Olympic first: Track and field gold medalists to receive $50k
On Wednesday, April 10, World Athletics has announced that track and field will be the first Olympic sport to pay gold medalists. The organization said that it will award gold medalists $50,000 each, starting with the Paris Games in 2024.
This makes World Athletics the first international federation to offer prize money directly to Olympic medalists as the games continue to shift away from amateurism.
The track and field pot of earnings will be $2.4 million for 48 men’s and women’s events. The federation said this is the first step in its plan to eventually pay all medalists by 2028, the year of the Los Angeles Games.
The funds for the winnings comes from payments to World Athletics from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC rakes in billions of dollars from sponsorships and broadcast deals.
The IOC said it was up to each sport’s governing body on how to spend its share of the Olympic revenue. However, it said it was not made aware of the World Athletics decision until April 10, shortly before the announcement.
Some countries already give athletes bonuses for medaling. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee awards athletes $37,500 for gold medals, $22,500 for silver medals and $15,000 for bronze medals. Singapore reportedly gives gold medalists $1 million. The U.K. and New Zealand offer no prize money for athletes at all.
However, athletes pay thousands of dollars each year for coaching and travel events and sacrifice traditional careers in the process.
Money Madness: 5 ways Caitlin Clark fever is paying off
Women’s March Madness is full of stars this year but one stands out above the rest. Iowa standout Caitlin Clark is the must-see attraction, pulling more eyeballs than last year’s NBA Finals average viewership, the World Series, and nearly every college football game. The sports world is in the Caitlin Clark business and it’s paying off.
“Iowa was a great team but Caitlin Clark is the reason we tuned in,” NBA superstar LeBron James said.
As Iowa gets ready to take on UConn and Paige Bueckers in the Final Four, here are five ways people are cashing in on Caitlin Clark.
Caitlin Clark herself
College basketball’s all-time leading scorer has scored about $3.2 million in NIL deals this year, according to On3. Her deals rank fourth behind sports royalty offspring Bronny James, Shedeur Sanders and social media sensation Livvy Dunne. Clark’s lucrative deals include Nike, Gatorade and State Farm.
Ice Cube also confirmed on social media that his up-and-coming BIG3 league extended a $5 million offer to Caitlin Clark, which would allow her to also play in the WNBA.
Gamblers are setting records with Caitlin Clark. FanDuel says the Elite Eight LSU-Iowa game was the biggest betting event of all time for women’s sports.
The Angel Reese-Clark rematch drew in 28% more money than their title game last year, where Reese came out victorious. This time, Clark dropped 41 points, drained nine three-pointers, and moves on to take on another college basketball star in the Final Four, UConn’s Bueckers.
Attendance records
The icon-heavy women’s tournament is setting records for fans in stands. The sellout crowds shattered records for the third consecutive season. Nearly 300,000 fans watched the first- and second-round games alone, a 26% increase over the previous year’s peak.
Fans in Iowa City topped all other hosting sites and the Caitlin effect doesn’t stop in college. The WNBA’s Indiana Fever is seeing a spike in ticket sales. The team has the No. 1 overall pick this year with Caitlin Clark headed to the league.
Getty Images
Ticket prices
It’s getting pricey to see these female superstars on the court. Their popularity is pushing resale ticket prices through the roof. The average cost to get into the women’s Final Four is $2,323, while the men’s tournament is taking in less than half at $1,001, according to Logitix.
Call it “Clarkonomics.”
TV ratings
Iowa’s Elite Eight victory over LSU shattered TV viewing records. With 12.3 million viewers tuning in, it wasn’t just the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history, but one of the most-viewed games in any sport other than the NFL this past year.
The Reese-Clark showdown topped the 11.8 million people who tuned in to watch USC great Cheryl Miller take on now-LSU coach Kim Mulkey in the 1983 championship.
ESPN has been getting a steal of a deal airing the women’s tournament. They recently signed an 8-year extension worth $65 million a year, which Sportico said is 12 times the current deal’s average annual rate. The higher rate won’t take effect until next season when Clark will be in the WNBA. Meanwhile, CBS and Turner pay around $1 billion per year to collectively air the men’s tournament.
WWE WrestleMania 40 expected to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Philly
WrestleMania 40 has arrived. This year, WWE’s marquee premium live event emanates from the home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, Lincoln Financial Field. But the “Showcase of the Immortals” — which has expanded to two nights in recent years — is not the only event in town.
Philly will see a celebration of sports entertainment from various promotions putting on shows for the influx of traveling wrestling die-hards. The Philadelphia Visitors Bureau expects WWE’s multi-day festivities alone to bring in over 200,000 wrestling fans to the City of Brotherly Love.
