Olympians Compete for Endorsements
While a few winter Olympians such as Michele Kwan and Bode Miller are well known in the United States, most athletes compete in obscurity. That makes it hard for them to earn lucrative endorsements.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, host:
The Winter Olympics get underway next week in Italy and when those skiers, lugers and bobsledders come hurdling down the mountain, some will be wearing company logos. Some top Olympic athletes can make a lot of money but most have to rely on anything they can make from commercial endorsements. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD reporting:
In the run-up to the Olympics you might catch one of these commercials Nike is about to start running featuring the top skier on the U.S. men's team, Bode Miller.
Mr. BODE MILLER (Skier, U.S. Olympic Men's Team; World Cup Champion): [in an advertising clip] ...and when the challenge gets bigger, I just want to ramp it up more and see what's--I mean, my only worry is that, at some point, I'm just gonna die.
ARNOLD: At this point in the ad you see video of one of Miller's spectacular wipe-outs. He loses control of his skis and is going so fast he flips completely upside down, flies for 50 feet through the air and lands on his head and shoulder.
(Soundbite of background advertisement)
Mr. MILLER: ...until then I usually charge pretty hard. It doesn't seem to get any less fun.
ARNOLD: Miller is the reigning World Cup ski champion and could win a bunch of medals at Turin. A few Americans heading over to the Winter Olympics, Miller and the figure skater Michelle Kwan, have managed to make millions off their sports careers. But most Olympic hopefuls get very little money by comparison, even when they get lucky enough to land a sponsorship deal.
Mr. TONY BENSHOFF (Luger, U.S. Olympic Men's Team): I'm not getting rich (laughs).
ARNOLD: That's Tony Benshoff, the no. 3 ranked Men's Single luge slider in the world. He's the top guy on the U.S. team. He's got several corporate sponsorships and he stands a good chance of medaling at Turin. So, how much do you think Benshoff made last year?
Mr. BENSHOFF: I made, oh, maybe $35,000.
ARNOLD: And about $25,000 of that came from a job he has at the Home Depot where he works six months of the year and gets six months off to train and compete. And Benshoff says he's happy to be making that much. He's 30 years old and he's been scraping by on a lot less ever since he fell in love with the sport of luge.
Mr. BENSHOFF: I saw it on the '88 Olympics and I remember specifically saying to my dad, like, how in the heck do these guys stop? You know, this (unintelligible) just the craziest sport. It was just the act of sliding down a hill at 80 mph and the sled just, I just, it was really exciting to me.
ARNOLD: Soon after the U.S. luge team was recruiting in Minneapolis near Benshoff's home and he signed up, started sliding and was hooked. Since hardly anybody in this country follows these more obscure Olympic sports, companies say they just can't justify spending much money on athletes like Benshoff. Paul Swanguard heads up the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center.
Mr. PAUL SWANGARD (Director, The James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon): It's hard for them to be able to measure the impact of those dollars being spent against those athletes. You know, in basketball if they're spending money on Lebron James and his new shoe results in $100 million of new business, it's a pretty easy, you know, math equation to figure out how that's affecting their bottom line.
ARNOLD: Swangard says one thing marketers have been doing more recently with Olympic athletes is giving them less money up front, but some bigger incentives if they actually win a medal. Benshoff says those are the kinds of sponsorship deals he's gotten this year. He says, still, even winning a gold would get him a total somewhere in the $100,000 range, not exactly Lebron James money, but after years with thousands of dollars on credit cards, Benshoff says he'd be happy with that. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
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