Hacker News Reader

Comment by strommen | Hacker News Reader

The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.

Only a select few have any leverage at all to bargain for more money (think Husain Bolt and others at his level). But these select few are already profiting big-time from the Olympics via endorsements, etc. So the last thing they want is to put the games at risk.

The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.

Stepping back a bit, there's no reason that anybody should be getting a salary simply because they are one of the very best at their chosen sport. Sports stars command large salaries to the extent that they have dedicated fans. If you compete in a fringe sport, you're not going to have many dedicated fans.

(This is why every top-tier athlete makes more from product endorsements than from their team salary.)

((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))

View on HN

> Stepping back a bit, there's no reason that anybody should be getting a salary simply because they are one of the very best at their chosen sport.

Indeed. They should be getting a salary because they provide the extremely rare talent (developed through incredible effort and dedication) that makes the multi-billion dollar business that is the Olympics possible to begin with.

The reason they do not get it is very similar to what you see in other fields like science and art: because the sociopaths that run our society know very well how to take advantage of the love that talented people have for their respective fields.

The extremely rare talent is not what makes the Olympics possible. The marketing machine (which is run by the executives) are what make it possible.

The top 100 athletes in every sport could sit out the Olympics, and the TV ratings and corporate sponsorship would take only a slight dip.

Well, that's happening in golf this year so we'll see how it goes.

Got any links about that? I haven't heard anything.

That is all fine and dandy, except that what really makes the Olympics-as-media-circus possible is tax payer money.

Given that it is not a free market operation to being with, but rather a money extraction operation based on political pull, we could do without the supply and demand lessons.

It would be interesting to ask the tax payers if they think that executives deserve to take home all of their money while the athletes that they actually enjoy watching get none of it.

The IOC's revenue isn't tax revenue, it's sponsorship revenue[1] Same goes for Team US: as the article itself points out, one of the reasons the US Olympic athletes are so poor is because unlike many other countries the US teams' budget isn't topped up by the tax payer (but is topped up by a bunch of sponsorship salespeople who bring in more money than they get paid but expect close-to-market compensation in return). And yes, like any free market organization, the management and the salespeople are better compensated than the people who are just really, really glad to be there.

If everyone on the IOC executive worked for free without any access to their expense accounts there still would be barely anything left for each individual athlete just for competing, especially if like Team USA their local government wasn't prepared to subsidise things either. So it's really nothing to do with monopoly power either. Olympic athletes are poorly compensated because there are an awful lot of them, and most of them only get a few minutes (sometimes only a few seconds) exposure at the highest level per decade in front of audiences that enjoy watching other sports on a weekly basis

As for the athletes people enjoy watching well enough to know their name and buy their preferred hair gel, the free market means they're compensated pretty well for their brand in individual sponsorship deals. Trouble is, there aren't many Olympians that are household names, especially the ones that really need the money.

[1]sure, local taxpayers often end up underwriting an Olympics after the planners overspend on infrastructure, but that's nothing to do with what goes into the IOC president's expense account, or indeed what the athletes get

but that's nothing to do with what goes into the IOC president's expense account

It does actually, unfortunately: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/may/11/tokyo-olympic-...

That's the story of a massive bribe [allegedly] paid to an individual rather than the source of the IOC's funding though. It was never likely to be directed to the part of the Olympic movement that most needed it.

Actually, I suspect that part of the justification for the IOC executives' lavish officially-sanctioned, sponsorship-funded expense accounts is to limit the ability of bidding nations to curry favour with less obviously corrupt "free hospitality" arrangements that apparently were common in the 90s. (You're less likely to feel obliged towards someone for the offer of free flights and a five star hotel for your fact finding mission if you could charge it to your Amex card anyway) Whether it actually works is another question...

Are you saying the high paid executives cannot be replaced themselves? That if you tried, the Olympics would be less successful?

The people watching make it possible. Stop watching and marketers might spend less or ratings might disappear or be counterfeit.

No, marketing machines need something to market; you can't sell pieces of shit to people no matter how many ads you run.

Over-estimating the power of marketing is a time-honored tradition among developers and engineers. Ironically, they also tend to view marketers as clods without any real skills. Weird divergence there. But I digress.

What is the marketing message of the Olympics? That the world's best athletes are competing against each other. If that is obviously and demonstrably not true, then the marketing fails. Contrary to popular belief, customers actually are not bad at sniffing out BS in their preferred products.