Larry Needle, the executive director of the Bureau’s Sports Division, told the Philadelphia Business Journal that even though Philadelphia bid on WrestleMania in the past, this was the right time for it to happen.
“The beauty of it for us all as a city is that now we’re going to get WrestleMania in all of its glory… if we did this even five or 10 years ago we would not have the benefit of the WrestleMania as it exists today,” Needle said.
Philadelphia is looking to top Los Angeles in terms of economic impact from the big event; WrestleMania 39 generated $215 million for the LA area, according to a study conducted by Applied Analysis. That topped the $206.5 million generated a year prior for WrestleMania 38 in Dallas. WrestleMania 39 drew nearly 162,000 people to SoFi Stadium with fans from all 50 states and over 60 different countries.
This time around fans took no time to set records. WWE touted WrestleMania 40 broke the company’s all-time gate record in one day, with 90,000 tickets selling in just hours of going on sale in August, surpassing the $21.6 million record set last year.
Straight Arrow News spoke to Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics, the site that looks at the economics of the wrestling industry. Thurston said 50,000 tickets have been sold for each night of WrestleMania, the Super Bowl of sports entertainment.
“WrestleMania is the biggest wrestling event of the year,” Thurston said. “This is the 40th one. It started in 1985. It is the wrestling event that people will know best that is the peak wrestling event… it really started the notion that the entire country and entire world could be watching one wrestling event at one time.”
WWE is currently seeing record financial success, posting revenue of $1.3 billion in 2023, with a rise in attendance and TV ratings. This past week the company spotlighted a rise in the key advertising demo of 18- to 49-year-olds for its weekly programs of “Raw” and “Smackdown,” averaging 733,000 and 892,000 total viewers respectively in the demo for quarter one.
Thurston attributed that to what’s known in the business as “creative,” which means the storylines and characters. Right now there’s no bigger star in wrestling than the biggest star in Hollywood, The Rock, and his on-screen persona, nicknamed “the Final Boss,” is not shy about taking all the credit during his in-ring promos.
“What you’re feeling right now, you’re feeling the energy, you’re feeling the mana because right now professional wrestling is cool,” the former WWE champion told a packed crowd during a recent episode of “Raw.” “Right now the ratings have skyrocketed because of The Rock.”
“They’re getting more money,” Thurston said. “They’re becoming a more profitable company. It’s a flip from what the wrestling business used to be decades ago where it was largely a live event business and it’s really become a business where – we still sell tickets and that’s great to do, but more than ever it’s a media business.
“It’s selling some form of video – whether that’s television programs weekly, whether it’s these big events like WrestleMania that’ll go on Peacock. It’s selling lots of media and they want to do more sponsorships”
WWE has made several deals over the past year: merging with UFC to form the $21.4 billion company TKO, striking a $5 billion deal to send “Raw” to Netflix in 2025, switching “Smackdown” from Fox to the USA Network in October in a $1.4 billion deal; and something that WWE has never done before — selling advertising on its ring mat to Prime Hydration, a sports drink company founded by WWE superstar Logan Paul. The latter is the largest sponsorship deal in WWE history, according to The Wall Street Journal.
There has also been some bad news for the company in recent months. WWE founder Vince McMahon resigned as executive chairman after being accused of sexual misconduct by a former employee. He has denied the allegations. But while the case gave WWE negative headlines, Thurston said it didn’t affect fan engagement in the product. In fact, he said the WWE has benefited from McMahon being removed from the company.
“The popularity of WWE increasing over the last couple of years has a lot to do with Vince being more removed from creative than ever,” Thurston said. “There’s definitely a perception with fans that the product has improved and I think Vince was an impediment to WWE’s creative connecting with fans and making them feel like they were excited for the show and wanted to tune in, spending money and time towards WWE events. And Vince being removed from creative has allowed Paul Levesque and others to step in and produce a show that is more satisfying for more people and more people are excited about.”
Paul Levesque, better known to fans as wrestler-turned-executive Triple H, is now in charge of WWE’s creative direction and what stories are ahead for its biggest stars like Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Rhea Rhipley and Becky Lynch.
“On April 6 and April 7 in Philadelphia, we’re going to take you to a whole new level,” Levesque said at a WrestleMania press conference held in Las Vegas in February. “It is a new time. It is a new era and it is an all-new WWE. And I promise you this, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Thurston said while WWE may have had more mainstream buzz during the Hulkamania era of the 1980s or the edgy Attitude Era that featured Stone Cold Steve Austin of the late 1990s, this era, the TKO era, is the company’s most profitable.
