Every once in a while a Turkish guy shooting with no equipment becomes a meme, or the greatest swimmer or runner in the history of the world comes onto the scene. Newsmedia goes nuts because this sells advertising.
But then a southern girl in a 5-second viral video does 100x of that in notoriety, with no travel budget and for the production cost of a single Big Mac.
Clearly they do or NBC wouldn't pay approximately eleventy quadtrillion dollars every time the contract is up to renew. NBC makes billions on the Olympics though running advertising and advertisers are willing to pay NBC's rates therefore at least enough people care for NBC to profit massively.
They don't want to pay that much, they may not really profit from paying that much, but they can't let their competitors take the customer for free.
Nobody particularly cares, other than other people in the sport. The only reason they might show you is if you win a medal for the US.
They could all save a lot of money and it would probably be more interesting to watch.
It’s just a fraction of a cent per viewer. So even with hundreds of millions of viewers it’s still barely a hundred thousand dollars to be split up between all disk throwers.
Except that the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere. The problem as stated is that the root source of that value, ie the athletes, see very little of that revenue.
There's value in the Olympics, sure, but that value is concentrated in a handful of big-name sports. The smaller ones come along for the ride rather than generating value themselves.
Support is a two way street, and I'd rather kids grow up to be strong and able to be those supporters of others than end up a depressed lonely loser, when they could've been happy instead, because they pissed their efforts on some trivia.
I found your capitalism quip particularly amusing. I know it's just a parroting of programming from your university days, but I'm sure there's someone in a labour camp in North Korea who'd crack at least a brief smile at the idea of a poor downtrodden Olympian proletarian spending all day practicing throwing a stick because it's their passion.
Why did you ignore the fact from the article that people do pay to watch (it's one of the most watched events in the world) it's just that that money doesn't reach the athletes? Not sure which pokemon represents that
Sure, an actual clown will get paid a tad better than zero by their circus, but they don't have the upside of a potential lucrative clown shoe sponsorship deal if they win.
TL;DR: these athletes knew the deal before they went in, and shouldn't act victim when they have to show their butts on only fans because their gamble didn't land.
Where is anybody "acting" victim? Isn't choosing to open an OnlyFans and posting on it to make rent and travel money the opposite of playing victim since they're taking agency over their situation?
1) it entirely depends on the prize and the financing infrastructure around it
2) athletes can participate in other competitions besides the Olympics
They can, but almost none of them are even remotely as popular as the Olympics. The only exceptions are in massive sports (football, in the US american football, hockey, basketball; in countries like India cricket; tennis, F1). For every other sport, the Olympics are the pinnacle and nothing is even remotely comparable.
2) yeah, but who watches those? and if there's nobody watching then there's not much money in it
A quick Google search suggests that the Olympics feature about 10k athletes in summer games and 3k in winter games - 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the typical 20-30 players on staff at a soccer club. I wouldn't be surprised if the wage gap was even more crass than those numbers suggest, but it shows that major spectator sports are an entirely different game.
If you offer something for free, especially to people we now understand to often be quite poor, they're going to fill their suitcase with them.
Even if you are offering beer coasters for free, someone's going to fill their suitcase with them.
Providing free access to make sure things are happening safely is not what's 'encouraging the behaviour' here :D
"Olympians" representing their countries.
- Is your hobby "to create software"? Then you should not be paid for it. - Do you like to help peolpe? Then you should not be paid for being a doctor. - etc.
Who should earn all the money then? The owners of the TV stations, the owners of the hospitals, basically the people that does nothing and just own things. What a dystopia of a world are we creating.
That said, the "hobby" angle is irrelevant here. As the article points out, the IOC makes an absolute fuckton of money from Olympic broadcast rights and sponsors, essentially none of which flows back to the actual athletes.
A lot of it flows back into the Olympic Committees of each country, who are in charge of spreading it, investing into infrastructure, youth development, etc.
Yes, but people connected to Olympic want to be independent from governments. In some way Olympians Games are private tournaments which are sponsored by host countries.
It is funny that "Olympians" representing my country when they demands public money, but are independent from government when we are talking about organization of National Olympic Committee.
Otherwise they are private workers/entrepreneurs and as such should be paid by what their customers feel like they're worth. Creating software can be an unpaid hobby, a government job, a private job, or a personal business.
Maybe. But they don't represent the people in their countries. Paying them is not a matter of taxation, I don't care about watching sports (but I do sports) and I never watch, I don't see myself represented in any way and I am not willing to pay for the "honor" or being "represented". In the end the article is about money: who should pay, why, how much? Not the tax payer.
The people doing the jobs that no-one wants to do. The garbagemen, the plumbers, the cleaners. And/or the people who do stuff that other people value, that people will pay to have it done well rather than badly.
If you're doing something fun, something that other people would very happily do for free, then yeah you shouldn't feel entitled to get paid for it. If you're good at your hobby and people care about it, they might pay you to do it (and I'd absolutely count software development among that), but that's up to them.
Whether this can be a career depends on the specific sport.
Like, if your hobby is throwing a disc as far as you can, have fun. But don't expect many people to pay to watch right?
But people pay a whole lot to see nice bodies doing sexual stuff. So since money comes from what other people value, no need for a surprised Pikachu face.