"The top 100 athletes in every sport could sit out the Olympics, and the TV ratings and corporate sponsorship would take only a slight dip."

Might not work. Remember the XFL? Arena football with lousy, underpaid players. Canceled after one season.

>They should be getting a salary because they provide the extremely rare talent

Supply and demand. The Olympics is the only place that cares about their rare talent. It's not like they can shop around for a better offer.

It's not an extremely rare talent. Virtually anyone can run/swim/play games. It's an arms race. Every one trains hard because others train hard.

None of them are inherently amazing. They just work a lot.

If no-one bothered training we'd still have an Olympics, it'd just be slower.

I've phrased this as, "Regardless of the increased salary in the NFL over the last 40 years, they're still only producing one super bowl winner every year. On a per team basis, production has actually gone down."

Yours is a perspective that effectively renders the term "talent" meaningless.

That's kind of the consensus modern psychology and trainers are coming to. Some kids just have a drive that others don't, and that is what determines how well they do.

The major difficulty with the idea of "natural talent" is that every time someone points to a skill/whatever and says, "this is natural talent" someone else finds a way to teach that skill. Here is one paper: http://talentdevelop.com/articles/ITROM.html

So if you trained hard enough you could run the 100m as fast as Bolt?

"Body shape" isn't what people usually mean by 'talent', and I doubt you define it that way either; but if you want to define talent to mean body shape, I will happily concede that talent is important.

> "Body shape" isn't what people usually mean by 'talent'

"Talent" is usually a catch-all for innate features distinct from trained features. ("Body shape" has both innate and trained elements.)

Merriam Webster defines talent as a special ability that allows someone to do something well. I agree with that definition. Usain Bolt is a naturally talented runner.

You said

>The major difficulty with the idea of "natural talent" is that every time someone points to a skill/whatever and says, "this is natural talent" someone else finds a way to teach that skill.

Can anyone be trained to run as fast as Bolt or would they have to be naturally talented in the first place to be trainable?

Generally, the notion that people should accept less pay because they live their work is bullshit, and the lines of work that engage in and encourage this kind of reasoning are exploitative. Period.

We see this same dynamic in many lines of graduate education as well, a huge oversupply of students competing over a very long period of time for a tiny number of academic and research positions, and occasionally partying through the nose for the opportunity. And like the Olympics, the biggest payouts are for the management class, whose main tasks seem to be further commercializing the whole edifice. This commercialization happens to be synonymous with expanding exploitation of those lowest on the ladder (Mo labor Mo profits) and expanding the ranks of the managing class for their business school bros from the ivies.

(Pretty similar dynamics also appear in the non profit sector, fwiw.)

No.

The IOC retains all the mind-share of the 'Olympic Spirit,' for lack of better terms. A curling competition on NBC will draw 0 viewers (and 0 money) ((estimating)). A curling event in the Olympics draws viewers because and only because it is 'The Olympics.' Take 'The Olympics' out of every esoteric event and you'll quickly see how little viewership it'll get.

I guess that depends on what sports your country enjoys. Here in Canada curling championships get a pretty wide viewership (but the money isn't great).

Olympics destroy the economies of the cities they play in. This article shows just the insane amount of salary at the top get. These are people who are literally the top of human form and athleticism. The Olympics entertain the planet and bring in insane amounts of money and have insane trademark enforcement.

If I make over $100k for sitting on my ass all day writing software, then certainly these people deserve far more than they're getting. They shouldn't need to depend on additional endorsements/advertising money. Just by making it to the Olympics, they should get a decent amount, and those bastards at the top can afford to get a little less...shaving a few $100k here and there and distribute it.

Kirk to Spock: "They're still using money. We need to get some."

...

Gillian: "Don't tell me they don't use money in the 23rd century."

Kirk: "Well, we don't."

eh..a little off topic, but I still want to comment on it. :-P Star Trek's utopia has a couple of major important technologies:

* Removal of energy scarcity - dilitium is mined off planets, by robots and provides cheap limitless energy

* Replicators - Controlling the atom to the point where we can make exact duplicates. If everyone can replicate a Rembrandt, the original no longer has its insane value. There's no wait to authenticate if something is "real" or "original" Some people prefer "real" food, even realizing the difference is pretty much all in their heads. All basic things can be copied and only the very complex can't be duplicated (like Lt Commander Data's brain).

