Scottie Scheffler added — very barely — to his 2024 earnings on the Olympics.
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Within the aftermath of an exhilarating championship Sunday on the Olympic males’s golf competitors, a number of gamers talked about how significant the finale was regardless of there being “no cash” on the road.
“I nonetheless assume that the Ryder Cup is the very best event that we now have in our recreation, pure competitors, and I believe this has the potential to be proper up there with it,” mentioned Rory McIlroy after ending his ultimate spherical. “I believe with how a lot of a s—present the sport of golf is correct now and you consider the 2 tournaments that is likely to be the purest type of competitors in our sport, we don’t play for cash in it.”
Jon Rahm echoed these sentiments.
“Two of probably the most significant weeks in my profession is 2 occasions the place we make no cash,” he mentioned. “And I’ve mentioned that one million occasions, and I’ll say it once more as a result of the Ryder Cup and [the Olympics] are up there.”
Their quotes made the rounds on social media, suggesting they’d tapped right into a broadly shared sentiment; for a number of years it’s felt as if cash has pushed each main choice in skilled golf, so there was one thing refreshing, pure, elemental a couple of money-free Video games the place the very best gamers on the earth have been combating just for the elegant prize of an Olympic medal.
However there’s nonetheless a little bit cash concerned. How a lot?
How a lot did the medalists make?
McIlroy and Rahm have been largely right. Largely. They completed T5 for the week and, as I perceive it, neither obtained paid for his or her outcomes. Evaluate that to Rahm’s T7 end on the Open Championship, which earned him $452,000, or McIlroy’s runner-up end result on the U.S. Open, which gained him $2.3 mil. Contending towards this caliber of golfer often pays big-time.
However Scottie Scheffler did earn some cash for successful. He obtained paid by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee for his gold medal. There’s a uniform pay construction for athletes representing Group USA: $37,500 for gold medals, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze. Contemplating Scheffler had already made greater than $28 million on the course in 2024, a payday within the mid-five figures could not even register. However in 2023, the median annual wage for all U.S. employees was $48,060; throw within the free Group USA gear the Schefflers obtained and also you’re a lot of the manner there.
(Let’s simply spend yet one more second on Scheffler’s 2024 earnings: he’s made $28,148,691 this yr enjoying the PGA Tour. And we haven’t even gotten to the big-money FedEx Cup Playoffs. He’s been enjoying good golf.)
Tommy Fleetwood fired a final-round 5-under 66; solely a Seventeenth-hole bogey saved him from a gold-medal playoff towards Scheffler. However he didn’t make a penny for his silver medal and wouldn’t have for gold, both. Group Nice Britain doesn’t pay its medalists, preferring to spend on grants and coaching stipends as an alternative. (British Athletics, the track-and-field assist program, does reportedly pay for medals impartial of the federal government.) He didn’t appear to thoughts.
Hideki Matsuyama earned bronze for Japan, a prize he’d dearly desired ever since developing simply quick at his house Video games in Tokyo. That need wasn’t fueled by financials, however Matsuyama reportedly earns $6,000 for a bronze medal from Japan’s Olympic committee.
What did the medalists make final time?
As a result of pay construction is so totally different nation by nation, that is hardly the primary time a decrease finisher has out-earned somebody forward of them on the outcomes web page. In reality, final time round C.T. Pan of Taiwan (the nation competes as “Chinese language Taipei” within the Olympics) gained the bronze in a 7-for-1 playoff. The nation’s Olympic Committee has a coverage that organizes finishes by athletes by tiers and a bronze medal put Pan in “First Class, Degree 3,” so he earned 5 million New Taiwan {Dollars} (NT), which transformed to only shy of $179,000. That was practically 5x the prize of gold medalist Xander Schauffele.
May Olympic athletes receives a commission extra sooner or later?
There’s one thing of a motion afoot to pay Olympic athletes extra. This shouldn’t be stunning; there’s loads of cash concerned within the Video games, in spite of everything, however its athletes see little or no of it. Given the motion in the direction of participant pay in school sports activities it’s straightforward to think about extra established pay on the Olympics, too.
On the planet of monitor and area, it’s already begun. World Athletics, the worldwide athletics federation, has pledged to pay Olympic gold medal winners $50,000 for his or her Paris wins, whereas they’ll start to pay silver and bronze medalists on the 2028 Video games.
Golfers are among the many Olympic opponents who want cash the least, however that doesn’t imply they’re unaware of the market forces at play. Shortly earlier than feedback from McIlroy and Rahm, Norway’s Viktor Hovland was requested about golf’s place within the Olympics.
“Nicely, I might say the leaderboard is fairly good, in case you take a look at the highest, in case you take a look at the names. Nevertheless it’s less than me to say whether or not it needs to be within the Olympics or not,” he mentioned. “I do know the IOC is making some huge cash primarily based on having golf there; so I’m certain they’re fairly pleased with it. I don’t know. That’s up for individuals to determine.”
That wasn’t a name for participant pay, essentially. Hovland gained the FedEx Cup final yr and made it clear that relating to additional tens of millions, he doesn’t really want ’em. Nevertheless it was a reminder that if somebody’s creating wealth, everybody else round that somebody is gonna know.
What else do medalists get?
There are some cool exemptions that include successful gold, too. One purpose some lower-ranked execs have been salivating on the thought is that the Olympic winner earns berths into all 4 2025 main championships in addition to the Gamers and, if the winner is a PGA Tour member, the Sentry.
The opposite medalists largely settled for world rating factors; Fleetwood jumped from No. 14 to No. 11 with the silver.
There’s additionally the worth of the medals themselves. Gold medals are (bear with me) largely fabricated from silver, silver medals are made completely of silver and bronze medals are fabricated from copper, tin and zinc. One economist at Oxford Economics estimated a worth of $1,027 for a gold, $535 for a silver and (sorry, Hideki) simply $4.60 for a bronze.
Ask any golfer’s agent they usually’ll let you know any medal is value one thing as they market gamers and negotiate a brand new yr of contracts — and gold is value way more. For the final a number of years Xander Schauffele and Nelly Korda have been launched as Olympic champions. For the following 4 years Scottie Scheffler could have that honor. It’s a $37,500 honor. It’s value excess of that.
Largely, although, it’s priceless.
