Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

I remember reading, in the late '80s, a series of interviews with famous programmers in a Yugoslav computer magazine (I think it was 'Računari' - those were translations from some U.S. magazine). In one of the interviews, a programmer (whose name, for the life of me, I can’t recall or find on the internet) mentioned that his boss was embarrassed because he drove an old clunker to meet clients. His boss pressured him to buy something more suitable. So, this guy (the legend I guess) ends up buying an old Rolls Royce to ensure his boss couldn’t complain anymore, all while still not doing what was actually expected of him :)

Have a family member who works as an assistant at a dealership and they are often pressured into buying a newer car for this reason.

It's funny, I drive a 22 year old car, by far the oldest at my workplace parking. I've been talking about getting a newer car but haven't been able to bring myself to spend 35K on one. It's running joke in the office, colleagues will ask if I've bought the new car yet every week.

I know where the argument comes from, but at an extreme watching football with 22 folks running behind a ball in a slow game where 97% of the time nothing happens in terms of scoring, and in terms of tactics, today sounds like a handball game; it's boring (and I say that as a Brazilian and having attended more than 100+ in the stadium and more than 600 on TV).

The entertainment in the Olympic games is in the fact that those folks (especially track and field) go to the extreme and human limit. In other words, for regular sports entertainment, I can go to watch Green Bay Packers vs. Vikings or Chelsea vs. Manchester City; for olympic entertainment (athletes pushing to their limits), Olympics are the place to watch.

What looks stupid and cool is purely subjective.

Fencing is hard to follow because its fast and movements are subtle.

> If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty bank account every day.

But if someone wants to see how well they can kick a ball its somehow worth paying them?

The biggest factor here is that team sports are brandable and build brand loyalty in a way individual sports cannot.

A contest between a man with a short sword and shield vs a man with a trident and a net would be very popular.

That's all purely a social construct - e.g. almost nobody on the planet outside the US watches football (or Cricket in the UK/India, or ...). Football is a thing in the US because it is a thing in the US: You can bond with your peers around it. The objective technicalities of the sport itself have nothing to do with it.

Yo idk what youre talki g about with fencing. Its entertaining as hell

> Football is a top tier sport because it's entertaining.

Some dudes running and kicking a ball from left to right for 90+ minutes? They’re not even allowed to fight…

From all the sports this is certainly one of the most boring ones.

Fencing is a really fun sport to watch. Fast, high energy, high skill. Also swords.

Actually, most of the sports are boring to watch.

Everything is about context.

Football is more entertaining than fencing?

Go to a Sunday local game against two amateur teams where the only attendance is you and one of the player's uncle and you have to stay standing up next to the field while its pouring rain.

Then go to a fencing contest with 100+ people in attendance, music and a great speaker.

Now tell me which one looks more entertaining?

I used to think like you, until I watched big darts tournaments and curling with a great speaker. It went from "uh, who watches darts? it's stupid!" to "quiet, I'm watching darts!".

That's also why, depending on the country, popular sports are not the same, because they developped a culture and know how to make it entertaining.

Athletes get money in rough proportion to how many and how much fans are willing to pay to see them. It's as simple as that.

The idea is exactly about channelling the competitive spirit to peaceful sport rather than war.

Athletes are not like diplomats, they're like warriors, except there's no killing.

Team sports always matter more because every player on the roster gets a medal. Exact rules vary between sports, but winning a volleyball tournament = winning 12 gold medals, not just one. That's what makes it a top tier sport.

There are even more fringe ones which aren't particularly important under any other circumstances, but matter a lot in the Olympics: water polo (13 players), field hockey (16 players), synchronised swimming (8-10 players) etc.

Pretty much all sports (soccer might be a singular exception) are "regional" in this sense.

Expenses could be orders of magnitude more than an individual's fulltime salary. Just think of the equestrian disciplines, for example, where it's pretty obvious that being independently wealthy with millions to spend on your campaign with zero hope of making that money back is just what it takes to participate. You're spending those millions and devoting your life to athletics, in preference to any pursuit that's actually, you know, productive, to compete with other similarly-positioned people for what, within the circles you travel in, passes as the ultimate status symbol.

Even as things currently are, it absolutely infuriates me, that my money is taken from me involuntarily (as an involuntary license payer for public broadcasting in Germany) and given to the IOC to line the pockets of corrupt officials and further aims that I disapprove of, like overtourism and everything that surrounds the building of an olympic village etc. Every single cent's worth of transfer from my pocket to Isabel Werth's is just adding insult to injury.

Sports Illustrated has always been considered as a soft core porn magazine.

A lot of sports make quite a bit of money. The problem is the facilities costs. You're spending a lot of money on a specialized building with specialized equipment. Larger markets with more money raise costs even further by raising both athlete and audience expectations with ever more luxurious features, meaning the smaller markets with smaller audiences are compared to them. The facilities operators thus get the majority of sponsorship money as they force themselves into having the largest costs, leaving less money for other aspects like athlete pay and feeder leagues.

