We are in the final week of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games and business stories are plentiful. From the historical cost of the Games for host cities to Rapper Flavor Flav sponsoring the USA Women’s Polo Team after their captain took to social media to ask for support, there is a lot of money surrounding the Olympics. Let’s take a look at the money from an athlete’s perspective.
Amateur status no longer needed
For the long history of the Olympic Games, it was a firm rule that the Games were for amateur athletes, not professional ones. Athletes who accepted money for playing or accepted endorsements as athletes were essentially shunned from the Olympics. For example, Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States, had the two gold medals he won in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon stripped from him when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) discovered he had been paid a marginal amount for two summer seasons of minor-league baseball a couple of years prior. Despite the small amount of money and it being a different sport than he won his medals for, the IOC denied his appeal and removed his wins from the record book.
Thorpe wasn’t the only athlete impacted by the amateur rule, but the IOC refused to alter its code stating in 1955 that “We can only rely on the support of those who believe in the principles of fair play and sportsmanship embodied in the amateur code in our efforts to prevent the Games from being used by individuals, organizations or nations for ulterior motives.” By this, they meant the Games should not be a way for athletes or countries to make money.
However, that all changed in 1986 when the IOC committee finally changed its charter to welcome “all the world’s great male and female athletes to participate,” regardless of amateur status. This change came for a variety of reasons including the argument that many believed some Olympic athletes were being fully supported by their governments to train and compete and thus were de facto professionals anyway. Many athletes celebrated the change and it paved the way for professional athletes to earn a living from their sport without having to pass on competing at the Olympics.
How much do medalists earn?
How much an athlete makes from winning a coveted medal at the Olympics is completely dependent on the country they represent. This is because the IOC does not award prize money to the athletes, but rather each country’s Olympic committee decides how much they will award medalists for representing their country at the Games. For example, Team USA athletes will be awarded $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze. This pales in comparison to athletes from Singapore who will be awarded about $1 million Singapore dollars for gold medals (equivalent to about $745,000 USD). However, to add some context to those numbers, the 2024 U.S. Olympic team consists of 593 athletes compared to Singapore’s 23.
Additionally, in a move to empower all athletes regardless of origin country and to ensure a portion of the Olympic profits are given back to the athletes that make the Games what they are, World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics, announced this year that they would be awarding gold medalists in all track and field events $50,000 for their wins at the 2024 Paris Olympics. World Athletics receives a portion of its funding from the IOC.
This marks the first time an international federation will be directly paying athletes at the Olympics. And with 48 track and field events, that amounts to $2.4 million earmarked for the event. World Athletics hopes to expand the prize money to include silver and bronze medalists at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