So in such a universe, an athlete gets everything a regular earth citizen gets, and visa-versa. It doesn't matter if you're in Star Fleet or choose to bus tables in a restaurant, you get the same type of living accommodation, and you can live or work anywhere thanks to transporters and limitless energy. People choose the jobs they want. Star Fleet isn't a military operation and you can resign at any time. In this world, a lot of useless jobs would go away .. Olympic committee trademark enforces for example.

The whole thing breaks down terrible in some episodes. In DS9, Sisko's dad owns a restaurant with a bus boy. Someone chooses to be that bus boy .. for no money. Maybe if the writers used a robot bus boy?

I think the whole thing breaks down with holodecks. Why would anyone put up with reality with virtual reality is so real? The propaganda budget must be huge, to convince people that there is value in serving real-life society (and the Federation) to prevent society from being wiped out by an external force.

Because getting time scheduled in a holodeck is really tough. They must have a high energy requirement or something.

From what I know of nerds, the Federation would need to have an entire corps of cops that specifically watch out for self-replicating replicators and home-made holodecks built without "safety" interlocks or content restrictions.

The Starfleet holodecks are just scarce because the operating code and hardware has to be formally validated and certified as safe for use in Starfleet vessels and installations. It's like how a GPS device is really cheap, until you want one permanently installed in an aircraft cockpit. Even then, malicious code (Moriarty, if I recall correctly) could break out of the holodeck sandbox and compromise connected systems.

Maybe there's some system of kudos that isn't addressed in canon. Like in The Algebraist. Working as a bus boy ups your rep and makes it more likely you get to run a restaurant or viewed highly. Perhaps there's a large contingent of "NEETs" that just hang out in holodecks all day. But society frowns on that and encourages doing _something_. Perhaps there's lots of places with robo bus boys, but it's far more prestigious

Also, at one point, there's mention of "teleporter credits" as an explanation of why going off to academy caused homesickness -- couldn't teleport on demand. Even in the Culture, citizens had to show their capability quite a bit to design a part of an orbital. They couldn't even get their own ships on demand.

Trademark enforcement would probably be one of the things kept in a post scarcity society, if there was any system of reputation left! Being an X(TM) athlete comes with prestige so you wouldn't want someone else to be able to endow that prestige at will.

It breaks down further than that. Get a transporter lock on the uneaten food and dirty dishes and just de-replicate it from a distance. The "robot" busboy is never seen, except as transporter-effect vanishings of plates and leftovers.

But if consistency is your thing, you could retcon the whole thing by making the busboy an in-restaurant hologram. It would be like the emergency hologram doctor, except the hologram busboy would just be an artistic feature. In the Star Trek economy, you are paid in public appreciation for your talents. The richest person in the Federation is the one who has the most fans and followers.

So without scarcity, a lot of people would give away their holographic models and software, for the prestige of "holographic restaurant busboy reaches one million downloads!" It wouldn't really be any more complicated than visiting Nexusmods to get a modded Fallout or Skyrim NPC companion with full dialogue and bonus companion quest.

If the busboy is a character that also interacts outside the restaurant, that was just the guy who scanned his own likeness and programmed a facsimile of his own personality to make the busboy hologram. His real job isn't bussing tables, it's making it look like restaurant tables are being bussed instead of serviced remotely by transporter/replicator/hologram technology.

Does that make you feel better about the guy who does menial labor in a scarcity-free economy?

Seriously, have you even looked at the economics? There are 10,200 people at the Olympics. Cutting a handful of overpaid executives on Team USA isn't even going to begin to scratch the surface of paying them a decent living, never mind the many who don't make it.

Let's assume that the total revenue (not profit) for a 4 year Olympics stretch is 4 billion US dollars. The article shows that the annual revenue is 1.375 billion, but we'll drop the 375 million dollars as expenses (and to make the math easier), and we'll consider a 4 year stretch since some years are going to be lower revenue than others.

Now let's say that they give 50% of that to athletes. That's 2 billion US dollars @ 500 million US dollars per year. Split between the 10,200 people, that you quoted above, gives about $200k per 4 years, or about $50k per year.

So no, cutting the salary of a handful of executives is not going to help, but that's not really the whole story.

So.......where do all those billions in revenue go?

That's the question right?

By law, they are not required to answer that question, so we have no way of knowing. Other than not directly to the athletes.