“You can talk about the Attitude Era, yes, it was definitely more popular then,” Thurston said. “Hulkamania era, I would say yes, it was definitely more popular in terms of mainstream awareness and engagement, certainly. But the cable bubble declining and people cutting the cord from cable has caused this demand from TV networks toward their most popular programs which are still what’s keeping the declining cable TV business together. And [two] of the most popular programs on television, if you look at the ratings, [are] WWE “Raw” and “Smackdown.” So that’s what’s really helping them become more profitable than ever.
So who will reign supreme when the final bell rings at WrestleMania 40? Cody Rhodes finishing his story? Or Roman Reigns dominating as the head of the table? That remains to be seen.
But in terms of economic wins, all the numbers point to WWE and Philly, a city known for its storied history, making some more history at WrestleMania.
Chiefs, Royals mull KC exit as vote on taxpayer-funded stadium upgrades looms
Residents of Jackson County, Missouri, are facing a vote on April 2 that may determine the future of their local sports franchises — the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. The question posed to voters on the ballot asks whether or not they would be in favor of implementing a ⅜-cent sales tax over the next 40 years to help fund stadium upgrades for the two teams.
Should the proposal pass, it would amount to an average annual cost of $115 for each adult in the area, totaling around $54 million in taxpayer money annually and an estimated $2 billion over the lifespan of the tax.
These funds would be allocated toward building a new downtown ballpark for the Royals and renovating Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs. Both franchises assert that these improvements would generate significant economic returns for the local community, estimating over $2 billion every year, including an annual $1.2 billion from the new Royals stadium and nearly $1 billion from the Chiefs’ spending.
However, if the vote fails, the owners of both clubs have floated the possibility that could lead them to look for new homes outside of Kansas City.
“We will have to consider all of our options,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said. “From the Chiefs standpoint, we’re in a building that’s 52-53 years old. At the end of the [current] lease, it will be 60 years old and we only have seven years left on our lease, so we’ll be in a position where we need to consider our options.”
“This is about sustaining ourselves as a major league city,” Royals owner John Sherman said. “There’s lots of cities that would love to have these franchises.”
The proposed legislation would replace an existing tax passed in 2006. The existing tax does essentially the same thing to fund stadium upgrades for the Chiefs and Royals, but is set to expire in 2031.
Opponents of the plan argue against the use of public funds to subsidize “billionaire owners,” and say they’re still “winning the battle on the ground,” despite being outspent in campaign efforts by a 20 to one margin.
“I am a lifelong Chiefs and Royals fan,” said Sarah Deder, a volunteer with KC Tenants, one of the groups advocating for a rejection of the stadium tax. “And that’s been hard for me to reconcile because these teams who have brought us together as a community for so many years are ripping mine apart.”
If the vote is in favor of the teams, the Royals aim to have their new ballpark ready for opening day in 2028, while the Chiefs look to finish Arrowhead Stadium renovations by the start of the 2031 season.
Sports Illustrated and Minute Media partnership secures print future
In a strategic move designed to stabilize and expand its operations, Sports Illustrated is partnering with digital media company Minute Media. This collaboration marks a significant shift in the magazine’s publishing rights, now secured by Minute Media for the next 10 years, with an option to extend the agreement for up to three decades.
The decision comes on the heels of challenges with the Arena Group — the magazine’s previous operator — which failed to fulfill a $3.75 million payment obligation. The lapse prompted Authentic Brands Group (ABG), the holder of Sports Illustrated’s intellectual property rights, to terminate its existing publishing agreement with the Arena Group, leading to substantial job losses in January.
Asaf Peled, the founder and CEO of Minute Media, has emphasized the company’s commitment to uphold the high standards of journalism Sports Illustrated is known for.
“At Minute Media, our focus will be to take that legacy into new, emerging channels enhancing visibility, commercial viability and sustainable impact, all while ensuring that the SI team is inspired to flourish in this new era of media,” Peled said.
The acquisition not only aims to ensure the print edition’s continuation but also seeks to broaden Sports Illustrated’s global presence. Minute Media — which owns other sports and culture content brands such as The Players’ Tribune and FanSided — plans to reinstate some of the employees laid off under the previous management, signaling a new chapter for the sports journalism brand.
US sports website Deadspin sold to European company, entire staff laid off
The sports website “Deadspin” has been sold to European startup firm Lineup Publishing, with its entire staff cut in the process. Deadspin was recently criticized in the news for publishing a story portraying a Kansas City Chiefs fan in blackface. The parents of the child at the center of the controversy sued.
