Who ever the market decides.

Hard to say if anyone is getting Phelps money. I doubt it. Ledecky would probably be the closest. I think Lochte might have forced some sponsors to take a step back given how volatile his career has been. //

If Caleb did not get more money than Ledecky, then he better fire his agent. To me at least, he is and will be the most electrifying swimmer of the next olympic cycle, or two. I would have thought he would be getting close to 10 million at least, maybe more..


For sure Ledecky gets the most for women in the US, but I bet that Italian makes the most of all women(Pellegerni)?. Super long career, model looks, and been a country hero for a long time now..

I'm not so sure Caeleb was worth more than Ledecky as of whenever they signed their contracts last year (Ledecky signed with TYR for $7 mil, and it sounds like Speedo's contract with Dressel is more incentive-based). Right now, for sure he is the more valuable athlete coming off world champs. But Ledecky has more name recognition across all sports fans, as she has multiple individual Olympic golds, an ESPY nomination, had not lost a race in years, etc. Dressel's going to make bank off this next year if he keeps it up, and I expect NBC et al to really use him to pump up interest by leveraging Phelps's historical medal count. He should be able to use that to get more sponsors from outside the world of swimming.

I agree about the Europeans. Hoszzou, Sjostrom, Pellegrini, they all likely have some bonkers sponsor contracts.

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I can tell you the slope is quite slippery from the top to the bottom of "professional" swimming. I've been out of the loop for a couple years, but when I was on the Board of Directors of swimming, we had a goal of 50 athletes at $50k/year of stipened, because suit companies were mostly our of salary type contracts and into performance based contracts for all but a select few.

I doubt much has changed. Here's the latest funding levels from USA Swimming, <$39k/yr annually for a top 8 ranking:
https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/athlete-servicesdocuments/meet-travel-reimbursement/2020-quad-athlete-support-program-post-update_2.pdf

These numbers don't include appearance fees for grand prix or prize money, so this isn't the sole source of income.

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I wrote this, you should read it:
https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html

Thanks for that graph, gives some great detail into country funding. Pretty journeyman wages, but of course, those should be the least amounts a top athlete makes, dinner money really. One decent sponsor for a top 1 to 8 person should be upwards of 6 figures, the closer to 1 you are, then 7 figures comes into play..

That’s a nice dream. I think you really overestimate contracts though, but I retired as a professional swimmer 11 years ago, so maybe things have changed. Dressel and Ledecky at $1M+, maybe a handful of others (Manuel, Adrian, Lochte etc) making 6 figures. I’d guess 10 total over $100,00

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I wrote this, you should read it:
https://www.slowtwitch.com/...n_Swimming_6700.html

Well I did say the top 8, pretty sure at least that many fit into those upper categories. But no doubt there is a steep drop off, just like triathlon, just like running. You have been out 11 years, yes it has surely changed. I have been out since the 70's, so I have seen even more change. We had one guy make millions, Spitz, and that was short-lived. But I hear he married up, got a nice sponsorship from his father in law... (-;

Just a quick datapoint from 2017 as Norway has public taxes (yes might be strange for some of you to comprehend, but at least it makes things very transparent)

Top payed relevant athletes
1. Kristoff , 17MNOK ~2M$
2-10 skiers and 1NFL player
11. Boasson hagen 3MNOK
......
Henrik Ingebrigsten 460K NOK
Warholm (400m hurdles) 350K
Sondre Moen 7K (!!!!!)
Henrik Christiansen (swimmer) 3K (!!!)


Note, there are ways to get around this by instead of having sponsor money registered as salaries letting the sponsor money go into a holding company etc. Anyway it shows some scale (AksenLund Svindal and Mats Zuccarello are probably the two highest earners, but they are at the bottom of the list)


https://www.aftenposten.no/...rettsprofiler-i-fjor