I’d watch a season-long YouTube series documenting how Sam improves his swim, and what real-time effect that has on his race performance.
I know Ari Klau did this already, and it doesn’t seem to have helped his swim, but from memory that was only an off-season swim camp? Plus Sam is more interesting than Ari, due to his proven ability to win races.
He may say that but the figures don’t lie.
No contracted athlete (except Neumann maybe and the mums) made less this year than last year.
Of course I have no idea what his partnership bonuses bring in (obv) but they cannot make up for the total PTO remuneration and the assurance of that contracted “guarantee” (which was min $100k btw assuming contract met).
I’ve popped the 2023 detail for Funk below (he made $73k).
I’ve done a quick and dirty check on this year (2024) and
PTO: $70k base + $65k (25 from races, 35 from Tour standing) + Ranking = $17k (finishing #15 as I expect Geens and Nieschlag to jump him), so
2024 total from PTO = $152k.
Plus #2 in the Challenge Champs for a few bob (+ bonuses).
He was Q for Taupo but chose not to race, btw.
| Source | $ in 2023 |
|---|---|
| Challenge | 19548 |
| IMWC | 30500 |
| PTO Races | 5000 |
| PTO Bonus | 18000 |
| Total | 73048 |
.
Yeah but Ari came back from Oz and promptly stopped swimming.
He obviously has good sponsor bonus $$ for ironman branded races
Well why didn’t he race any then? You have partnership contracts which pay 70.3 bonuses (and he had a win and #2 in Lahti so two excellent results for him in a best ever season in 2023) and then he signs to race T100 Tour in 2024, with no bonuses written into contracts!
Don’t blame the PTO or say T100 “doesn’t work for him”. He doubled his money in a less successful season (and btw finishing #10 has the opportunity: a ‘gold’ contract “guaranteed” to make another £130k (minimum) in 2025.
I wonder if his manager is of the same opinion.
I think it is actually Challenge races he has big bonuses for
The issue is you have no idea what the sponsor bonuses are.
Many pros make money to be on the podium from sponsor bonuses .
bonuses are often a multiple of price money once you have reached a certain level
IE you start as a pro where close to 100 percent of your income could be price money and you might get some gear
The next level is you get some bonuses
Than you get some money and bonuses
And all going well at some stage it’s far less than 50 percent of your income is from price money.
And for people like Jan it was likely less than 5 percent of his income
For a Kona winner price money of the year is most likely less than 15 cent percent of their income for the year
Funk is doing well in the sponsorship department and I might make this up but I think he once mentioned publicly that about 20 percent of income comes from price money and I would think that’s not that far of as he is very business safey and puts himself out…IE he is punching above his performance weight .
But he needs podiums for that and at pto races he does not get podiums and the PTO contract can not completely outbalance that.
Add let’s not argue plus minus 5 percent more like roughly.
So he’s a special case, then. Needs to choose his races accordingly. Has he signed his T100 contract (I do not follow his SM)?
If he’s “business savvy” and only 20% comes from racing results, why did he race T100 in 2024 when all his partnership bonuses were for Challenge or IM?
I think his ‘sponsors’ are the subscribers to his onlyfans page.
I can only quote him but he loves to race with the best .
And I don’t think he is that special but it’s more the reality of the sport that social media and branding can be more than race results and I would say the one that is best at this has his own thread on ST …and his first name starts with an L lol
And likewise you could come 4th at ironman world champs and lose your bike sponsor …
who is this ? m/f ? Hard to keep up 
RVB lost Trek at the end of 2023, took until Kona 2024 for him to get Factor signed on.
thanks. I thought maybe Chevalier had lost his.
