The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) dines with billionaires and dictators, jets around the world, and lives in a luxurious six-star hotel – while American Olympians are not even given a salary.
The IOC generates $7.6 billion in quadrennial revenue, which is the same amount as the GDP of Tonga, Seychelles, Bhutan, and the Maldives – combined.
This is while Olympians – humanity’s best athletes – eke out a meager existence, are forced to live in cars, take up side jobs, and choose between eating and racking up credit card debt.
Despite the enormous rivers of gold that flow through the IOC’s coffers, 58% of Olympians report that they did not consider themselves financially stable – with the vast majority living at or below the poverty line.
Olympians Are Not Paid Enough for What They Do
Despite training for years, dedicating their lives and their bodies to the Olympic mission, most Olympians are not given a salary.
Instead, they are driven into debt.
The IOC doesn’t provide monetary rewards to Olympic medalists; the prize money comes – if at all – from the Olympian’s country. American Olympians aren’t even provided with a salary.
Comparatively, the Wimbledon tennis competition offers millions to each singles tournament winner, with the athletes who lose in the first round taking home double the amount of prize money that gold-medal-winning US Olympians receive.
Prize | Wimbledon | US Olympians | UK Olympians |
|---|---|---|---|
Winner (Gold) | $2,477,600 | $37,500 | No Prize Money |
Runners-Up (Silver) | $1,300,740 | $22,500 | |
Semi-Finalists (Bronze) | $662,758 | $15,000 |
“There are a lot of us [Olympians] that are technically living under the poverty line.”
Ben Bruce
Whilst training for the Olympics, Ben Bruce hardly made $10,000.
Instead of training, Ben was forced for “several tough years” to work delivering pizzas and cleaning houses.
Ben is representative of the vast majority of Olympians – competing in silence, and living in poverty.
“I am a homeless Olympic medalist, I thought to myself.”
Ronda Rousey
In a heartbreaking interview, Ronda Rousey revealed that, despite her success in the 2008 Olympics, she had so little money upon returning to the States, she was forced to live in her car.
Swearing off the Olympics, she joined the for-profit WWE, and is now worth $14 million.
The Enduring Legacy of Olympic Poverty
Steve ‘Pre’ Prefontaine
Unfortunately, exploitation is a historic practice in the Olympics. Before the rule change in 1974, the Olympics enforced the ‘amateur’ requirement.
American hero Steve ‘Pre’ Prefontaine, a renown long-distance runner, was forced to live off food stamps in order to comply with this arbitrary rule.
“I don’t think anything has changed,” Olympian Adam Nelson revealed. The legacy of Olympics-enforced poverty lives on long after Pre’s premature death.
America’s Forgotten Sweetheart
Debi Thomas
Despite amazing the world in the 1988 Calgary Olympics, becoming the first African American to win a figure skating medal, Debi Thomas was so poorly compensated by the Olympics that she was forced to live in a bed-bug-infested trailer, and can no longer afford new skates.
“It’s a small percentage of people who make a real living in this sport.”
Brian Sell
Despite representing the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the men’s marathon, Olympian Brian Sell was thrust into poverty.
While training, Brian’s income was below $25,000, for three consecutive years.
“It’s hard… think a few people are getting some money here and there, but it’s not much at all.”
Scott Parsons, Three-Time Olympian
A Better Deal for Athletes
Enhanced will deliver a high-impact yet cost-efficient games, so we can share the profits with the athletes, based upon a model devised by the Enhanced Athletes Commission.
The Olympic Games generate substantial revenues almost unparalleled across the sporting world – to the tune of $7.6 billion in quadrennial revenue. Yet, these streams of gold don’t trickle down to the athletes whose shoulders the Olympics rest upon; a 2012 study by former Olympic athletes found that just 6 percent of the US Olympic Committee’s $795 million expense budget actually goes to athletes as cash payments.
A Smarter Alternative for Host Cities
The costs of hosting the Olympic Games have skyrocketed over the past 20 years; a growing number of economists argue that the benefits of hosting the games are at best exaggerated and at worst nonexistent, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Further, the average cost of hosting each Summer Games is, on average, 252 percent over budget, according to a 2016 study from the University of Oxford.
*Just on Infrastructure
These crushing costs are fronted by you, the taxpayer.
The Enhanced Games will be delivered without cost to the taxpayer, and will instead cost millions – not billions – to deliver.
The Enhanced Games will be a triumph of science, athletic achievement, and capitalism, bringing sport back to its true roots.
See our Event Plan to learn more.
Ultimately, the core values of the Enhanced Movement are operational efficiency and a drive for individual human excellence. Accordingly, a four-stage selection process was employed to determine the sports that best aligned with these values.
Sourced list of active and retired events at the Summer Olympics.
Added non-Olympic options in popular demand, such as MMA.
Eliminated team sports to focus on individual performance.
Eliminated ball sports to focus on speed, strength, and endurance.
Emphasized operational efficiency and public interest.
Discussed outcome with Enhanced’s leadership team. Executive decision was taken.
Tabulated data points with sports as the dominant variable.
Defined 25 non-dominant variables, and corresponding values.
Tabulated data points with sports as the dominant variable.
Defined 25 non-dominant variables, and corresponding values.
Emphasized operational efficiency and public interest.
Discussed outcome with Enhanced’s leadership team. Executive decision was taken.
We have selected five core categories of sports – athletics, aquatics, gymnastics, strength, and combat. Whilst medals will be awarded to the first, second, and third best Enhanced athletes at each event, the ultimate award will go to the athletes who set new world records, thus pushing the perceived limit of what we believe is possible.
The Enhanced Games will avoid this destructive and wasteful cycle by revisiting the same host cities over and over, and reusing existing infrastructure, such as university sports stadiums – all at zero cost to the taxpayer. Our Games are designed to be hosted at a Division One university, to avoid building new infrastructure.
Every four years, the Olympics forces the host country's government to waste billions of taxpayer dollars building new sports stadiums, which will be used for a few weeks before being thrown away. Indeed, since the year 2000, the cost of hosting the Olympic Games has spiraled from $8.1 billion, to $59.7 billion – creating a burden for this – and future – generations of taxpayers.
We are an efficient sports league and treat sports like a business – by using venture, debt, and revenue to run our high-impact and low-cost Games.
Because the Enhanced Games are for-profit, we are responsible to our shareholders – and are incentivized to run efficiently, and treat our athletes – the backbone of our movement – properly. The Olympics, however, is a not-for-profit run by
Swiss aristocrats. Bribery, corruption, and exploitation are ingrained in Olympic culture – with each Olympic Games revealing another instance of backroom bids and palm greasing. The Olympics props up dictators like Xi Jinping and Putin, legitimizing their authority in the wake of human rights abuses, such as the genocide of the Uyghur population, and the invasion of Ukraine.
The Olympics is set on becoming chummy with dictators and seeks to drive Western democracies into debt. It is high time for this behavior to be called out – and canceled.
