The wait is over: 2018 Pro Runners Salary Data Revealed: How Much Do the Pros Make?

LR is fake news wrote:

So you got a bunch of people who didn’t actually know the right answers to GUESS (and based on your notes, some of them had no idea). Then you AVERAGED those COMPLETE GUESSES and tried to pretend that this made up average had real meaning? This is borderline fake news. If you wanted to do something like this, you should have just listed, specifically, what each of the guesses were for each athlete from each agent.

The points you make in all caps are clearly explained in the article. Calling that fake news is just like Trump calling objective facts “fake news.” Makes no sense.

Completely disagree with your demand, in your last sentence, that we should get the individual hundreds of estimates, not the averages. I want to see averages, not hundreds of individual data points.

WhyNoFacts? wrote:

beef:.

T R I G G E R E D

Jim Mattis wrote:

LR is fake news wrote:

So you got a bunch of people who didn’t actually know the right answers to GUESS (and based on your notes, some of them had no idea). Then you AVERAGED those COMPLETE GUESSES and tried to pretend that this made up average had real meaning? This is borderline fake news. If you wanted to do something like this, you should have just listed, specifically, what each of the guesses were for each athlete from each agent.

The points you make in all caps are clearly explained in the article. Calling that fake news is just like Trump calling objective facts “fake news.” Makes no sense.

Completely disagree with your demand, in your last sentence, that we should get the individual hundreds of estimates, not the averages. I want to see averages, not hundreds of individual data points.

The “averages” you want to see are not real averages, because there is zero real data here. This is like something a middle schooler would put together and call “research”. Nobody with any exposure to science or math education could take those average numbers seriously.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

"Not sure if the lesser athletes also get rooms at those spots but I know that's how it works for the big names."

A long time ago, I was a lesser athlete, and for several Boston Marathons the BAA:

- Flew me to Boston (admittedly a cheap trip from the NYC area) and met me / dropped me off at the airport

- Housed me for several days at the Fairmont Copley Plaza (shared room but I usually got to pick my roommate)

- Maybe/maybe not provided a per diem (I've forgotten....been a long time ...)

When I got their call inviting me the first of these years, I asked if they had the right guy (people often confused me with the much more accomplished Joe LeMay) -- they said yes, they invited the top 50 US marathoners from the previous year. This was back before the top level USA talent ran the Majors (some rare exceptions ).

Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner in history, as a matter of fact — and his times/medal record on the track were better than Rupp’s. But Kipchoge is Kenyan whereas Rupp has been the male face of American distance running for much of this decade, and as a result, our agents guessed that Nike pays Rupp over $200,000 per year more than Kipchoge.

one word.RACIST

Every single number is a guess. Not a single fact in there

Garbage “journalism”

An average of educated guesses still qualifies as an average.

The concept that educated guesses are more accurate than random guesses has a logical base.

Waste of time wrote:

Every single number is a guess. Not a single fact in there

Garbage “journalism”

I'd rather read an article with a bunch of educated guesses and context than nothing at all because face it, you're not going to get anyone to just straight up tell you their salary.

The fact that the ranges among the agents were so large for so many athletes does not really sell me on the accuracy of the data. They might be slightly more educated guesses than LRC readers, but they still are largely guesses at least in the athletes they do not represent.

What are you talking about? We didn't estimate the salaries of these coaches. Every public college coaches' salary can be looked up with a FOIA request. What does that have to do with guessing the value of a private contract?

Boris Berian's Nike contract was in the public record and maybe we should have linked to that. But knowing one contract isn't going to give us specific information on the values of the other contracts without insider knowledge. The people who on one side (the agents) who negotiate these contracts are with the most insider knowledge of anyone of what the value of these contracts are.

I don't see how an elite athlete coordinator for a marathon given guesses as to the appearance fees for athletes at other marathons is any different than agents giving guesses as to contracts of other athletes. Next time instead of reaching out to agents we could go the other route and reach out to elite athlete coordinators, but if they give info on their own races without providing names I don't think it would be too hard to put a name to an athlete so I doubt many of them would do their own races but it doesn't hurt to try as some of the agents involved in out survey gave contract amounts for athletes they represent. But obviously we can't reveal that number without breaking the confidentiality agreement we had with the agent.

I'd say without asking the people who actually know the numbers (the athlete, their own agent, and the shoe companyy) we got a) The people who negotiate these type of contracts to make educated guesses on what other athletes make. Some agents even submitted numbers for their own athletes which I presume were 100% accurate.

