When the modern Olympic Games began in 1896, in Athens, It was a strictly amateur competition, with zero professional athletes. And, of course, without monetary prizes.
However, in Paris 2024, there are athletes who earn millions of dollars a year and sportsmen who have to do raffles to finance their training.
Olympians can earn money from a wide range of sources, from sponsorships to prize money from their home countries and, for the first time, a prize awarded at the Games themselves.
But not all sports are giving prizes to their athletes, which has caused a great controversy over how best to divide the profits generated by the Olympic Games.
Of the 32 sports taking place at Paris 2024, only two will reward their athletes: boxing and athletics.
World Athletics, the governing body for athletics worldwide, made a surprise announcement shortly before the Paris Olympics: the gold medal winners in athletics events were to be awarded a prize of US$50,000.
And just a few weeks later, the International Boxing Association (IBA, which is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee and has not organised boxing tournaments within the Olympics since Tokyo 2020) announced a prize money of US$100,000 for the gold medallists.
However, IBA clarified that a quarter of the prize money must be given to the boxer’s federation of origin and another quarter to the trainer.
In both sports, silver and bronze medalists will also receive a sum of money, but much less. In boxing, even the fifth-place finisher will receive some money.
The truth is that the award does not come from the authorities of the International Olympic Committee, but from the international federations of both disciplines.
To pay for these prizes, World Athletics is using some of the money it receives from the IOC as part of the economic profits from the Olympic Games.
Previously, this amount was spent on broader athlete development programmes, so some have questioned whether introducing prize money is the right choice.
“The fact that the money goes to the winners perhaps reinforces the idea that the best-known athletes are the ones who get paid,” Tom Bason of Coventry University’s Centre for Business in Society, which specialises in major sporting events, told the BBC.
“Most likely, those who are winning gold medals in athletics whether they have important sponsorship agreements”he adds.
For Bason, this has led to criticism that the money could be better used to develop athletes, with funding going to younger athletes rather than those at the peak of their careers.
But even Olympic champions can benefit from some extra money. In 2017, it emerged that Olga Korbut, one of Russia’s legends of artistic gymnastics who won four gold medals in her career, had to sell three of them for $333,000.
If the source of funding for athletes is the IOC, the source of prize money in boxing is less clear.
The International Olympic Committee decertified the IBA due to “lack of financial clarity” in its operations.
“As always happens with the IBA, it is not clear where the money comes from,” the IOC said in a statement.
“This move to award prizes may be a strategy by the IBA to stay within the Olympic Games and be relevant internationally,” Bason said.
National proud
In Paris 2024, many countries will recognize their medalists with money.
In Latin America, nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia award monetary prizes to Olympic medalists.
For example, Mexico gives a sum close to US$154,000 to the gold medal winners, US$103,000 to the silver medal winners and US$52,000 to the bronze medal winners.
In Colombia the figures are slightly lower: the gold medal winner takes home US$82,000 and the silver medal winner (such as gymnast Ángel Barajas) receives US$42,000.
Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, after her prodigious performance in artistic gymnastics where she won gold in the floor event, will receive nearly US$65,000 from the Brazilian government.
Globally, Singapore is expected to be the nation that gives the most money to its gold medalists.
For example, an Olympic champion from this country will receive around US$750,000.
For the French, the prize money is US$80,000 for each gold medal. The Moroccans hope to win US$200,000.
In the US, gold medalists receive around US$37,000.
And there are other countries, such as the United Kingdom, that do not offer any cash prizes.
Instead, Team GB schedules pre-Games funding and competitors with a high chance of winning gold can receive up to £28,000 a year.
While these figures are by no means negligible, they are nowhere near the amount of money that the most famous athletes can earn.
“At Paris 2024, there’s a real mix of athletes who are receiving significant salaries, like the US basketball team, to athletes who have part-time jobs to fund themselves,” says Bason.
Stars
Spanish golfer Jon Rahm is the highest-paid athlete in Paris 2024 according to the annual list of richest athletes published by Forbes.
The magazine estimates he earned $218 million last year, with most of that money coming from the controversial Saudi-funded LIV Golf tour.
It is no surprise that the second highest paid is one of America’s star basketball players: Lebron James.
He is believed to have earned $128 million.
With the huge sums involved in sports like golf and basketball, competing in the Olympics has likely had little impact on Rahm and James’ incomes.
But for lower-profile athletes, winning a medal can help them get a much-needed boost to their pockets.
Athletes often include a clause in their sponsorship contracts stating that they will receive a bonus from sponsors if they reach the podium.
Typically these clauses are confidential, but during a legal dispute between Nike and New Balance in 2016 it was revealed that American runner Boris Berian was to receive US$150,000 if he won gold at the Olympics.
“I think a lot of people look at athletes, top U.S. athletes or soccer players playing for European teams, and they think that making $100,000 or $200,000 a week is what happens to all athletes, when in fact it’s not,” Bason said.
“There are a lot of athletes who struggle to get ahead. A couple of years ago, there was research done in Australia and it basically found that 40% of athletes currently training for the 2032 Olympics have a full- or part-time job.”
Even in the United States, where many of the world’s richest sports stars live, it is a huge effort for many competitors.
A recent study by the country’s Olympic and Paralympic Committee found that 26.5 percent of its current athletes earn less than $15,000 a year.
Future change
The heated debate over whether handing out prize money to top athletes is the best use of sports federation funds will continue, but is likely to extend beyond athletics and boxing.
“There will certainly be pressure on federations to pay out prize money,” Bason said.
However, this could cause problems for sports that receive less media exposure and therefore less money.
“Athletics and international boxing are two of the highest profile sports in the world,” Bason explains.
He also stressed that these are two of the sports that will find it easier to access additional funding from sponsorships and endorsements.
“And perhaps other sports, such as canoeing, for example, if they are under pressure to pay their athletes, may not be able to do so easily,” warns the expert.
The Paris 2024 Olympic champions will at least be able to take solace in the fact that they are guaranteed a gold medal if they emerge victorious at this year’s Games.
And what is the value of that?
This year’s winner’s medal contains 505 grams of silver and six grams of gold (gold medals have not been made of solid gold since 1912), giving it a gross value of US$950.
But the Paris Olympic champions hope the memories of their victories will prove invaluable.
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