Prize Money at the Olympics

[Sylvia]

Associated Press article by James Ellingworth (April 10, 2024):

Track and field becomes first sport to pay prize money at Olympics. Paris gold medalists get $50,000

Track and field is set to become the first sport to award its own prize money at the Olympics.

apnews.com

Track and field is set to become the first sport to introduce prize money at the Olympics, with World Athletics saying Wednesday it would pay $50,000 to gold medalists in Paris.
The move is a symbolic break with the amateur past of the Olympics in one of the games’ most-watched events.
The governing body of athletics said it was setting aside $2.4 million to pay the gold medalists across the 48 events on the track and field program for this year’s Paris Olympics. Relay teams will split the $50,000 between their members. Payments for silver and bronze medalists are planned to start from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe told reporters that the move is meant “to recognize that the revenue share that we receive is in large part because our athletes are the stars of the show.”
The prize money will come out of the share of Olympic revenue that that the IOC distributes to World Athletics.
However, the move could upset the balance of power in the Olympic movement ahead of the Paris Games. Coe said World Athletics only gave the International Olympic Committee “a heads-up” of its intentions on Wednesday morning, shortly before it published its announcement. The IOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the World Athletics plan.

 

[ninjapirate]

Interesting that this comes right after this...

The No. 1 complaint athletes have about the Olympic movement is that they can’t make money.

Meet the International Olympic Committee-disapproved Friendship Games, coming this September in Russia: 36 sports, 21 venues, 17 in Moscow, four in Ekaterinburg (including track and field Sept. 18-22).

Total prize money, across all sports: $100 million. Winners get $40,000. Second place, $25,000. Third, $17,000.

In a world of disruption, the Olympics confronts the World Friendship Games | 3 Wire Sports

The No. 1 complaint athletes have about the Olympic movement is that they can’t make money. Meet the International Olympic Committee-disapproved Friendship Games, coming this September in Russia: 36 sports, 21 venues, 17 in Moscow, four in Ekaterinburg (including track and field Sept. 18-22). Tota

www.3wiresports.com

Not paying the athletes is one of the biggest vulnerabilities of the Olympics.

[edit]

There's also this: https://enhanced.org/pay-athletes/

And the recent happenings with the NCAA.

Losing talent to other sports could also be a factor.

Sebastian Coe, World Athletics president, highlighted the need to share revenues with the athletes who help make the Games a global spectacle and emphasised the importance of retaining talent at a time when elite competitors in other sports such as football and basketball command millions of dollars a year in salary.
...

“It’s really important that . . . we create a sport that is financially viable for our competitors,” he told journalists on a call.

Athletics federation to pay gold medal winners $50,000 at Olympics

Allocation of $2.4mn for Paris Games prompts concern over erosion of event’s spirit of amateurism

www.ft.com