Starting this week, nearly 3 million people will descend on Paris for the 2024 Olympics. But when some elite athletes step off the field—or lane, or pool, or court—and into the village, they won't just be having a monumental lifetime experience. They will continue their day jobs: creating content.
While most people think of the medals, attention and national pride that Olympic athletes receive during the games, underneath the praise is a grueling infrastructure that requires competitors to put in hours of training and tens of thousands of dollars just to have a chance. to fight. To be honest, getting an athlete from good to Olympic level takes more than skill. Requires cash.
Top athletes like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles and Sha'Carri Richardson can earn millions from endorsement deals with apparel or lifestyle companies, which can be used to keep them competitive. But most Olympians don't get those kinds of offers. In 2020, a survey of 500 Olympic-level athletes in 48 countries found that 58 percent did not consider themselves “financially stable.” Olympians competing in national and international competitions can practice anywhere from 12 to 55 hours a week, leaving little room for additional nine-to-five careers. There is also no specific prize money awarded to each Olympian who has a medal. Instead, it is up to individual countries and their sports governing bodies to determine prize money, if any. For Team USA, the prize money for Olympic gold medalists is $37,500, with silver and bronze medalists receiving $22,500 and $15,000 respectively, but that's only if you win.
Enter influence. Over the past eight years, content creation has gone from a niche way for athletes to build a brand to one of the core games for Olympic hopefuls. On TikTok and YouTube, popular accounts that participate in creator programs can earn over $6,000 each month from views alone — which doesn't include brand promotions. Rolling rock spoke to some of the most popular Olympian influencers who say they started their careers creating content to get audiences excited about their sports. But as the creator economy expands, these elite athletes are blazing a new trail for how Olympians can do what they love and make money at the same time.
Before Tara Davis-Woodhull was a two-time Team USA long jumper, she was an athlete with a popular Instagram account. But when she met and started dating her now-husband, Paralympic athlete Hunter Woodhall, the two realized there was rabid online interest in their daily lives. Their first major check from YouTube was $3,200 — a shock to their college bank accounts. (We were like, 'We're dropping out,'” laughs Woodhall. “We thought we could make a living with this,” Davis-Woodhall says.) Now the 25-year-olds have individual TikTok accounts in addition to a YouTube video channel with more than 700,000. subscribers — and consider their accounts their full-time jobs.
“I'm a Paralympian and Tara is a female long jumper, and neither of those are high-earning events in the sport of track and field,” says Woodhall. “We love athletics and knew that doing athletics alone wouldn't give us the life we wanted. Sincerely, [content creation] it has changed everything.”
“It's honestly changed our lives,” adds Davis-Woodhall. “We can buy the best nutrition, we can buy the best doctors and we can pay our coaches. I'm able to put my best foot forward without having to worry about the stress of money.”
Some Olympians have found success as content creators much later in their journeys. When Team USA rugby player Ilona Maher made her 2020 Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2021, she gained instant fame for her humorous exploits in the Olympic Village. Now with 1.1 million followers on TikTok, the Olympian and creator spends the year bringing her followers behind the scenes with Team USA Rugby. Maher declined to comment for this story as she prepares for the 2024 Olympics, but said NBC Sports in 2023 her TikTok success changed her life and career.
“My main goal was to get more eyes on my sport,” he said. “People say you can go to the Olympics and come out a completely different person. I didn't come out as a different person but I got so many followers, I gained more fame. It definitely changed me, even my career, how I make money now and my influence.”
Dani Ramirez has long understood that few people know the world of artistic swimming well. The sport, formerly known as synchronized swimming, made its Olympic debut just 40 years ago. But in 2023, Ramirez began pushing to close that information gap. Now, she's an Olympic hopeful in the pool and an ASMR star online, with more than 400,000 followers. Artistic swimmers use Knox gelatin powder to achieve their sleek hairstyles, and nearly half a million people tune into Ramirez's page to watch her peel and scrape the hardened substance from her hair.
Ramirez knows her content is unique, but she says so Rolling rock that she sees her ASMR videos as a gateway to learning more about artistic swimming. “The part that captivates people is that it can be confusing at first glance,” he says. “Then when you find out what it's actually for, you go down this rabbit hole of a sport that you've either never seen before. It's an amazing blessing to have the opportunity to introduce my sport to so many people, even if it's through extreme hairstyling.”
Raising awareness for a sport may seem trivial, but all the athletes they spoke to Rolling rock highlighted how public interest is changing the way athletes are paid. Watch women's basketball only. In 2024, the WNBA had its highest attendance in 26 years — selling out arena after arena due to increased fan interest, making players like A'ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark household names and landing them million-dollar endorsement deals in the process. So when the cameras roll on every aspect of the 2024 Olympics in a few weeks, a loyal few million will be glued to the behind-the-scenes footage that creators like the Woodhalls, Ramirez and Maher can provide.
“It feels so mundane to all of us because we do it every day. But the programs we follow, the training we do, the way we live our lives, it's so interesting and people want to pay attention to it,” says Woodhall. “And I think that just confirms that this is really something that people want to see and want to learn about, and everybody can benefit from it.”
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