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Why the greatest athletes don't get paid like it
- Olesya000 2y ago[dead]
- kaptainscarlet 2y agoLike everything, the 80-20 rule applies. The top 20 percent earn 80% of the income
- bowsamic 2y agoI still don't quite get what the exact limits on who can compete are. I was reading the Olympic rulebook, and there are a bunch of very strict rules on who can't compete, based on the general principle that the competitors be amateurs. But just preceding those rules there is a paragraph saying (paraphrased) "these rules can be ignored by the officials so long as the spirit of only amateurs is preserved". Yet, it turns out that tennis was not part of the Olympics for years because the International Tennis Federation was against the rules regarding amateurs. So in 1988 they brought it back with absolutely zero restrictions, meaning any tennis player in the world can play at the Olympics, including professionals. Does anyone happen to have a list of which sports in the Olympics totally ignore this rule, in addition to tennis?
- mantas 2y agoBasketball stopped enforcing it for 1992 olympics. Then NBA ban was lifted and US dream team became a thing. Basketball professionals ban was a bit weird too. NBA was banned, yet all the euro pro leagues were fine.
- vanattab 2y agoI think only wrestling and boxing are the only amateur only sports remaining and I think boxing is allowing pros in the next Olympics.
- vanattab 2y agoEdit: actually boxing started allowing pros in 2016
- docdeek 2y agoRoad cyclists (almost all male, and many female) are professionals these days. There used to be seperate World Championship titles for Amateur and Professional cyclists on the road but these have long since disappeared in favor of elite + U23 titles.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cs702 2y agoIt's true that most Olympic athletes are paid nothing, barely make ends meet at home, and are largely ignored by sponsors/advertisers. The OP argues that the reason for this is that the Olympic Committee doesn't do more for athletes. As the OP puts it, "everybody is sort of left to their own device." I'm not so sure. A more plausible explanation is that audiences care more about some sports than others, so income will always flow to the stars in those sports.
- mantas 2y agoFun topic reading from afar. Here very few olympic athletes get sponsors. And even sponsored ones frequently still have to work for a living. But then still compete with sponsored athletes from US and sometimes even win. Sponsorship ain’t a silver bullet.
- brabel 2y agoYou will only make money if there's a mass of people willing to spend money to see you, and they need to be able to do that regularly. Brands will only sponsor you if you show up on the news wearing their brand often. I don't think there's a lot of triathlon events around and people willing to pay good money to watch them. And those events usually have minor media coverage. I think that the only solution here is to focus on those sports which people actually want to watch. Unless your priority is not to give people something to enjoy but to get medals and international reputation, in which case yeah, the Government should cover the bill, not sure if that's what this article is trying to get at?
- synicalx 2y agoI mean, at the end of the day despite their enormous athletic achievements it's hard not to view nearly all traditional Olympic sports as a hobby. They're typically quite mundane things, and they're never going to attract a regular audience of any real size. Things like basketball and tennis are successful outside of the Olympics because people like watching them, but its pretty hard to get excited about watching someone throwing an object exactly one, or running for 11 seconds once every 4 years.