Ashley Uhl-Leavitt has landed an opportunity most athletes can only dream of – a chance to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics. While this Florida-based marathoner has run in some of the world’s most iconic races, like the New York City Marathon, York, this is her first time competing in the Olympic marathon.
In less than 100 days, athletes and spectators will converge in Paris, France, for an event that is synonymous with uniting the world, regardless of the caliber of global geopolitical tensions throughout the history of the modern Olympics.
“Hundreds of thousands of people tried to get a handful [marathon] points. It was a long shot,” Uhl-Leavitt told Al Jazeera.
But with that blessing comes an obstacle on the road to gaming. How to train and cover costs.
“When I’m in marathons, it’s very time consuming,” she said.
She needs to fit training in wherever she can between her two jobs – one as a personal trainer and the other as a bartender in her hometown of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida – about 20 miles outside of Jacksonville.
To offset the costs of accessing the games, she turned to the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.
Training for this high level of athletics is a full-time job. Athletes also travel to compete in different games to hone their skills before the big day. But as most potential Olympic athletes have to pay their own way for all this effort, it is an almost impossible situation to have to decide between working or competing.
Only a select few achieve a profitable corporate partnership. Allianz Life Insurance Company, for example, only sponsors five Olympic and Paralympic athletes (the games for people with disabilities).
There is no salary for athletes training for the Olympics. Stipend opportunities are limited, but only after qualifying for the games – a risky venture in itself. Although stipends vary, some are as high as a few hundred dollars per month. The training until then is out of pocket.
More than 90% of all Olympic athletes reported spending up to $21,700 on competition fees and membership fees before the games. More than a quarter of all U.S. Olympic athletes report earning less than $15,000 annually in total income.
As for health care, Olympic athletes reported spending up to $9,200 on out-of-pocket expenses for injuries and only 16% were reimbursed, according to a report from the U.S. Commission on the State of the Olympic and Paralympic Games — an independent commission appointed by Congress in 2020 (PDF).
Uhl-Leavitt is one of many athletes over the years who have turned to alternative means to finance their Olympic journey. Another is boxer Jennifer Lozano of Laredo, Texas, who, according to her crowdfunding campaign, is the first in the South Texas city she calls home to have the chance to compete.
Lozano’s training regime requires a lot of physical effort and time – a must for the 21-year-old in her efforts to take home the gold. It starts every day at 6am. She receives a grant from USA Boxing to cover her daily costs, such as car payments during training and travel to games.
She told Al Jazeera that she had been receiving a scholarship for the past eight months, before officially qualifying for the team at an international competition in Santiago, Chile, in October 2023. She declined to disclose the scholarship amount and frequency.
Before that, however, all costs came out of her and her family’s pockets. She also declined to share the dollar value of those costs.
Lozano told Al Jazeera that he is using funds from his GoFundMe campaign to cover costs associated with transporting his family and coaches to games.
Less than the federal poverty line
Financial constraints have hit Olympic athletes but not other high-level athletes, such as those in professional athletic leagues. In sports like American football, even players who don’t participate in official games are paid well. The minimum salary for a player on this year’s practice squad in professional football is $16,800 per week, according to the National Football League’s most recent collective bargaining agreement. As for Major League Baseball – players in its minor leagues receive a minimum of $60,300 for the 2024 season.
While many Olympic athletes do not receive compensation for the time they spend at the games, medal winners do. The gold medalist walks away with US$37,500, US$22,500 for silver and US$15,000 for third place.
In context, this means that third-place finishers earn less than the current federal poverty line for a person. To pay your rent in the United States, you will need to earn more than double what a gold medalist earns at a minimum.
The United States has quite low payouts in terms of Olympic prizes compared to other nations. During the last Olympic Games, Italy offered US$213,000 to the gold medalists. Singapore offered the equivalent of US$737,000 to the first place winners. This time, Singapore is upping the stakes and will offer top finishers US$1 million in prize money. But if history is any indicator, it may not be necessary to pay that, as the island nation has only produced one gold medalist in its history.
“His lifetime earnings as an Olympian are in extremely high negative numbers. There’s no doubt about that,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and author of Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics.