Some sports overcome this by forcing the team operators to also be the facilities operators, such as the NFL, but for many others like SailGP the athletes and teams are directly competing with the venues for some of the sponsorship money. And on top of that the different sports are competing with eachother for who gets what sponsorship, as some sports or sponsors have forced exclusivity contracts, such as Pepsi had with Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR or Mastercard had with FIFA.

And sometimes the sanctioning body responsible for the sport itself is just taking in the majority of the money and leaving the actual individual costs to the venues, teams, and athletes without ever supporting them centrally. F1, FIFA, and the NCAA did that for years.

There's plenty of money, it's just that it's not being spread around appropriately. The worst part is that it doesn't even have to be evenly for the sport and athletes to thrive, just appropriately.

The only people who make it to Olympic level (other than for very small countries) are people with the willingness to do anything it takes. If your sport isn't your top priority in your life, your place will be taken by someone for whom it is.

100% I'd strip. Putting that much toil in I'd want maximum compensation

First quote from Google-Search: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) generated US$902 million in revenue for the 2023 financial year."

Murkrow, sneasel, thievul, gholdengo

once every four years (and that's if you're good enough to make it to multiple olympics) isn't going to pay the bills

It's not a great business model as an athlete though is it now? Not really going to build up a following when you do it once every 4 years, or maybe only once. And unless you're in a prestigious event like the 100m sprint you're closer to a clown entertainment role wise, swinging your ball on a string or whatever.

Sure, an actual clown will get paid a tad better than zero by their circus, but they don't have the upside of a potential lucrative clown shoe sponsorship deal if they win.

TL;DR: these athletes knew the deal before they went in, and shouldn't act victim when they have to show their butts on only fans because their gamble didn't land.

Creating software is an economically profitable activity that many people are willing to pay top dollar for. Throwing a disc really far by hand, not so much.

That said, the "hobby" angle is irrelevant here. As the article points out, the IOC makes an absolute fuckton of money from Olympic broadcast rights and sponsors, essentially none of which flows back to the actual athletes.

Ok then why don't they get paid a living wage by the countries they are representing? Wouldn't representing a country be a government job?

Otherwise they are private workers/entrepreneurs and as such should be paid by what their customers feel like they're worth. Creating software can be an unpaid hobby, a government job, a private job, or a personal business.

> "Olympians" representing their countries.

Yes, but people connected to Olympic want to be independent from governments. In some way Olympians Games are private tournaments which are sponsored by host countries.

It is funny that "Olympians" representing my country when they demands public money, but are independent from government when we are talking about organization of National Olympic Committee.

> Who should earn all the money then?

The people doing the jobs that no-one wants to do. The garbagemen, the plumbers, the cleaners. And/or the people who do stuff that other people value, that people will pay to have it done well rather than badly.

If you're doing something fun, something that other people would very happily do for free, then yeah you shouldn't feel entitled to get paid for it. If you're good at your hobby and people care about it, they might pay you to do it (and I'd absolutely count software development among that), but that's up to them.

I represented my country in cycle ball as well. The thing is that nobody is really interested in that, similar to how nobody is interested in people throwing discs as far as possible. Just because you represent a country, it’s not necessarily interesting and people don’t have to get paid for it.

Those aren't hobbies. I'm not saying don't enjoy what you do. But if you want good money you're going to have to consider its value to others.

> "Olympians" representing their countries.

Maybe. But they don't represent the people in their countries. Paying them is not a matter of taxation, I don't care about watching sports (but I do sports) and I never watch, I don't see myself represented in any way and I am not willing to pay for the "honor" or being "represented". In the end the article is about money: who should pay, why, how much? Not the tax payer.

I think people chose to interpret that more lasciviously than it was.

If you offer something for free, especially to people we now understand to often be quite poor, they're going to fill their suitcase with them.

Even if you are offering beer coasters for free, someone's going to fill their suitcase with them.

This always gets the pearl-clutchers out of the woodwork - you're gathering a few hundred of the world's fittest people in peak performance mode in the same place for a few weeks, giving most of them a huge amount of downtime, what do you THINK is going to happen? (This is the general 'you', not YOU)

Providing free access to make sure things are happening safely is not what's 'encouraging the behaviour' here :D

They were also easy souvenirs to hoard.

People travel around the world and pay a lot to see a small handful of big-name sports. The long tail of olympic events is watched mostly by people who came for the big-name sports (or lived there already) and figured they might as well catch something else while they were in town.

These days I start to think (US) college sports, as bad as they are for many reasons, are much better than the Olympics, in the sense that at least athletes don't need to worry about being able to afford the training.

Yes, I prefer it this way. Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them. No need to subsidize it.

You're correct. But throwing a disc may be fun activity, but by no means is it a mark of "greatness." If a pro sport can't entertain, IMO it's a waste of time and contributes little to humanity. I would be happier if people celebrate wins in science.

