it. That's the point.
The fact is: roaches get baited, mouses get trapped. Try not to be a cockroach is what jerf is saying. Follow your dreams are fine but dont be a cockroach for someone else's Olympic bug park. Unfortunately these kids are their own worst enemies. Like you mentioned, no union, no bargaining. Just a lot of expendable roaches that are unfortunately ruining it for eachother and competing in sports games with eachother, ironic.
I don't think it's fair to expect most high schoolers to be as clear headed as you were. Many Olympic athletes train since they are kids, before they even know what .001% means.
Given the current popularity of mixed martial arts competitions, and the profitability of professional fighting, I'm surprised that they haven't brought back pankration with IMMAF amateur rules.
I think the missing point behind this argument is that the Olympics are not meant to pay the competitors a salary, much less a living wage. The amateur restrictions mean that Olympic athletes don't get any money directly from the IOC. They may be paid by the national team they compete with or get their own sponsorship deals, but the money given to the IOC was never intended to go to the athletes.
Plus, the Olympics last for a few weeks every two years. And that's assuming your sport is in both the summer and winter events. Most people don't rely on a gig as infrequent as that to make a living. If their sport is popular, they should be able to make enough money by competing in other events outside the Olympics.
Don't get me wrong, I think the IOC and the Olympics is a scam in general. And the fact that the executives are making bank off the sponsorship money is pretty disgusting. But it's unfair to blame the IOC for athletes living in poverty.
Olympic regulations regarding amateur status of athletes were eventually abandoned in the 1990s with the exception of wrestling, where the rules for participation still require amateur status rather than professional status for the safety of the participants. For the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics professionals will be allowed to compete in boxing.
> And that's assuming your sport is in both the summer and winter events
Which none are.
> If their sport is popular, they should be able to make enough money by competing in other events outside the Olympics.
Until fairly recently (and still for wrestling; boxing, IIRC, was another hold out until this Olympics) amateur status requirements prohibited that in most Olympic sports (though a number of countries evaded that, which is what led to the rules being abandoned.)
The amateur restrictions were removed in 1986, and professional athletes have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since then. Hence the 1992 NBA "Dream Team" competing and so on.
I thought indoor sports like basketball were in both. But I guess that's not the case. So basically, you can only participate in the Olympics once every four years if you're lucky.
> I thought indoor sports like basketball were in both. But I guess that's not the case. So basically, you can only participate in the Olympics once every four years if you're lucky.
I enjoy playing sports just fine. And I enjoy some degree of spectator sports -- the more closely tied I am to the community and team, the better.
But some years ago, I made a simple decision: I no longer support any form of professional sports. And, sorry Olympic Committee, but what you have there are professional sports. With all the graft and corruption and self-centeredness I refuse to support.
As for the athletes? It has been quite apparent for considerable time what you're signing up for. And... many people lose their job, their career, every day. Individual, personal appeals are not going to sway me.
I do feel for those who use sports to climb out of disadvantageous situations. However, at this point society needs to find a better solution to this that the "going pro" lottery.
Not like my individual decision is going to lessen their chances, anyway. But if and when society starts to say "enough", maybe society will also find fairer means of providing opportunity.
> For members of Team USA — many of whom live meagerly off the largesse of friends and family, charity, and public assistance
This is not true in Canada, although it's a bit of a secret. I wonder if the reporter is ignorant about the situation in the USA as well.
Olympics hopefuls in Canada get generous stipends from the Federal Government to train all year. The amount they get is $25,000 to $50,000 (Canadian) per year depending on various factors such as their location. It's also apparently tax free; keep that in mind when comparing it to average incomes.
Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of "hopefuls" get these grants in Canada. Only a fraction of them get into the Olympics. It's a semi-secret use of tax payer money (and unnecessary and unfair in my opinion). Not a single person who've I mentioned this to was aware of it!
Source: I know two such hopefuls who got this money. (They didn't get into the Olympics.)
This is true in Brazil as well. Not necessarily considered a "waste" of money, but Olympians are paid somewhat generous grants. It's still hard to qualify, which kind of creates a Catch-22 scenario, but at least hopefuls don't need to live on food stamps.
As someone who knows a couple athletes headed to the Olympics this summer: there is essentially no direct taxpayer support for Olympic athletes in the U.S.
The U.S. Olympic Committee was created by Congress and given exclusive right to the Olympic marks in the U.S. (the rings, flag, name, etc)--that is the extent of the federal govt. support.
Most of the USOC's revenues come from Olympic mark licensing deals, and other corporate sponsorships. There are some personal and foundation grants too. It's all private cash though.
Also, it should be noted that many female athletes hit their peak marketability / competitive age much earlier than men. Not allowing teens to cash in is a travesty. Worse, looking at soccer, the men's team is much better treated than the more profitable women's team.