There has been some push to maximize payouts for these athletes, but there hasn’t been much in the last decade. After the 2016 games, then-President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that prohibited the IRS from taxing medal rewards, dubbed the victory tax.
So far, athletics is the only sport that offers additional cash prizes to winners. Earlier this month, World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, announced it would distribute $50,000 in prize money to each of the gold medalists. Athletics is scheduled to have 48 different events in the upcoming games.
While prize money helps, it does not resolve financial barriers to entry. That’s partly why so many athletes like Uhl-Leavitt turned to crowdfunding platforms in 2024, ahead of the games.
The training itself is expensive. That’s what led now-retired fencer Monica Aksamit, who won a bronze medal at the 2016 games, to start a GoFundMe while training for the 2020 Tokyo games, although it was postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the months leading up to the Tokyo games, she made national headlines in which she explained that it was a choice between training and working. She told the student newspaper at her alma mater, Penn State, that the U.S. Olympic Committee gave her a small stipend of $300 a month. Meanwhile, she spent more than $20,000 on training. Due to the time commitment that Olympic-level training requires, she had difficulty finding work, even at a local supermarket.
Aksamit agreed to meet with Al Jazeera in New York. However, she did not attend the pre-planned interview nor could she be contacted to reschedule.
There is some small help available for some athletes in some sports. Associations such as USA Swimming, USA Taekwondo and USA Rowing offer small scholarships to athletes training for the Olympics, particularly after qualifying for the national team.
Otherwise, the options are quite limited to the few athletes who are able to solidify sponsorships.
Because of these huge financial costs and the low likelihood of long-term financial success, there is less incentive for parents to get their children interested in sports – and not just niche ones.
“Parents pay enormous amounts of money in hopes of getting their children even just onto the varsity team, into high school, that elusive college scholarship or the even more elusive spot on a regional or national team and a potential invitation to the Olympics. It’s extremely expensive,” added Matheson, the economics professor.
Only about half of middle-income children and just 31% of low-income children get involved in athletics, while 71% of higher-income children do, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
This has been a challenge for Olympic athletes and their families for a long time. In 2012, Natalie Hawkins, mother of iconic gymnast Gabby Douglas, filed for bankruptcy amid high training costs.
Highly paid executives
Meanwhile, the Olympic Games are a huge source of revenue for several different parties. During each game, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) pools earnings from ticket sales, advertising sales and other cash earnings. Part of this amount is redistributed among host cities and partner organizations, including each country’s individual committee, after the IOC receives its share.
This is when, in theory, organizations like the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee split the revenue and distribute it at their level to training programs and athletes.
“Almost certainly a lot of it is consumed by administrators overpaying and things like that,” Matheson said.
That’s what happened in the United States.
Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, earned more than $1.1 million in 2022 – the year of the most recent Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, the US Olympic committee had net revenue of $61.6 million – the second highest on record, according to the organization’s 2022 financial disclosures. It is second only to the Tokyo 2021 games (delayed a year due to the pandemic), which generated US$104.6 million in net profit. In comparison, in 2016, the year of the Rio de Janeiro games, US$78.5 million (equivalent to US$88.9 million, adjusted for inflation).
The events also make a lot of money for broadcasters. In the United States, NBC holds exclusive rights to broadcast the games. The media company revealed that it sold at least $1.2 billion in advertising ahead of the games. The broadcaster, which holds exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics until 2032, expects record revenue.
This is significantly higher than what other broadcasters achieve for other high-profile events for which they have exclusive broadcast rights. For example, CBS raised a record $635 million for football’s premiere event – the Super Bowl.
The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The biggest names in some sports end up with lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals, including athletes like swimmer Michael Phelps, who won 28 gold medals throughout his career, and gymnast Simon Biles, who gained global fame after winning gold in 2016.
But for most committed athletes, greatness is not about a marginal opportunity for financial success, but rather a demonstration of a fundamental part of who they are.
“Long weekend runs are two and a half to three hours, and you run for an hour or two and a half or cross-train every day of the week,” Uhl-Leavitt said. “It definitely consumes your life.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
