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I would say what I brought up is still applicable. Prize money may not have to be as large if there are other awards/bonuses that athletes earn on top of that. Do dart players(athletes?) get any appearance fees or sponsor bonuses? It’s not always as simple as prize money
They do. Poker players get insane appearance fees in the millions for certain events.
My brother is a pro poker player. A small number make big bucks.
Most good pros make decent money.
But the scenario you present may be similar to running. A few at the top making really big money.
The big tournaments are like mega races and most of them are losing money.
Obvious answers are sponsorship bonuses + appearance fees but it's interesting to see dart players make good money & have good viewership. #1 ranked dart player pulled in $1.5 million pounds in the last 2 years in prize money & has almost 200k IG followers (Kerr 67k). Their final got 3.7 million views. Eugene got 18.7 million over 10 days.
T&F definitely seems to have more bureaucracy than some of the other niche sports that it competes with. There are so many people employed by governing bodies/world athletics compared to darts. Maybe that's why prize money is where it's at, idk. My guess is that a lot more money could be going to athletes in our sport. But a guy like Kerr probably gets a lifetime job doing something in the sport when he retires. Those opportunities don't exist in the same way for darts players.
The Average person would be way more interested in watching darts than track and field. I love watching Track and Field, but all my friends would say Darts, Darts, Darts!
Kerr got $40,000 for his win in Glasgow and $70,000 for his 1500m win at Worlds last year, and the Telegraph writes that that $110,000 "for becoming double world champ is less than half" what a darts player received for reaching the world final earlier this year. It is a stone-cold fact there is no money in track and field. The big market sponsorships sadly are not there. I started to play in the WSOP last year and have seen no name poker players score $1,000,000 pay days with a good grind in a tournament. Track is a sport you do because you love the competition not for the money 99% of track athletes are going to need to have a post athletic career once they dry up sadly its true, it's not a Tom Brady type of money sport.
The stadium in Glasgow did not appear to be fulll to me when he ran and it was a tiny stadium. Meanwhile, I went to a regular season soccer match and there were 50,000 in there.
2) The only way to increase the money work would be to cut events.
The Darts analogy isn't a good one. There is one Dart winner. At Worlds, there were 24 individual gold medallists so instead of viewing the winner of Worlds as being the world champion, you could view them as the 24th ranked track athlete (actually lower as many outdoor stars weren't there). Kerr is ranked #22 on the WA overall rankings.
I don't think the tv money would go down a lot if there was no hammer, javelin, 10k etc. Then you could pay the remaining athletes more but it's not track and field as we know it and the athletes aren't really making much more money overall, it just looks bigger. We talked about this at length on the podcast yesterday. I'd be fine with doing half the events at Worlds one year and half the next time (full schedule at the Olympics) so we get all the 10k guys in the 5000. All the 800 guys in the 1500, etc. All the 400h gals in the 400.
At a mininum, you could double the prize money but it also would reduce expenses of hosting world by a lot. You might be able to increase pirze money by 150%. How much expense is there associated with every athlete (1k?).
So at the 2025 and 2027 worlds, you would alternate these events.
100/200 400/400h 800/1500 5000/10,000 Sp/DT Javelin/Hammer Pole Vault/HJ 110h/Multi - (I'd love to see Holloway try the multi).
I'd cancel the marathons immediately.
Now I could see the argument that you want to have a few marquee events at every worlds. For me, it would be the 100 and 1500
So if that's the case and the 100 and 1500 are at every worlds. I'd alternate the other events like this
200/400 400h/800 5000/10000 Sp/DT Javelin/Hammer Pole Vault/HJ 110h/Multi
3) Some of his quotes are just not true.
“I’ve always gone with the idea that it would be cool to sign athletes to a league,” said Kerr. “If you could sign someone to a Diamond League, and have 12 guys race each other three times, I think that would be a situation where guys would start to think that financially it would make a lot more sense for them to worry more about the league than they would about a World Championship.
Ignoring the fact, I don't want to see the same three guys race three times, I call BS on this. The vast majority of Kerr's money comes from his sponsor. They want him to run Worlds.
“We’ve got to find ways to attract athletes to race more and to race head-to-heads more. The way to do that is pay athletes good money to race a series of events.”
Hello? You are the one who skipped out of the Diamond League final last year.
