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This is more than a bit unconvincing. I have all the basketball forwards I need, but Channing Frye isn't living on food stamps. He's not the one people come t

This is more than a bit unconvincing. 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.

Domenic_S 10y ago
> 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?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  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.

Domenic_S 10y ago

> 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?

Bartweiss 10y ago
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.