“Journalism — and the country as a whole — is better today now that Carron Phillips no longer has a platform to target innocent kids with his agenda-driven writing,” the firm posted on X. “We are also grateful to G/O Media for infusing the company with cash that can be used to pay the judgment the Armenta family is going to win against it.”
Deadspin was launched in 2005 as part of Gawker, a gossip media site that filed for bankruptcy after being sued by Hulk Hogan for invasion of privacy.
Deadspin’s was acquired by Univision in 2016 and sold from there to G/O Media in 2019. G/O Media has now sold the sports hub to Lineup Publishing.
“The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site,” G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said.
“Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller said.
The startup faces an uphill battle as the sports journalism sector has been struggling to find its footing in an evolving media space.
Voting 13-2, Big Green’s basketball players elected to join Service Employees International Union Local 560, which already represents other Dartmouth employees. The same day, Dartmouth College appealed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision that Dartmouth players are employees.
“Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is as unprecedented as it is inaccurate,” Dartmouth said in a statement.
Dartmouth College argued unionization is not appropriate in part because, unlike other universities where athletics generate millions of dollars, the costs of Dartmouth’s athletics program far exceed any revenue.
“Those arguments, I think, are phony arguments,” said Michael Hsu, a former University of Minnesota regent and co-founder of the College Basketball Players Association. “If you have unionized secretaries or even factory workers, you can’t make the argument that they don’t make money for the company, or they lose money for the company. So I think it’s a ridiculous proposition that they would use that argument. It doesn’t even have a meaningful example in the corporate world.”
Hsu has filed two charges with the NLRB against the NCAA and Northwestern’s use of the term, “student-athlete.”
The sordid past of ‘student-athlete’
“These boys are student-athletes. Student comes first,” Samuel L. Jackson said in the film, “Coach Carter,” portraying high school basketball coach Ken Carter, who famously locked out his players for performing poorly in academics.
But unlike the well-meaning characterization of the character Carter, the term student-athlete was not crafted to prioritize education.
“The term was created by Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA in the 1950s,” Hsu said. “And they created the term to try and escape liability, legal liability.”
In 1955, Fort Lewis A&M football player Ray Dennison crushed his skull during a game and later died. His widow filed a claim for death benefits under workers’ compensation. The case made it to the Colorado Supreme Court, where the justices ruled the compensation fund did not extend to student-athletes.
Byers — who made sure the term “student-athlete” was embedded throughout college sports — later renounced its use in his memoir, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes.” The NCAA continues to use the term.
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo warned in 2021 that where appropriate, she will allege that calling players student-athletes is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“He’s basically admitting that they’re violating the law by saying that, but he’s saying, ‘Oh, we need a new law to make this okay and make it legal,’” Hsu said.
Baker claimed 95% of athletes’ opportunities would be endangered if athletes were considered school employees. Like Dartmouth, he’s arguing the vast majority of schools lose money on athletic programs and can’t afford to pay their players. This extends from small programs like those within the Ivy League Conference to Division II and Division III schools.
The NCAA continues to push Congress for a limited antitrust exemption to give it a break from the onslaught of lawsuits it now faces. As for Dartmouth and the fight against its basketball-playing employees, Hsu says that case will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court.
FuboTV sues Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over sports streaming service
The streaming wars appear ready to enter the courtroom, as sports streaming platform FuboTV is suing Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over their recently announced sports streaming service. FuboTV filed an antitrust lawsuit on Tuesday, Feb. 20, alleging the joint venture “will destroy competition and inflate prices for consumers.”
“Each of these companies has consistently engaged in anticompetitive practices that aim to monopolize the market, stifle any form of competition, create higher pricing for subscribers and cheat consumers from deserved choice,” David Gandler, co-founder and CEO of FuboTV, said in a statement.
FuboTV alleges the defendants’ new joint venture is their latest move to eliminate competition and monopolize the sports streaming market.
“The launch of this new streaming sports service is a significant moment for Disney and ESPN, a major win for sports fans, and an important step forward for the media business,” Bob Iger, Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company said. “This means the full suite of ESPN channels will be available to consumers alongside the sports programming of other industry leaders as part of a differentiated sports-centric service.”
How Dartmouth athletes succeeded in union efforts where Northwestern failed
Dartmouth College basketball players are not just athletes, but university employees able to negotiate salaries, practice schedules and travel schedules. That’s what a National Labor Relations Board regional official ruled on Monday, Feb. 5, clearing the path for a union vote.
Dartmouth can still appeal the decision in a case that could wind up at the Supreme Court. The players, meanwhile, are already planning their next steps, including forming an Ivy League Players Association for basketball players across the conference.