The World Indoor Champs were a resounding success for the US distance runners and we give them one final look. Elle St. Pierre ran 8:20 for gold, Bryce Hoppel got gold and 5 more Americans took home medals, as Josh Kerr impre...
I understand what you're saying and I agree there isn't enough money in T&F, but if you include all of the champions of 20+ events and/or the prize money for all the placing athletes, that's a decent chunk of change. The prize pool is not equal to other sports because we have 20 1st places, not 1. His real equivalent would be $110,000 times 20+ which is a lot of money for 2 meets and doesn't include his sponsorship base pay, bonus, and the pay just showing up to certain meets.
To be clear, I want there to be millions per winner in T&F, but it also makes sense why they get paid "so little".
While I believe the current format of world championships is more fulfilling to die hard fans and appeals to most runners sense of fair play, professional track and field really need to adopt an MMA or professional boxing approach to competition if you become serious about $$$.
Rather than pouring tons of cash into building up a site/city for a world championship, what if we had Jacob, Kerr, and Nuguse racing in the Sphere in Las Vegas, belt and all? Throw in a few under card events like the high jump with live betting on heights and attempts. Someone get Michael Johnson on the phone.
is that prize money only or are you including bonuses from Brooks for world champ wins? What about bonuses for world records? Bonuses for British Champs? Appearance fees? I would wager that he makes way more than what you’re saying
I believe it's a comparison of actual prize money for winning the event track vs darts.
Are there multiple events in darts? At different distances? Different throwing motions? Each receiving a bunch of prize money?
My point is with Track and Field, you've got 26 events total between men and women. So ya only one event winner gets $50k, but there's $1.3M going to event winners, and more going to the other places. And that's just indoor worlds, there will be more for outdoors.
Remove some events and there is a larger cut per event, but I don't think that is a great option.
Kerr got $40,000 for his win in Glasgow and $70,000 for his 1500m win at Worlds last year, and the Telegraph writes that that $110,000 "for becoming double world champ is less than half" what a darts player received for reaching the world final earlier this year. It is a stone-cold fact there is no money in track and field. The big market sponsorships sadly are not there. I started to play in the WSOP last year and have seen no name poker players score $1,000,000 pay days with a good grind in a tournament. Track is a sport you do because you love the competition not for the money 99% of track athletes are going to need to have a post athletic career once they dry up sadly its true, it's not a Tom Brady type of money sport.
Why would anyone be surprised in a sport that almost never has drama and can be deduced to an athlete simply moving their legs faster than others? That's it. It's generally a boring sport. The excitement of track and field peaks in that last 400 almost no matter what the distance is.
Look, I'd like him to get more - he's fantastic for the sport! I really hope his sponsors are giving him some fat bonuses.
But - even in Europe- it's getting harder to find track or major marathons on TV. There's oodles of darts and snooker, winter sports (especially biathlon and ski jumping), cycling, and not much else...
I suspect WA is demanding too much for TV/ livestream rights and killing the sport even more...
"There is no money in track and field." Maybe, but there's untapped money in the pockets of track fans, who tend to be highly-educated and highly-compensated relative to the general population. So you just have to creatively monetize each track event; for example by selling naming rights: "The Malcolm Gladwell 1,500" or "The Haruki Murakami 10k" Even if these individuals don't want naming rights, their heirs might. Or they might fund endowments. Other ideas will be found. Regardless Track & Field will survive as an ancient, little-noticed relic of a nobler time.
Kerr got $40,000 for his win in Glasgow and $70,000 for his 1500m win at Worlds last year, and the Telegraph writes that that $110,000 "for becoming double world champ is less than half" what a darts player received for reaching the world final earlier this year. It is a stone-cold fact there is no money in track and field. The big market sponsorships sadly are not there. I started to play in the WSOP last year and have seen no name poker players score $1,000,000 pay days with a good grind in a tournament. Track is a sport you do because you love the competition not for the money 99% of track athletes are going to need to have a post athletic career once they dry up sadly its true, it's not a Tom Brady type of money sport.
For the World Series of Poker, there's a $10,000 buy in... for thousands of participants. If the registration fees for every one of the T&F athletes were $10,000 for a championship or Olympics, I'm sure the prize money would be a lot higher.
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