We most definitely could not list what each agent guessed. You might be able to figure out who the agents were by what athletes some of them guessed on and left blank.

b) How else do you propose we guess at this number which is private without having athletes break the confidentiality clauses in their contracts?

As the poster above is saying our premise is the educated guesses of people who make these contracts is going to be more accurate than the educated guess of the crowd. But we also included the median guess of the LRC crowd to show that datapoint as their is the "wisdom of the crowd" belief. We have both datapoints to put out there.

I found it interesting that the agents were way higher on the estimates for what the stars got than the LRC guesses. My belief is the agents would tend to know better than the LRC crowd in this matter.

If any athlete wants to share an old contract with us please email

I like your articles but this was hot garbage.

Took some guesses, ran them as facts, and wrapped it in a ribbon and presented it to us like it was a Pulitzer winner.

The Agents for these athletes are in my opinion taking advantage of the athletes, they are making way to much for a pure labor job that someone ELSE is doing, wtf.

rpdvil wrote:

Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner in history, as a matter of fact — and his times/medal record on the track were better than Rupp’s. But Kipchoge is Kenyan whereas Rupp has been the male face of American distance running for much of this decade, and as a result, our agents guessed that Nike pays Rupp over $200,000 per year more than Kipchoge.

one word.RACIST

According to John Utah, that means you're probably a liberal!

Seriously though, nationalist would probably be a better claim.

In case you weren't aware people are currently boycotting Nike for the opposite of what you allege (for protesting against racism)!

sanchobaile wrote:

The points on appearance fees for Shalane and Desi were interesting. I still wonder... might winning a major actually DECREASE your potential appearance fee the following year? I mean, wouldn't it be kind of assumed that you'd want to defend your title? and thus wouldn't that reduce your bargaining power? I mean, how often does the winner not try to defend their title? I wouldn't think that would be very often, and thus I'd think that'd depress appearance fees for defending champs. What did agents have to say about this, Brojos?

Let's say you're right. The NYC marathon assumes the winner will choose to defend the title, so offers no appearance fee. Maybe they assume correctly. But unless this is kept a secret, in future people who think they can win will choose to go elsewhere. Why win at NYC and get no appearance fee the following year, when you could win in Boston, Chicago, etc. and get an appearance fee?

In general, they have to think strategically and bear in mind the impact it will have on their reputation.

The headline is false. We have some guesses on what they make, that's it. If there are people in the survey who actually know and are telling the truth, then that information is obscured by the addition of those who don't know to the estimate. And this is apparently a base salary that can be added to or subtracted by the company, and presumably doesn't include prize money or other endorsements, as far as I can tell. So, it doesn't tell us what they make at all.

Kinda surprised that Kipchoge is estimated to be paid so little. To be honest, he's literally the face of Nike distance running. Vaporflys are as popular as they are because of the Nike time trial...

Good insight, not accurate but a general sense of the financial arrangements. Thank you for the time and effort.

I think an interesting question would be ‘what do you think Boston will do with Sarah Sellers in 2019?’

Does she truly warrant a hefty appearance fee? Will Boston suck it up and treat her the same as previous runners up, albeit with times 15 minutes faster, just to avoid a PR nightmare?

Thoughts?

wejo wrote:

What are you talking about? We didn't estimate the salaries of these coaches. Every public college coaches' salary can be looked up with a FOIA request. What does that have to do with guessing the value of a private contract?

My point was not that you should be looking at actual coaches salaries -- you should be looking at actual salaries. My example was to show that actual salary data exists, just not necessarily as public record. I found it easily. Surely your team could have pestered, entertained, cajoled, researched, and researched some more and found out real details, and then shared them in a relatively anonymous way, making it hard to find out who is earning what. Talking to agents, elite athlete coordinators, manufacturers, the accounting department of companies, just to name a few, could get you much more detail.

You run a very good website - it's a great forum for the (primarily distance) running community. It's a great aggregation of topics us readers enjoy and follow. I'm not knocking your site in any way here. This survey had the opportunity to be really insightful, but fell short.

Many posters criticize Letsrun for not being journalism -- in my opinion you tread that line. A survey such as this had the opportunity to do what's uncommon and rare - really uncover and report on something telling, and really be bold. If you're really going to do this annually - be bold, get real numbers and give us real data - Low, Average, High. Protect confidentiality as you'll need to, but get deeper. You know you can do better. Just look at the feedback on this thread? We want you to reallize your potential.