By Heath Mills
First Published in Dylan Cleaver's Substack Newsletter The Bounce 15.8.24
When I left New Zealand and sports journalism for a big OE around the turn of the century I had never heard of Heath Mills. By the time I returned I certainly had as Mills first established the NZ Cricket Players’ Association and then led them into industrial action. It’s a gross simplification of the 23 years since, but the fruits of that strike remain two-fold: New Zealand cricket has one of the most dynamic and win-win contracting environments between players and board in the professional sports world; and the public by and large remain suspicious of Mills and his ilk.
I like the bloke. Over the past 20 years we’ve had more phone calls and conversations than I’d care to count. Some have been fraught, some have been short, occasionally they could be characterised as a ‘robust exchange of views’. What I always respected about Heath was that even if the last call went pretty averagely, the next one would be picked up.
I think he appreciated the fact that as a journalist, I was trying to get the full picture and in return, I respected the fact that as an advocate, he always had his constituent’s — the players — best interests at heart.
In more recent years, as I moved out of the day-to-day cricket news cycle, the conversations been more reflective and big-picture. So when he started talking about the Olympics, I was listening. So much so that I said, ‘Don’t waste all this on me, tell it to my subscribers too…”
- Dylan Cleaver
IT HAS been a wonderful fortnight watching our athletes competing against the best at the Paris Olympics. It’s great to watch events that most of us only see once every four years, like track and field, swimming, triathlon, rowing and cycling. Those athletes that climbed onto the podium and even those who didn’t, will hopefully inspire our kids to get outside and give it go themselves. They should be celebrated.
The Olympics can leave you with a sense of joy and nationalism that’s uplifting, but when it comes to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), those senses mask what lies beneath the commercial juggernaut.
The IOC engineers this nationalism to get host cities, who want to be seen as a global big player, to put themselves into debt for generations to come. Sadly, it’s not the politicians or property developers of the day who foot this cost, but the tax- and rate-paying citizens of these host cities and countries. There are countless examples of overblown costs and abandoned facilities left as a burden to those who remain once the Olympics leave town.
Taxpayers foot the bill to stage the games, from which the IOC generates around US$7.6 billion per Olympic cycle in commercial revenue. It’s a sum that has grown steadily since the mid 1970s and was supercharged after Los Angeles 1984, the first truly commercial Olympics, largely due to the growth of linear broadcast channels and the sale of sports media rights to host this content.
And what about the athletes? Where do they fit into this money-go-round?
As it’s climbed to the multi-billion-dollar event we see today, many people have made a lot of money including broadcasters, commercial sponsors, event service providers, property developers, construction firms, catering companies and betting agencies, but not the athletes. The very people we tune into watch don’t earn a cent from the IOC for generating the financial windfall that is the Games.
Yes, some have personal sponsorships, but that number is declining. Some will parlay Olympic success into lucrative post-playing careers in the media or business, but that number is far fewer than you would expect.
Some receive taxpayer funding via government sports agencies, but it barely pays the bills. The average athlete in New Zealand currently receives about $30,000 per year from the government, which if they manage to climb the mountain to success may move up to $60,000 for gold medal winners, though I believe this is increasing slightly in the next four-year period.
But the IOC doesn’t pay — the taxpayer does and that is remarkable.
The Olympics remain in stark contrast to most professional sport where the athletes take from the money that is generated by the event or competition through revenue-share or collective-agreement arrangements.
What other industry or sector would get away with asking people to work for two weeks, sell the fruits of their labour, and not pay them a cent for it? But the IOC does and we’ve had it ingrained in us to believe that, in the interests of nationalism, this is acceptable.
If the IOC was genuine about the growth of sport and the “spirit of sport”, or Olympism, and didn’t commercialise its events, instead giving the media rights for free to each country’s state broadcaster, then maybe the athletes shouldn’t be paid as nobody would be commercially trading off them.