Yeah but I'm not going to tell them throwing a disc is greatness, and I'm not going to tell them to make up the gap between what they think an activity is worth and what society thinks it's worth by becoming a whiner. That'd be abuse.

Support is a two way street, and I'd rather kids grow up to be strong and able to be those supporters of others than end up a depressed lonely loser, when they could've been happy instead, because they pissed their efforts on some trivia.

I found your capitalism quip particularly amusing. I know it's just a parroting of programming from your university days, but I'm sure there's someone in a labour camp in North Korea who'd crack at least a brief smile at the idea of a poor downtrodden Olympian proletarian spending all day practicing throwing a stick because it's their passion.

Right but GP’s comment would apply if someone posted a complaint about “why is no one paying me a salary to build an ESP32 thermometer that tickles my feet when it gets below 80 outside?”

Careful. Trying to detach profitability from utility and necessity, nevermind any higher level ethical or philosophical questions, may get you strung up around here.

Yeah and half the stuff that is of financial value is complete cancer on our society. Social media, advertising systems, etc etc.

You're entirely correct. However, most people on Hacker News are also making decent money on the side with their main job.

This is not the case for most Olympians, because even for sports that are not attracting large amounts of visitors and viewers and therefore sponsorships, you still basically need to dedicate your life to it.

You don't need to dedicate your life to writing code unless you are working for an early-stage startup or Elon Musk. So you have spare time which you can use to write code.

> "something that mattered"

Like decreasing quality of life for everybody through ad-tech.

Absolutely savage

In all seriousness, "thankyou for your service".

I'm an absolute middling athlete. In my 40s. Half a life spent at a desk. And then I picked up a bit of running/cycling as one does. And joined a local club, and became absolutely inspired by the people of all ages at the club entering competitions, doing big feats of endurance. Just for the love of the sport, or the thrill of achieving something difficult.

I'm still a middling athlete but now one that makes sure to fit in a bit of exercise each week and continues to make solid progress. So even if you haven't won any medals, you've likely inspired someone into making changes for the better.

If you’re asking the question, you clearly don’t have to worry about money. For most it’s a question of survival.

I know a poster who needs a few weeks working in a sulfur mine for a dollar a day to pull his head down to earth

Is it equally dystopian if you consider that “be productive for the economy” is shorthand for and quite closely related to “do something of value for your fellow community members?”

(Yes obviously there are extreme and very visible edge cases, but 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor)

Man you guys got trolled by the parent comment so hard.

People often like what they are good at, true, but people become good at things through work and practice. I am tired of the general attitude that somebody will either like something or dislike it after they give it a little try, when pretty much any performance art, be it programming, playing sport, drawing or learning an instrument comes front-loaded with hundreds of hours of practice before somebody can get good enough at it to properly enjoy it.

* Startups that exit, software engineers

* Pharma companies, US taxpayers funding basic research

* Waltons, Walmart employees

The list is endless.

The kids have parents who are empowered to make those decisions for them, for exactly the reason you suggest.

Of course, some parents make poor decisions - but it's a free country, but not free from the consequences of bad decisions.

Or do you suggest someone else make those decisions for the kids?

(flashbacks of reading comprehension exams intensify)

He doesn't seem to state his position on whether proper sex work should be stigmatized or not, just that others think it should be.

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> in desperation when their insurance tells them to take a hike.

Socialized healthcare is good because it doesn't mean you're tied to a job or worried about in/out network hospitals. But, care would still be rationed as it doesn't magically provide us with infinite resources.

I just like to point this out since there are very good arguments for socialized care in the US, but this isn't one of them.

I’d be interested to see stats on how many are Americans.

It was big news in Singapore where parents were raising millions for their children with a rare genetic disease.

Singapore has social medicine, but it doesn’t pay for gene therapy (but it’s paid for in the US through insurance).

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/crowdfunding-r...

Then add on top all the ones I saw from surrounding SE Asian countries and it’s must add up.

Americans are presented with a false dichotomy: Socialized medicine or US-style privatized healthcare; where the healthiest are charged 10% or more of their income and the neediest are dumped onto the US government.

It’s welfare for the industry.

If you have a non emergency procedure and you are short of cash it seems like medical tourism would be a better choice

The US healthcare system is insanely expensive. Socialized healthcare is not the solution to this particular problem. Spending the most $ amount in the world with not the best results raises the question about efficiency. Solve that first, otherwise it is just money pit and no realistic amount of socialized money can fill it.

Yes it was originally, but now you gotta have the money and time to pursue that sport at a professional level if you want to have any chance of even getting into the Olympics.

Personally I think it would be better if it was just regular joes doing the Olympics again, but state political interests kept dipping their hand into the pool to try and secure wins for some dubious political points.

„Early days“ is until 1990 in that case, which is surprisingly late. Some nations got around the ban by employing the athletes as soldiers and allowing them to prepare almost full time though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and...