The NLRB ruling marks the first time college athletes have successfully won approval to unionize, though not the first attempt. Ten years ago, Northwestern University football players appealed to the NLRB for similar rights and were eventually shot down.
“It was always a house of cards that was doomed to crumble and 10 years later, we’re miles ahead of where we were, but the Northwestern case was certainly one of those things that took a few cards out of the base and started the whole thing tumbling down,” said David Ridpath, sports business professor at Ohio University.
Some of what Northwestern players fought for — and were denied — one decade ago is now common practice in college sports, specifically compensation around name, image and likeness, known as NIL.
How Dartmouth players’ case is different
The premise behind the NLRB denying Northwestern players does not apply to Dartmouth. At the time, the NLRB declined to take on the case because while Northwestern University is a private university, it is part of the Big Ten, which is full of public universities. The board kicked the issue to schools and the NCAA, saying allowing one school to unionize while others could not would only complicate matters.
For Dartmouth, that issue does not exist. The college is not only private but part of the Ivy League conference, which only consists of other private schools.
“This can have far-reaching implications for all the Ivy League schools and certainly something that other schools could follow,” Ridpath said. “I just look at it as a possible template and a pathway forward for all schools, public and private.”
NCAA’s many athlete-employee battles
Since losing NCAA v. Alston, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the NCAA has faced several antitrust violation cases that continue to play out in court. While the NCAA has historically fought back against compensating college athletes, maintaining compensation would harm their amateur status, courts are increasingly ruling in the other direction.
“You can’t say that somebody is a student and treat them as an employee without giving them all the rights that employees have, including collective bargaining as a union,” Ridpath said. “It simply doesn’t work. You can’t hide behind the student-athlete moniker and claim that they are just students doing extracurricular activities.”
Ridpath said he could see Dartmouth’s case getting appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
Watch the full interview in the video above.
How Taylor Swift ‘shakes off’ her tour to make it to Super Bowl LVIII
Taylor Swift may not be Juliet, and Travis Kelce may not be Romeo, but a love story is unfolding nonetheless. The first hurdle in their romance may be Swift’s unconfirmed journey to Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas, Nevada. The award-winning artist has yet to announce her plans for travel.
Swift is scheduled for a show in Tokyo on Saturday, Feb. 10, a day before the Super Bowl, and in order to make it to the big game, she’ll need to beat the clock.
The Associated Press reports that Swift’s flight from Tokyo to Las Vegas would take 11-12 hours. If she left at midnight on Saturday from Tokyo, because of time zone differences, she would arrive in Las Vegas at 7 a.m.
To see her boyfriend, who stars for the Kansas City Chiefs, Swift is going to have to find a parking spot for her private jet, a Dassault Falcon 900. The aircraft ranges in price from $19 million to $47 million, according to PilotPassion.com.
However, money isn’t the problem; parking availability is what’s causing the dilemma.
All of the airports around Las Vegas have around 475 spaces combined, according to a report by the AP. Not a single parking spot for private jets remains at any of the four airports, as noted by spokesperson for the Clark County Department of Aviation, Heidi Hayes.
Air traffic is expected to be busy. Commercial airlines have added flights and the Las Vegas Airport reported Wednesday, Jan. 30, it accommodated nearly 60 million passengers in 2023, an average of 160,000 passengers per day.
As far as Swift’s travel, she is not shy about using her aircraft. The New Daily reported that Swift’s flights to NFL games this season have created 138 tons of emissions in just three months.
However, a representative for Swift defended her decision, saying the artist offset the pollutants by doubling down on the carbon credits required for her Eras Tour in March. Those credits are tradable units that represent one metric ton of carbon dioxide avoided or removed from Earth’s atmosphere, according to the investment site Sylvera.
Enough with the side talk, Swift needs to find her parking spot.
The AP reported that there are several airports within 100 miles of Las Vegas which allow for “drop-and-go” flights. Essentially, those flights allow pilots to drop off passengers at their destination and then fly to another airport to park.
If Swift were to go the drop-and-go route, she could choose the Mesquite Municipal Airport in Nevada, which is an hour and 13 minutes to Las Vegas, not considering the added traffic from Super Bowl LVII.
If Swift does “touchdown” in Las Vegas due to a spot opening up at one of the four airports, her parking may actually be cheaper than the average person who drives to the stadium. An official at Harry Reid International Airport confirmed to the AP that parking for private planes ranges anywhere from $20 to $150 per day, depending on the size of the plane.
However, it’s unclear if Swift will even make the trip to Super Bowl LVIII, as her journey remains up in the air. The multiplatinum artist had not confirmed whether or not she will attend the sporting spectacle as of Thursday, Feb. 1.
