How much pros made in the 80s

Yeah, and people say track has never been popular.

Steve Scott $194K which is $553K today. Coe probably earned at least 5 x that.

And it was still supposed to be an amateur sport.

Still, track was already dying in the 80's. Herb Elliott (an Australian) was offered the equivalent of $10 million in 1960 to turn professional from an American promoter.

‘80s, not 80’s.

Every time there's a discussion about whether or not track can be popular, I say it was and can be again.

It's all a matter of marketing and USATF sucks at marketing and, another problem, is that it's a scattered organization. There doesn't appear to be any connection between the casual road 5k and world class races.

In the 80's it was pushed as the sport where you can compete with the elite and people knew who the elite were. Now, they are a faraway, separate entity.

We do need a model other than the shoe companies. An organization, maybe, that can generate income off of the casual runner (I think ZAP Endurance, Brooks Hansen may be models and use that income to support the elite and make that connection with the casual runner.

The Big Wheel was the most fantastic thing in the world at one point. I don't see many of them anymore.

And for a time, a CB radio was THE thing to have. Same.

Lukas V. caught lightning in a bottle. Now he pees in one.

We'll never go back.

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Where would he have been able to race, except this promoter's events?

Blame the olympics. Track was pro in the 19th century and the olympics destroyed it

It was apparently the guy behind the Harlem Globetrotters. Maybe he was planning to have Elliott tour the world making repeated attempts on the world record? It was thought at the time that he was going to be capable of breaking every WR from the 800m to the marathon. The crowds would certainly have paid to see it. All he would need would be a couple of pacers. Elliott didn't exactly have much competition at that point anyway.

Agree with the point about the Olympics. Perfideous French turned it from a popular working man's sport to something for a select few toffs.

Categorically FALSE. No one in any sport made that kind of money back then.

The offer was a two year contract at $250,000 a year, about $2,500,000 in today's money, from a guy called Leavitt who owned the Harlem Globetrotters. Elliott came close to taking the deal. His dad was for it at first but his mum squelched it. It wasn't exactly clear what Elliott would do for the money but it seemed like he was supposed to break every distance record from the 800 to the marathon. But the Elliotts began to distrust Leavitt and demanded about $60,000 up front. Leavitt agreed but never followed through and it fell apart.

It got ugly then. Leavitt claimed to have a secret tape of a phone conversation with Elliott that if released would have made Elliott ineligible for the Rome Olympics. But if it existed Leavitt never released it. Australians were also furious at Leavitt for trying to poach their star and threatened to boycott any Globetrotter tours of Oz and the whole business died.

Nobody cares about track anymore

People just want to watch soccer, football and basketball

I’m also curious if the revenue streams for track athletes were the same back then. Like were these numbers coming strictly from a combination of shoe contract, appearance fees, and prize money or were there other sponsorship opportunities available back then? I know Carl Lewis had a prominent role in Pirelli’s advertising but not sure if those kind of opportunities would’ve been shared by others on the list.

I don't recall any other sponsorship opportunities. I'd bet appearance fees were a bigger source of income than prize money was. Ron Clarke was getting about $19,000 in the summers to run in European meets alone, that's almost $180,000 now, and he also ran on the US indoor circuit and would have gotten more. In 1978, maybe '79 I was at the Springbank Road Races in Ontario talking to the race director. Jerome Drayton had won the "12" mile race the year before. They paid him $100,000 Canadian to run there, that's about $450,000 now.

There has always been money paid in big track meets and even in mid sized ones. When road racing began growing one of it's selling points was that anyone could enter a race and line up next to Olympians, national champions, etc. It was a real draw and if you had a race you were promoting and wanted a big field getting a Rodgers, Dixon, Sinclair, i.e, recognizable names etc. was a reliable way to do it. And fields were still small enough that you effectively did line up next to those guys. Eventually fields got so big that much of the field couldn't really see the "name" guys running and then East Africans began winning the big races. There were few recognizable names and people entering races weren't drawn by the presence of stars as they once were so there was less interest in paying appearance fees.

you'll find the answer in the doc 9.79*