Diamond League earnings: Full table, breakdown and analysis

Eaton set only two WRs, but he got $750k bonus for his first one. I don't know how much he got for this second, but probably more as his contract was renewed after his gold medal in London.

Pay has gone up in the last 15 years of pro running. What are you guys talking about? Contracts have 10x. Don’t believe me? In 2001 Alan Webb getting a 250k/r base contract and it was ground breaking news. In 2010 Wheating got a 600k/yr contract and in 2016 Degrasse got 2.25m/yr for 5 years. Half the people on that list make more than 500k a year and the other half all make more than 200k. That’s not even counting contract bonuses (which can be absolutely massive especially for winning medals- 250k rollover is typical for Olympic Gold), race bonuses, prize money, appearance fees (which a surprising level of athletes get) and side sponsors. Pretty good deal to just run full time.

I'm surprised DL hasn't gone bankrupt yet. That's too much money to shell out for these lowly TF athletes

As someone who doesn't know the intense ins and outs of DL, can someone tell me are salaries for these athletes typically fairly small compared to their appearance fees, endorsements, etc.? Or is that variable by event and/or country represented?

Alan Webb 250k in 2001 adjusted for inflation is $418,000. He got that with a career best finish of 8th in a World champs. Go through Eugene and find all the 8th place finishers and I'd be surprised if you could find a 400k athlete.

Last I heard, both NB and Nike are trying to get away from roll over bonuses because they got bit one too many times by them and because they're very hard to forecast.

Puma bet big on Degrasse because everyone thought he was going to be the next Bolt after Rio. He was good but don't think things panned out how they hoped.

I'd say over 50% of that list are on under 200k/yr. Also track sponsorships in the US are better than anywhere else in the world. A so so American miler can make over 50k a year coming out of college while a European/Australian/Canadian counterpart with the same PBs might be lucky to get 5-10k. The American track athletes on the list 200k + sure, but the non yanks and the throwers on that list are going to vary wildly. Eg Aaron Brown has been very outspoken on how some years it is tough just to pay the bills and he was a double World finalist this year.

It's highly variable by country, and honestly even by timing. Athletes whose contracts expired end of 2020 for example had a rough go of it as all the big apparel companies were struggling due to covid. I know one athlete who was offered a contract extension in 2019 but turned it down, betting they'd have a good Olympics in 2020 and raise their value for when their contract expired Dec 31st 2020. The same sponsor came back with an offer down 40% on their initial extension offer even though that athlete had some big PBs in 2020 anyway.

Lots of companies blow their budget in June on big NCAA grads. 2021 was competitive with Nike spending big to nail down the likes of Mu, Teare, and Hocker. You don't want to be a Nike athlete re-signing after they've just had to open the wallet to lock down those three.

For the biggest names in track most their money will be from endorsements. For the names towards the bottom and more for field athletes and throwers prize money I'd a bigger percentage. So someone like Jakub Vadlejch (javelin) perhaps gets a large portion of his income from DL prize money. Someone like Jakob Ingebrigtsen is probably making ~5% pre tax earnings from prize money.

What a joke. Now we know why Americans don't race in Europe.

It makes less sense for American's to do the full DL circuit if their contracts and appearance fees they would get elsewhere are a much larger function compared to what they would get in prize money at a DL. I understand, as fans, we want the stars all competing. But athletes will just stay home and train for the championships because their placing, time, at the globals or bonuses if they medal makes the the DL prize money look insigificant. Unless more prize money is offered, DL or not, athletes will peak for the championships and dedicated time trials.

Also, contracts are getting higher, even accounting for inflation, for American athletes at least. There's more opportunities now at each teir of pro running. 20 years ago, there wasn't much ROI on athletes, they didn't promote products the way they do now so your average runner cared nothing about brand. People just got a pair of Asics, New Balance or whatever and ran. Now shoes and even running gear is being promoted significatly more. Nike accelerated this in 2015 when they brought science into running shoes after only being decent at it pertained to the Pegasus. Now companies are bringing science into running gear. People bought in to Nike koolaid, companies had to follow, and now shoe lineups for companies are deeper than ever. People who don't even run are buying running shoes casually at levels I've never seen before.

Part of it is advancements in social media and notice how being marketable is a huge factor in contracts, especially if you aren't top teir coming out of college. Instagram influencers make more money than full time pro's putting in 100+ mpw and brutal workouts. Think about that. Now the NCAA has incorporated NIL. Runners of all levels can be a lot more interactive and relatable to proffesional athletes compared to other sports.

Okay, the athlete-company ROI might be insignificant for a few companies like Nike who are invested in much more popular sports in America, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's true Nike is scaling back on contracts offers, thier relative profitability has probably been the largest over the past 7 years and no company has put out anything better than the Alphafly/Dragonfly still. They are fine for now. For other companies though, the ROI is becoming more noticeable.

Not sure why this is getting so heavily downvoted. Surely it's obvious the massive incentive differential from the above figures for Kenyans to go into running as compared to athletic kids in the West, not to mention the relative financial incentive to dope.

Kipsang is at the bottome of that list with $32,000. That puts him comfortably in the top 1% of wealth in Kenya ($20K minimum) in one season just from DL prizemoney. In the USA, you need wealth of over $4 million to get in the top 1%. In Norway it's probably 5 or 6 million dollars.

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Someone stupid as you never will realise to be stupid. A pure racist like you maybe thinks to act equally to all ethnicities.

It's downvoted because you are a stupid racist and because the post is stupid and racist.

Any one else says something similar are people would see the point. You say and we just know it’s your prejudice dog whistle.