Wow: Carrie Tollefson just said that Des Linden told her she made more than $1 million last year

Maze Hydra wrote:

I think it’s a good thing that this has become public.Most young American runners are under the impression that the pros are starving it will help more young Americans to try and chase the dream.Who knows maybe a few will be successful and win us some medals.

What?

Most American distance runners attempting to run professionally are NOT making enough money to exist without some other form of income. Just because the very very top are making good $ doesn't mean it trickles down to others.

The cost of running professionally at the lower ranks is huge in the long term.

150k prize for Boston

20k prize money for NYC

250k annual salary from Brooks (I have heard from a friend who used to run for Hansons that the base salary for team members is 50k. Linden is a 2x Olympian, and if Boris Berian signed for 125k, this seems reasonable)

100k NYC appearance fee

75k Boston appearance fee

100k speaking engagements/race expo appearances

50k additional prize money/appearance fees from smaller races

250k Brooks bonuses

That all adds up to approximately $1,000,000

Vote Bernie wrote:

runn wrote:

Even in the amateur days they used to say winning Boston was worth 1 million in the next year.

I think a lot of people would be surprised how much the top runners make- shoe money, shoe bonus, appearance money (expenses are always paid) and prize money.

I see the problem as the money is all at the top. It doesn't go deep enough.

Socialism creeping into performance based money structure now. Awesome!

Huh?

What I'm saying is- in golf and tennis no one gets expenses or appearance fees.

It's all prize money.

So, what if, say, the Boston Marathon didn't pay expenses and didn't pay appearance fees but put all of that money into prize money.

How much appearance and expense money did Boston pay out?

I would love to know, I wish they made the official numbers public.

How much would a Kenyan have made with the same performances?

Qwertu wrote:

rojo wrote:

Yeah, asking agents was really a bad way to go about it.

He’s not wrong, though. That piece was a bunch of semi-educated but mostly uninformed guesses that you guys touted as truth revealed.

I would not consider agents to be uninformed or semi-educated. Brojos described exactly how they gathered the data so if you took it as 'truth revealed', that make you the dummy.

Why do people get all butt hurt about runners salaries? We praise how much other pros make.

Maybe instead of acting like its some conspiracy we should hold it up to the rest of the other sports and say "hey look, pro running is a thing and you can make a living".

Then people might repsect it more

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is money made from winning Boston (or any other race) taxed at the same rate as if it were income from a reg 9-5 job or is it like winning the lottery or gambling winnings?

montana wrote:

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is money made from winning Boston (or any other race) taxed at the same rate as if it were income from a reg 9-5 job or is it like winning the lottery or gambling winnings?

Yes

Wow, that's so much money for a professional athlete.

Tiger Woods just made 20x that much in prize money alone for a podunk golf tournament.

There's an MLB player who makes 100x that much and has struck out the whole year.

Kim Kardashian can make that much just by posting an Instagram picture with a Coca-Cola in the background.

I second the poster who said it's REALLY tacky to boast publicly about your income (unless thats part of your shtick, of course). If true, Desi lost points with me.

jamin wrote:

Wow, that's so much money for a professional athlete.

Tiger Woods just made 20x that much in prize money alone for a podunk golf tournament.

There's an MLB player who makes 100x that much and has struck out the whole year.

Kim Kardashian can make that much just by posting an Instagram picture with a Coca-Cola in the background.

Stop making stuff up. It makes you sound like a 12-year old. Tiger made 2m for winning the Masters. Chris Davis makes 23m/year (and was one of the best players in the world when he signed his deal).

wejo wrote:

I can't believe you all think she didn't make a million last year.

She WON the Boston Marathon as an American.

The salary survy was just estimating the base shoe contract.

Successful marathoners are going to do well with appearance fees, etc in addition + prize money.

Sort of crazy that we think one of the most successful marathoners made less than a million last year. She got a TON of publicity for Brooks last year, that likely is reflected in her bonuses + bump up in contract etc.

And total pay isn't a perfect proxy for worth but with talk of Sydneh McLaughlin getting $2 million a year I don't doubt for a second that Des was worth half that last year to a bunch of entities.

Correct. I was just giving the base level of what she likely made. Its really hard to say how they compensated her in other ways. Commercials and promotional shoots she possibly received additional bonuses for. She probably did tons of appearances and got a few thousand a pop depending on the appearance.

I didn't look up if she did any halfs which she could have gotten appearance fees for.

For me the hardest thing to nail down is the base salary. It could have been anywhere from 100k to 250k in my opinion.

Ray wrote:

Can't believe Carrie is giving out that info, but it's not hard to believe that Desi easily made that in 2018.

The only way to resolve this is for Des to publicly release her tax returns , like Bernie Sandals is doing.

It's possible, but I would have figured around 700K.

An American winning Boston or NY is probably worth a close to half million. Keep in mind that you get money just signing up, more for toeing the line and a lot for winning. Des probably also has some performance bonuses from your sponsor, which could be hugh for winning a WMM. There are a ton a ways to cash in from winning Boston. Btw, agents don't allow top tier runners to do anything for free; they can get several grand for speaking engagements, which they can do just about every week. Many years ago I paid a retired Olympian $1500 to speak at a banquet, plus their air flight, hotel and I had to pick them up from the airport. However, I would imagine I sold at least 20 extra tickets from people knowing they could get an autograph and have their picture taken with one of America's gretest T&F athletes.

Not only did she make the $150k for winning, plus her regular Brooks contract which is minimum $50k but probably closer to $100k and then way more with her bonus for winning a major, plus New York appearance fee of near $100k because she won Boston and prize money for New York, and her other prize money from smaller races, but she also would be able to get paid to speak at random events and make $10k a pop from each one of those. She could have made over $300k last year just from showing up at random events a couple times a month. And then other random sponsorships that she picked up from it.

She probably didn't make much over a million, but probably right at a million.

yeah, but what's her 5k time?

Numbers game wrote:

rojo wrote:

On the NBCSN broadcast, Carrie Tollefson said Des texted her and said she made more than 7 figures last year.

If you are interested in how much other pros make, read this piece from last year:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/09/pro-runners-salaries-much-professional-runners-make-unveil-one-sports-biggest-secrets/

What we learned is that the Letsrun money survey was off.

Better research on bonus's paid , appearance fees, endorsement monies might give a more accurate figure.

Maybe have Des lay it out so other elites can plan and negotiate better for themselves.

Yea appreciate the work LRC did on this but it would be good if LRC called on races to release numbers or to actually find them out. Athletes need some sort of runners association to better bargain with races. I assume some people probably get short changed. PRs might not matter as much but I'm sure a lot of runners from other countries might see less at a race like NYC or Boston than domestic runners. Would be cool to see what races are taking in, where all that money goes, and if there is any room to increase appearance fees or prize money. If I was running a race I would figure out how to maximize those areas instead of lining my pockets. Not saying races do that but they keep a lot of info to themselves.

runn wrote:

Huh?

What I'm saying is- in golf and tennis no one gets expenses or appearance fees.

Incorrect.

That said - runners can be paid more than the top prize money in appearance fees for the WMM. London, Berlin, New York, for instance, pay more than their prize money, which is often a pittance (NY at least is 6 figures).

I can't believe you and your brother don't understand the poor optics of taking over threads you wish you'd started yourself. So weak and a major bitch move. Like copying someone's class notes or exam answers. ?