I expect more Trek carnage this year
Yes i know the US system, but he doesn’t need to race in US, i dont think the money is there
You really don’t have an idea about this, being a PTO Stan and saying you’ve seen half a copy of their contracts doesn’t mean you’ve seen a single sponsor contract. (I haven’t either) Yet it is well known that all of these contracts were written pre-PTO and that these companies hold to the letter of the contract if it saves them money. Now, even on new deals people are saying Ironman wins still net more in sponsor bonuses. So people are reliant on performing well in a T100 race and series to net the same amount. I suppose in the end it is zero sum for most and negative sum for others. We’ll see how long this thing lasts, highly doubt it lasts the length of the announced partnership (12 years). And if it does I’ll send you a lovely American single malt?
He rolled the dice. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
All off topic, sorry.
“all of these contracts were written pre-PTO”
I suggest many, likely the majority, of partnerships contracts are less than 2 years old: is that “pre-PTO” in your money.
I don’t doubt IMWC and 70.3WC wins pay more than a T100 wins (though the latter applies to rather few athletes: Lee, Ditlev, Keulen, Gentle, Knibb, Van Riel, Laidlow, Geens). And likely IM wins pay (but none of that lot had an IM win in 2024).
“I suppose in the end it is zero sum for most and negative sum for others” you say.
I suppose in the end it is positive sum for the vast majority. And since neither of us ‘know’ how much and for what results in what races the bonuses are paid, I have done the sums for Funk (as an example given by @pk ). If anyone who has a handle on this (ie knows what they are talking about) and wants to help you along, great.
Funk 2023: $73k (loadsa races and a good 70.3WC result)
Funk 2024: $152k+ (T100 finishing #10, plus Challenge Champ, plus gold contract for 2025, if he wants it))
And what do you think the delta is in the partnership bonuses he earned 2023-2024? $80k?
As for PTO and T100 longevity, I get from your stretch out to 12 years (per their World Tri colab) that you think that this endeavour may last more than the year you gave it in mid-2023. Good to see movement there and great for the current cohort of top Pros, and indeed those ranked 30-100, for years to come, not least its catalyst as and competition for IM Pro Series.
But aren’t all of a pro’s travel expenses tax deductible as business expenses???
Hey if you want to call the guy a liar, that’s on you.
As far as the longevity, it will be about how long Moritz wants to keep funding it. He seems to like the whole thing for now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in the start up sports space going on our 8th year. It’s a tough place to be, but teams have inherent value, struggle to see how being a race promoter like PTO is morphing into will have value that broadcasters will pay enough for. I know they’re pivoting to mass participation, to support the pro model. But uh, we’ll see.
Clearly I underestimated what those folks cared on a return. But I looked at it from all the grandiose sound bites and didn’t see how it met KPIs in any sense. But that’s sports for ya.
What I will find interesting is does the T100 essentially become WTCS 2.0 in the next 5 years. By that I mean- in the WTCS you basically are tiered as an athlete. It’s the same athletes on the podium/top 5’s, same athletes always finishing 13th, same athlete finishing 28th, etc. Very rarely does the 28th place guy get on a podium. So does the course dynamics + racing dynamics + limited race roster dynamics eventually get to a point where, you sorta are what you are. Granted it’s still very early, and they are still learning how to do the contracts, etc, but eventually I can’t help but not see it replicating WTCS. It’s a limited athlete roster, it’s a limited race schedule, and it basically becomes every race tactic is the same, just change the location…especially if the courses “lack” characeteristics.
Atleast with the IM Pro Series you can race the best of the best, but you can also “cherry pick” to a degree and make your sponsors happy with a podium (if you are a top talent). That’s by default the advantage to a ~20 race series in that it’s not basically the same athletes racing every race against each other. Now it’s def improved the ability to have more times in LC where the best are racing the best outside of the WC’s, but by default this series sorta allows the best of both worlds. You get the best racing the best more often, but you also still have the freedom to not race every A event if you don’t want too.
It’s kind of funny you think PTO works for most yet there is a pro here asking, kind o,f what works best for him especially in his original post.
At the end of the day Sam is the one who should know what he gets in bonuses … And what works and given that he asked the question, the answer is not that clear to him ,as you think it is .