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Comment by thewizardofaus | Hacker News Reader

I think it's important to be realistic with your dreams and expectations for them.

I am an 'elite athlete'. I compete in one of the oldest sports/events in history.

I am top 3 in the country and top 60 in the world.

My dream is to be a full-time athlete and represent my country at the 2024 Olympics and also many Major international competitions.

Unfortunately, I will never make a 'living' from my sport. After sponsorship deals and prize money the Top 5 athletes in the world are making $100K USD (before flights/accommodation/manager fees)

I am perfectly content with that and it has influenced my lifestyle greatly.

I chose to get a good education and work from home and pursue X/Y/Z because it gives me more freedom to Train and pursue my "real-dreams".

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I have this crazy idea to make a patreon for sports...

I hate how the sports world has been consumed by -top players- on the most lucrative markets, which are mostly marketing products.

I love sports but hate the sports current -way of selling out-, the power law distributions, etc...

I do think someone should get up and running a Patreon/KickStarter for sports....

You as an athlete put up your profile, you can put updates with your training etc, and you have your -goals- competitions you want to attend in the future and need X dollars for equipment/travel expenses etc...

Just a random idea, reading an athlete like you telling how it is, makes me think it's more needed than ever.

Not practical either, the power law still applies to Patreon creators and the like.

Yeah but the mission would be that any person who wants to do a sport, is able to do it and doesn't just skip it for monetary reasons...

You still probably won't make 100k/year from it, but no athlete should have to not go to a competition, or not be able to train or afford the equipment, etc...

But yeah, I'm not even an athlete so what would I know, heh

I get you, but things are even less distributed than you'd expect. The bottom 90% (95%?) of Patreon creators can't even make minimum wage. The top 1% are reigning in FAANG salaries from the Midwest.

Yep, get you too, I just stay away from it. But yeah some ideas ain't good enough to pursue

You can already do some version of this on social media, no? They post a bunch of content on their life/training, there are ways to monetize that attention, etc.

Valve introduced a variant of this for Dota 2 recently. But they take a 50% cut. And it's more team based, than individual based.

https://www.dota2.com/newsentry/3066366095803889976

Could you do this with regular Patreon?

I am not familiar with details how exactly it works, I guess you are supposed to provide some media to your subscribers, but I guess you could simply publish videos from your training, or make a vlog before/after a competition. The idea is that people would not pay you because the videos are super awesome, but simply because they are your fans.

The subscriber tiers could be like "sponsor", "sponsor who gets autograms", and maybe something special for those who pay really lot.

Yeah prob, but I think it doesn't help it's more oriented to -content- creators.

Content should'nt matter...

I got the idea from my couple's sisters needs, she does iron mans all around the world, travelling there ain't cheap. Also bikes and shit etc, but I never got along building any of it.

I have a crazy idea to make an 'Xtreme Olympics' where participants are allowed to take any substances that they'd like, as long as they are communicated so viewers can see which participant took which steroid and which stimulants.

I'd watch that.

Hell yeah!

This will surely create lots of cases of athletes just crossing the border of what the body can take. I'd expect the show would become more about mishaps, than extreme performance.

Must definitely have a target audience, but not me.

It's like nascar but for elite athletes

Check out https://makeachamp.com/ which seems to be along the lines of your idea.

Oh thank you for sharing that, I'm glad it already exists, so I can focus in other ideas that seem more niche-y.

Have an awesome day!

> oldest sports/events in history.

which one?

I guess archery...

Is he not referring to the Olympic?

Wrestling?

Betting on rowing

Trolling.

>oldest sports/events in history

That has to be some form of running, right?

Naked decathlon

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