A javelin thrower isn't making much money? I'm sorry, but I have all the javelin throwers in my life that I need. Not that I would have seen him on tv anyway since it isn't gymnastics, swimming, men's basketball or a track final with an American contending for gold.
Sure this level of performance is amazing, it's just not valuable.
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.
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?
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.
What value is that to me, exactly? I watch the Olympics and willingly tolerate the ads to see the Olympians, not to watch the IOC. The only stand-alone revenue generating value in this equation is the athletes' performances, that is the main attraction. The IOC organizes and captures that value, some of it for it's own benefit, but what value do they bring to the table?
> Sure this level of performance is amazing, it's just not valuable.
If it had no value, why do you think it is included in the Olympics at all? You seem to suggest that because you don't like javelin, then nobody should. You're confusing less popular with zero attraction, and the logical conclusion to that is the the Olympics should consist of exactly one sport and no more. But, obviously there are lots of Olympic sports, and all but one of them are less popular than something else. The fact of the matter is that every single one of them is valuable as an Olympic sport, every single one of them generates value and has sponsors and has competitors who train to be the best in that sport every single day.
In the most market/libertarian sense you are right: athletes in highly visible sports do seem to make a lot more than those in not-visible sports. Market forces at work.
However, the salaries of the brass are made up off money made in television deals and other promotions. Network effects do have an impact on the size of the pie. So even the javelin matters if only for the size of the pie. It wouldn't be the Olympics with only soccer, it would be the World Cup.
I'm a big fan of an obscure sport: wrestling. I have attended events, bought t-shirts and otherwise supported US wrestlers directly or indirectly.
And yet, the Olympics is still the biggest stage for these guys because having that gold is a level of prestige that can't be earned anywhere else. It's an all or nothing gambit for the athletes, but the Olympics is the only group offering up even that much.
If people really want the javelin guy and the trampoline dude to make a living, they should attend/watch events other than the olympics.
tl;dnr -- There is virtually no value in a swimming event. There is a large value in an olympic swimming event. The athletes are the same in both. The venue brings the value.
Replace the olympics with the world championships and suddenly nobody is watching (in most of these sports). You remember how great that 2015 world championship in swimming was, right? It was all over tv, right?
People care about the olympics far more than they care about the athletes.
Yes I know men's basketball and a few others are exceptions, but they're also the ones nobody is worried about being paid.
Don't make the mistake of confusing, olympics - the event with the organizers. Swap the organizers of the Olympics with that of the World Championship and no one is going to notice any difference. Swap Usain Bolt with some other guy and the race becomes meaningless. Swap any executive with another and no one gives a shit. The Olympics are primarily about the athletes and nominally about the executive officers. Nobody gives a shit about them - I can understand officials making 50K$ the year of the Olympics but I don't understand why they need to be paid any more than that. They have organized terribly in Rio and one exec can be swapped for another and no one would care.
> Don't make the mistake of confusing, olympics - the event with the organizers. Swap the organizers of the Olympics with that of the World Championship and no one is going to notice any difference. Swap Usain Bolt with some other guy and the race becomes meaningless. Swap any executive with another and no one gives a shit.
Er, the World Championships of any sport that is also in the Olympics generally consists of the same pool of athletes, and the same bureaucrats in the sport-specific governing body. What differs is: (1) The Olympics also have Olympic bureaucrats, (2) Scheduling, (3) Name of the event ("Olympics" vs. "World Championship").
I say the same thing about every sport, but the companies behind them all keep raking in money.
IOC gets the money because they're the ones pimping out the talent, the same as every professional group behind every sport.
Floyd Mayweather made a quarter of that by himself last year... after everyone else including his opponents, the venues, the promoters and the administrators had taken their cut.
Floyd Mayweather didn't make all this money because boxing doesn't have its share of pimps. He made it because his performance is hugely more valuable (and more effectively commercially exploited[1]) than any individual Olympic sport, including the Olympic boxing he used to participate in.
[1]not entirely the IOC's fault: I can't see pay-per-view Olympics working out profitably for Usain Bolt, never mind the participants in the sailing or archery heats
The IOC also puts on an event every two years. Boxers box a little more frequently.
I assume you're not seriously suggesting the main reason individual Olympic events don't realise anywhere close to that much revenue is more down to the quality of the promoters than the commercial appeal of the individual event.
I have seen all the executives in my life that I need.
Sure this level of organizational failure at Rio is awful and can be easily improved by firing the executives and hiring cheaper executives that can organize events better. I just don't see what value the executives bring to the table.
Satisfying demand is not the same thing as providing value.
That's the tragedy here. Not that athletes want to take money from the IOC, but that the IOC has been taken from the athletes.