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by dod9er 526 days ago
First quote from Google-Search: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) generated US$902 million in revenue for the 2023 financial year."
2 comments

That's comparable to the revenue of a single (top-level) soccer club: https://www.sportico.com/leagues/soccer/2024/manchester-unit... https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/40629331/real-madrid-...

A quick Google search suggests that the Olympics feature about 10k athletes in summer games and 3k in winter games - 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the typical 20-30 players on staff at a soccer club. I wouldn't be surprised if the wage gap was even more crass than those numbers suggest, but it shows that major spectator sports are an entirely different game.

That's less to do with people paying to watch someone throw a disc as far as they can, and more to do with corporations understanding that putting the Olympic logo on a shirt increases sales.
Logo would not exist if there were no athletes.