By Susan Edmunds of RNZ
How much is a gold medal worth?
If you are high jumper Hamish Kerr, about $83,000.
Australian financial comparison site MoneyMe surveyed the earnings of athletes at the Olympics and determined that Hong Kong fencers Cheung Ka Long and Vivian Kong Man Wai were the highest-earning at these Games, each securing about $1.28 million for their gold medals.
Hong Kong had the most generous cash reward for gold medallists, followed by Singapore, Indonesia, and Israel.
Kerr was New Zealand’s highest-earning medallist because his gold meant he received US$50,000 ($83,000) from the World Athletics Committee.
MoneyMe’s chief executive Clayton Howes said there were significant disparities in financial rewards across different nations.
“Like many games before, the Paris Olympics highlighted significant variations in prize money across different sports and events, reflecting the diverse recognition and reward structures that athletes encounter on a global stage.
“While some countries, particularly those in Asia and parts of Europe, offer substantial financial incentives, others such as Great Britain, some Nordic countries, and Australia and New Zealand, offer more modest rewards.”
High Performance Sport New Zealand said that while Kerr was the only athlete to receive a cash bonus at the Olympics, there were excellence grants available.
They ranged from $10,000 per year for the Olympic cycle for people who placed seventh or eighth, to $40,000 for gold medallists.
Marketing expert Bodo Lang, of Massey University, said there would be other, potentially long-term benefits for medallists, too.
“For some athletes, it may be worth millions over their lifetime, considering all the commercial opportunities that become available to them.
“Sponsorship, being used as a brand ambassador, and speaking engagements are three examples of the sorts of options that can open up for such high-performing athletes.”
He said the relative value added would be largest for athletes in less commercialised sports that did not have as many professional participants.
“Such athletes may be lifted from the confines of their own disciplines into the public spotlight. Name recognition, liking, and attitude towards such athletes typically skyrocket, particularly if there is an interesting story angle, such as being a very young or old athlete, or having some other obstacle to overcome.
“Eliza McCartney is a good example of this at the Rio 2016 Olympics, where she catapulted on to the international scene, winning the bronze medal. She would have been relatively unknown outside her discipline prior to the 2016 Olympics but became a household name and a much-liked athlete after the Rio Olympics.”
He said it was part of a broader trend of the increasing commercialisation of the Olympic Games.
“The revenue attained from licensing and merchandising at the Olympics has grown enormously in the past. So while the Olympics may be about high performance sports, they are also about turning that performance into a financial return in many different ways, such as merchandising, travel, and subscriptions to Olympic streaming channels, such as Sky TV.”
Revenue for the organising committee of the Olympic Games rose from US$17.2m ($28.6m) in 1992 to US$119m ($198m) in 2012.
“Another interesting commercialisation angle of the Olympics is the public’s willingness to pay for the resources required to support high-performance sports.
“Research has shown that consumers’ willingness to pay is linked to how successful the Olympic medal haul has been, as well as to international prestige and national pride. This is interesting because marketers typically think about [it] as how much consumers are prepared to pay for a product at the point of sale,” Lang said.
“However, in this case [the willingness] is about resources that consumers do not directly use, own, or benefit from - maybe specialised training facilities, a velodrome. In that sense, having a successful Olympic medal haul increases consumers’ willingness to pay for such facilities because of more abstract psycho-social benefits, such as national pride.”