Sure, your maths leaves $50k per athlete that actually competes in the Summer Olympics. But four years out, you're not certain who makes the team[1], so that money ends up split between the pool of athletes competing for each slot, which is quite a bit larger, particularly if your Olympic organization is trying to subsidise teenagers that might be the next generation of Olympians out of that same budget, and probably Winter Olympians as well[2]. So the idea that stipends to athletes might max out at $20k (as the article highlights for the US) starts to look quite reasonable even before we talk about the cost of sports coaches (lots of specialists and one-to-one coaching) and sports scientists, physios, masseurs, velodromes and other highly specialist venues, training camps, competitive trials, flights etc. On that basis, just as well that many national Olympic teams can top up their meagre Olympic allowances with sponsorship revenue, revenue from their own sporting events and government and lottery money.

[1]the ones you are sure will make the team barring serious injury are probably the ones most likely to have a decent sponsorship deal and not need the money so badly [2]Not sure whether the Winter Olympians factor into the article's revenue numbers or what their competitor numbers are like, but they're surely even more expensive sports to properly train for...

you're not certain who makes the team

I'm not sure the IOC should be responsible for any potential competitors vs actual competitors. Even if it's only limited to those actually competing in the games, and only given out after competing, then that's a lump sum of $200k which they weren't getting before.

As for the stipends given out by USOC for Team USA, those are specifically for the US, and there appears to be no information on how much of that stipend originates from the IOC as compared to sponsorships obtained by from the USOC directly. Even then, most countries do not pay stipends that come even close to $20k US dollars. In many places, if the athletes got a full $200k for participating in the games, it would set them up for a very long time (if not for life).

As for the cost of sports coaches, training locales, etc, there's a whole 50% of revenue left over specifically to help pay for those costs (on top of local OC's). As noted in the article, professional US-based organizations, such as the NFL, generally share 50% of the revenue with athletes. Those organizations also have many of the same types of costs, but still are able to maintain an approximate 50/50 ratio.

More to the point, "have you even looked at the economics?". Yes. The conclusion that I have is that there is huge gulf between, (and using the USOC specifically here), USOC's claimed 90% spending and the article's "6 percent in cash payments" to athletes. So it's not clear cut that direct benefits to athlete's couldn't be raised, and substantially.

If you deign to consider the possibility that providing the infrastructure and training to 10,200 people in dozens of sports in 200 countries on a 1bn annual budget might actually result in a higher level of overheads per competitor than training ~100 footballers at a single club with a $2bn annual budget, it becomes a bit more obvious why athletes get a smaller share of the pie in cash payments than participants in high profile team sports, even without the whole amateur ethos.

Funnily enough, a good friend of my brother's did spend 6-8 years of his life dedicating himself to getting ready for his first Olympics, going into debt in order to do so. Upon gaining a bronze medal he used the sponsorship windfall to cancel his debts and buy a house. I suspect if I suggested to him that the British Olympic team should have cut back on facilities or charged him for training and pushed him deeper into debt in order to ensure there was a moderate-sized lump sum waiting for him in the year he finally started being able to get money from commercial sources, I'd get a very weird look.

((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))

I agree with much of your post, but it seems to me that NBA players make the highest salaries because the structure of the game and the level of competition put them in such high demand relative to supply.

NBA rosters are small, and only 5 players are on the court for each team at any time. There's also a huge drop-off in competitive performance[1] as you move down the bench from the elite players. Unlike the NFL, which has a substantial reserve of "replacement level" talent from college ball, there aren't that many folks who could play basketball at an NBA level and not be totally exposed. That's similar to baseball players, who are also among the most highly paid, even though there are more positions and rosters are bigger: There just aren't that many athletes out there who can bat above .200 against Major League-class pitching.

[1] http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2016_leaders...

Basketball is pretty unique, in that essentially relies on abnormally tall people. When you put that as a requirement in front of the many others you need to be successful in the NBA, it becomes clear why the field is so thin.

You see a few other places with similar fields though, like the absolute bleeding edge of traditional ballet, or some gymnastic events.

The classic case I always hear is jockeys too. It's not that odd, every sport is getting very specialized in athlete selection, in fact there's a great TED by David Epstein[0] talk about this kind of thing.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_...

Gymnasts as well have similar size limitations in some cases. I know my one friend growing up was pretty much devastated when she grew to 5'8" (~170cm if my head conversion is close)

She said that being too tall made the balance beam harder as you had more chance to hit your head. I think been a while so anyone can correct me.

The taller you are, the much much harder it gets to rotate the body end over end.

I'm not even that tall and I learned that growing up, learning just how to do a front flip on a trampoline was tough being a "lerpy" kid.