I could sign up for that, but as we know, making money and commercialising the work of the athletes has been turned into an artform by those in charge of the IOC. So much so, that every big commercial sport that can be persuaded has been brought into the fold and all manner of new sporting activities that bring in the next generation of eyeballs (translation: new revenue opportunities) have been included. If Love Island could be turned into an international competition, the IOC would include it.
Which is fine if those in charge are honest about their motivations, but they can’t have it both ways: making billions off the athletes work on the one hand, then insisting they compete as an “amateur” and pay them nothing on the other. If the IOC is so values-driven, then it should do the right thing and ensure those who it trades off share in the windfall.
It’s not good enough to make so-called “solidarity payments” to each international sporting federation, for them to spend on all manner of things other than athlete remuneration.
It was great to see Lord Sebastian Coe, the head of World Athletics, agree to pay each gold medallist in the track and field US$50,000 at Paris. It was done with widespread condemnation from the Olympic movement, I should add, with IOC president Thomas Bach saying that it was not “the role of an international sports federation” to provide payments to athletes “for Olympic success”.
Despite Bach’s wrong-headed assertion, that’s a step in the right direction from one sporting federation, but there’s a long way to go. We also can’t just focus on medal winners, as the vast majority of the 10,000 athletes at the Olympics are sacrificing years of their lives to training regimes with very little to no compensation. A recent research project by the Australian Sports Foundation found that 46 per cent of athletes survived off less than $15,000 per year and 42 per cent suffered poor mental health due to financial difficulties. If that’s happening in Australia, who are one of the more enlightened countries when it comes to athlete welfare, I hate to think what the numbers would look like in many other countries.
But it’s not bad news for all. In an article in Time magazine, Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin noted that IOC members travel first-class to events, stay in five-star hotels and are paid up to US$900 in per diems for each day they attend an Olympic activity. This means they will earn more from the IOC than a bronze medal-winning US athlete, who receives US$15,000 from their Olympic committee.
Zirin and Boykoff note that the IOC’s slogan is “Putting Athletes First”, but in reality they’re put last. Always.
Stick to the wall and don’t look down - swimming in the Seine. Getty Images
We saw that graphically illustrated in Paris when the desire of organisers to generate images of people swimming in the Seine for the first time in 100 years was prioritised and came at clear expense of the health and wellbeing of the triathletes and marathon swimmers.
You might ask why I’m suddenly bursting into print about the Olympics. Well, the politicians at the highest level of the IOC and the International Cricket Council (ICC) have decided that cricket will appear at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. It is something we involved in the sport will have to work through in the coming years.
Cricket’s inclusion will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional broadcast and commercial revenue for the IOC, largely due to India — which, despite being the most populous country in the world, has remained a largely untapped Olympic power — and its obsession with the sport. We know that the IOC will keep all this extra revenue for themselves and not a cent will go to cricket’s national bodies or players.
We’re told by some cricket administrators, however, that the sport’s inclusion will grow the game. Really? I’m not convinced about that, because it clearly has not been the case for other sports. The only thing we can be certain of is that there will be good photo opportunities for some and nice all-expenses trips away.
We’re also told governments around the world will now pay money to national cricket organisations because it’s an Olympic sport. That is apparently a wonderful thing, but it’s also where they lose me. How is it right for a multi-billion-dollar per year sport to rejoice in the taxpayers of the world funding its administration? This line of thinking is beyond me.
There are many sports that are not commercial for a wide variety of reasons and it’s appropriate that a government would help fund them to ensure our next generation have something to aspire to and engage in, especially if it promotes healthy and active lifestyles. But it can’t be right that taxpayers are funding multi-billion-dollar commercial sports to compete at the Olympics, particularly when the IOC is raking in the revenue from their inclusion in the games and not paying.
Well done to those Kiwi athletes who’ve reached the top in Paris – you’ve inspired us all. There really is so much to like about the Olympics and your collective performances are the main reason why.
But we must start asking ourselves harder questions about what the IOC has become and what its attitude is towards those who elevate the Games to such great heights — the athletes.
That discussion can’t just involve those who benefit greatly by the current system remaining the same.