USWNT is projected to generate $8M more in FY2017. They only generated 2M more the year after they won the World Cup. If you look over the last 4 years the Mens team does far more in ticket sales than the Womens team.
On that note, I do agree that the Womens team should be paid equally, if not more, if only for the reason that their earning power during their career isn't anywhere near what the Mens team.
Let me also point out some of the ticket sale difference can be attributed to inferior venues (the women had to cancel games because of poor turf in 2015), but the point remains they are now generating more money and more profit. They also have worse accommodations (flight and hotel) than the men.
May be I don't get it but how does any sport can lead to "harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society". Sports is nothing but a form of entertainment and it is about money and of course the ego of being "better" than other humans at something.
What I find even more ridiculous is the whole "volunteer at the games" thing. Working for free at a multi-billion dollar event while corrupt politicians and cronies fill their own pockets is baffling.
The masses that contribute the attention that makes advertising attractive would have little idea if you subbed in second tier athletes. Just keep telling human interest stories and praising them for being great.
In fact, we have no way of knowing if that's already happening!
It could very well be that the best athletes are already just going where the money is, and we're getting those that have a burning desire to be in "The Olympics" rather than making a lot of money.
American Ninja Warrior (and the Japanese show that it came from) show some amazing athletes in every contest. If those people trained for the Olympics instead, I think they could be rather good at it. And many of them are just regular people who decided to try this crazy contest. Now that people have started training specifically for Ninja Warrior, the obstacles have gotten a lot harder. This year's are pretty hardcore, IMO.
My wife and I just got into that show again recently. (I prefer the Japanese, honestly, because IIRC they don't waste as much time on human interest stories, but YMMV.)
One of the things that I sort of like about it is that most of them do seem to have jobs and such. Most people aren't IMHO-wrecking their lives to compete. Though the description of what it takes to "walk on" is a bit BS; people literally quitting their job to camp out for a week or two is a problem, ANW, not something to brag about. Most people don't quit their job, but still, that is an awful lot of time to ask people to piss away to show up on your show.
It costs money to get good people to work for you. If you want to see how underpaid workers generates dysfunction just look at most government agencies where "if you're an intelligent hard worker you can walk across the street and double your salary in private industry".
The benefits of gov work such as unfettered job security and good pensions which draw people (although not necessarily talented people) are probably not available with IOC. So without good pay you're left it mostly altruistic reasons (loving sports) or for the 'fun' of it.
IOC needs smart business people like any organization. Running the biggest events in the world smoothly and coordinating a massive organization with thousands of people of different nationalities is hard work.
From that baseline of expectation, the numbers they are putting up (such as $250k for the president) don't seem very high at all.
Pretty bad deal for the athletes. The execs walk out multimillionaires, the athletes walk out broke. Smells like the proper thing to do is go on strike until the money gets spread around a bit more.
I doubt that will work. Just like other prestigious or enjoyable things people do (like photography) there is basically an unlimited supply. The only strike that can work is countries boycotting it.
Also would have been interesting to hear more about these IOC positions, how are the people selected for these roles and how often do they change? I bet the answer is nepotism. FIFA is another rotten nest.
I disagree. The athletes are creating a substantial amount of the value of the Olympic Games and see almost none of it in return. Compare to some major professional sports where athletes receive 50% of revenue. Olympic athletes absolutely deserve their fair share.
The athletes staying poor doesn't bother me. Whatever your sport, there is a pro-option if that's what you want to do.
The construction workers getting cheated of their wages in Sochi, and deported from Russia, however, is an obscenity the IOC should be taken to task for.
I don't know if there is any principle like this, if not I will coin it here...
xlayn principle:
Any organism conformed of several type of different units with one of them capable of political capabilities will transform itself to have a head (read it as president, board of directors, human head as brain, stakeholders, etc) and will transform itself such as that the head become the goal at the expense of the rest of the organism.
e.g.
-head decides to overeat to enjoy the related pleasure
at the expense of other organs in the body
-company shift objective to make money to the board of
directors at the expense of the employees
-humans as the "reason de etre" of the world destroys
every other specie for the sake of their benefit...
-this article...
-corrupt governments
edit: Please let me know if a principle that states this exists.
Only a select few have any leverage at all to bargain for more money (think Husain Bolt and others at his level). But these select few are already profiting big-time from the Olympics via endorsements, etc. So the last thing they want is to put the games at risk.
The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.
Stepping back a bit, there's no reason that anybody should be getting a salary simply because they are one of the very best at their chosen sport. Sports stars command large salaries to the extent that they have dedicated fans. If you compete in a fringe sport, you're not going to have many dedicated fans.
(This is why every top-tier athlete makes more from product endorsements than from their team salary.)
((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))