More like 172... another issue are the longer limbs that require more strenght to balance the body

Jockeys are an interesting example, because women compete successfully alongside men, at very high levels. In that sense horse racing is among the least sexist of professional sports.

British Olympic medal winning cyclist Victoria Pendelton is now competing as a jockey.

At London 2012's Olympics she set a world record in the Team Sprint, got silver in the Match Sprint and gold in Keirin.

The irony here is that Olympic Keirin is derived from a Japanese/Korean betting sport, which is basically horse racing. But with people.

This explanation sounds believable, but I think it's important to mention the basic math of the salary cap:

NFL salary cap is $155M across 53 players = $3M/player

NBA salary cap is $95M across 14 players = $6.7M/player. But actually it is a soft cap so the teams can spend a lot more in extreme cases.

MLB has no salary cap.

Sure, but the salary cap (or lack thereof) isn't decreed from on high, it's the result of a nominally market-based negotiation between each players union and the corresponding league. If NFL players thought they could push the salary cap to $200M without killing the golden goose, they'd do it.

I have a hard time calling the result of negotiations between the single cartel of teams and the single (probably less-skilled) cartel of players a market.

> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.

> The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.

This line of argument is what enables corporations, advertisers and governments to exploit athletes and the tax-payers of host countries to the tune of billions every year. Same as how the NCAA exploits college athletics.

> ((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))

The highest salaries among U.S. athletes are earned by baseball players, and it's not even close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_sports_contrac...

> The highest salaries among U.S. athletes are earned by baseball players, and it's not even close

If you sort by average per year it isn't quite as clear cut as that. Excluding the first 3 outliers (2 Ferrari F1 drivers and Floyd Mayweather) the next 10 highest paid athletes per year are split roughly 50-50 baseball and basketball.

There are more baseball players on the list in total than basketball players, but I'd argue it is because there are ~750 total MBA players and only ~450 NBA players.

I think you probably have to account for the relative sizes of basketball arenas and baseball stadiums (>2x) reducing the overall ticket revenue for NBA. TV rights might be comparable among the major sports, but revenue share breaks down on the number of seats and that can't be compensated by ticket prices (NBA avg: ~1.2x MLB).

NBA players aren't on that list because their contracts are limited to 5 years, and to a maximum salary. And the truly elite players sign short contracts, because the max salary goes up over time.

Mean NBA salary is ~$6M, compared to ~$4M for MLB - despite league revenue per player being roughly equal.

TL;DR : Imagine if you had a non-profit soup kitchen but charged the homeless to buy your soup. That is a sports NGO.

The salary of the Executive Director of USA Swimming is $1-millon-plus dollars a year from an organization that pulls in about $41-million annually from donations and otherwise.

http://www.usaswimming.org/_Rainbow/Documents/37308384-90d5-...

The salary for a USA Olympic Swimmer, if they sign on to do fund raising events and make appearances for the organization is about $70,000 — About 55-swimmers are chosen for the Olympic team every four years. They are not paid that salary when they are not on the national team.

Though the athletes love the sports they do sport NGOs are making tranches of money of the backs of children and athletic teams who are force to "pay tribute" and competition fees just so they can get a chance to realize a dream that is harder to obtain than becoming an Academy Award winning actor or a CEO of a billion dollar company.

> Husain Bolt

Usain. No leading H.

http://usainbolt.com

D'oh! Thanks! Too late to edit my comment though...

I agree that, for a majority of the athletes, it is about the spirit of competition. But if the Olympics are about the spirit of competition for some, it should be the same for all. And when I say "for all", I really mean for the executive who sits back and get a large salary from the municipal/advertisement money pumped into Olympics.

> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.

I really don't buy this argument. Why should anyone ever deserve less than his or her fair share? This might make sense if there really weren't much revenue being generated, and the executives were not lining their pockets with millions, but in this case it is simple exploitation.

> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.

Once you started allowing pro players into the Olympics, that went out the window (although calling any Olympic athlete an "amateur" is kind of a misnomer ...).

While people didn't like seeing "amateur" US teams lose to "professional" Soviet teams, allowing pro players into the Olympics robs people of the emotional impact of things like "The Miracle on Ice".

Predicted before clicking this link that I would see, at the top, a typical libertarian excuse of this situation. Was not disappointed.

>This is also why NBA players earn...

I think basketball stars earn so much because an individual player has a huge impact on team results (relative to hockey, baseball or football).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com