Forbes puts a business spin on the Olympics with training costs
- Tom Van Riper
Forget the tourism bucks. Forbes found another business angle for the winter Olympics: training costs for families.
Consulting the sports associations for each sport and the United States Olympic Committee, sports business writer Tom Van Riper came up with a figure on the training costs – by sport – for Olympians in the making. Before athletes make the national team – when those organizations begin to pick up the tab — families bear the brunt of these costs.
For families with budding Evan Lysaceks or Michelle Kwans, the tab can come to $100,000 over a decade or more for “private ice time, coaching, custom-made dresses and skates, travel and various competition fees,” Tom writes. “Looking for a bargain? Try curling.” It costs under $1,000 a year.
Today’s Tip: Consider all the costs involved.
For example, when measuring the costs of events such as trade shows, don’t just include the booth fee and transportation costs. You also have to consider the training and staffing costs.
This principle works in other areas as well. For instance, blogger Bill McBride computes the actual taxpayer cost of the Cash-for-Clunkers program at $7,200 per car.
And here are some more business angles to mine on the Olympics from blogger Melissa Preddy:
- Sports, tourism, fans .. all good angles for the Olympics
- Mining local money angles from the Winter Olympics
And while we’re on the business of sports, check out our free workshop on March 10 in Indianapolis on “Investigating the Business of College Athletics” with Pulitzer winner Buzz Bissinger. We hope to live-stream the daylong event on BusinessJournalism.org, so stay tuned.
