Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#361

Post by echoangle » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #341

echoangle wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you seriously think that there is even a tiny chance of fencing ever continuously bringing in even half as much viewers as football, I don't know what to tell you. The uncertainty there is not weather report level, more like "the sun will rise tomorrow".

Not a fencing example specifically, but in Poland skijumping effectively didn't exist until 2001. Then because of Adam Małysz, a record viewership has been established for national TV - during skijumping championships. That record has not been replaced until at least 2022 (I don't have more recent data, maybe it still stands). The largest football matches had millions fewer people watching. For more context the 10 mo…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Poland#Viewing_s...

There are 6 football games with higher viewership than the 2002 Olympic ski jumping.

Also, viewers per year would be a better metric, one single event with a lot of viewer probably gives you less ad revenue than an event every week with half the viewers.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#362

Post by jalapenos » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

pzduniak wrote: post #327

jalapenos wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say sounds logical, but it's nevertheless observably obviously wrong, and that's what's important. All the figures bear out that people find football more entertaining than extreme feats. Maybe they like the slow pace and tension as it's more relatable to their own lives, or because the lulls in action allow some socializing or whatever. Otherwise they'd spend their weekends watching hours of shark wrestling…

Or, hear me out, it's purely a cultural thing. Some communities are into hockey, wrestling, soccer, football etc. You could say the same thing about ski jumping, yet it's extremely popular in a few EU countries and pretty well funded. AFAIU barely anyone gave a shit about gymnastics in the US before Biles - if we have pipelines for young athletes to succeed, their sports can absolutely become regionally popular, suff…

I think that popularity isn't random but comes from the region, and in those cases they are in fact paid well.

E.g. ice hockey in Canada, makes sense that people living in such a cold place are going to gravitate to such a sport.

EU countries - guessing those near the Alps right, not say Portugal? Biles - because it was their country winning. Outside of that they didn't care about the sport.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

#363

Post by lmm » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

kitd wrote: post #311

unsupp0rted wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I prefer it this way. Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them. No need to subsidize it.

Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them Except that the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere. The problem as stated is that the root source of that value, ie the athletes, see very little of that revenue.

> the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere.

There's value in the Olympics, sure, but that value is concentrated in a handful of big-name sports. The smaller ones come along for the ride rather than generating value themselves.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by leosanchez » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #340

leosanchez wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India until 1991 was very socialist. After 1991 they implemented reforms to reduce state controls. This [0] explains a bit better [0] https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/india-and-the-tragedy-of-soci...

What a shittily written article, staining the Adam Smith name. Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?

Private companies needed to obtain license [0] from the govt to start or to expand.

Some companies were even prosecuted for producing more than what was allowed. This was at least Nehru's (first Prime Minister) version of Democratic Socialism.

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by varjag » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #343

edu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m biased because I’ve practiced fencing for a long time, but you keep saying it’s dumb without explaining why. First of all, which weapon do you refer to? Foil, epee or saber? They look quite different. Saber is very fast and might look as you say, both fencers jumping quickly to each other to get their right of way and score. Epee looks quite different, there’s no right of way and the score target is the whole bod…

So a layman like me finds it instinctively dumb for the following reasons. If I watch the hundred meter sprint, I kind of get it. They're aiming to run super fast. It's a relatable activity. See it in the movies. Would do it if a dog is chasing you. Swimming - crocodile chasing you. Javelin, they're chucking a spear really far - not so useful now, but I get it. People used to do that to fight or hunt. Others, like po…

Well duh, that's a recurring theme between true performance sports and spectacle sports.

Top performance in Greco Roman wrestling is harder than in WWE. 10m rifle/pistol is harder than IPSC. Formula 1 is harder than monster truck races. Marathon is harder than wife-carrying, though for sure the opposites are much more spectacular.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 2:04 PM UTC

Almondsetat wrote: post #291

Frieren wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if your hobby "Olympians" representing their countries. - Is your hobby "to create software"? Then you should not be paid for it. - Do you like to help peolpe? Then you should not be paid for being a doctor. - etc. Who should earn all the money then? The owners of the TV stations, the owners of the hospitals, basically the people that does nothing and just own things. What a dystopia of a world are we creating.

Ok then why don't they get paid a living wage by the countries they are representing? Wouldn't representing a country be a government job? Otherwise they are private workers/entrepreneurs and as such should be paid by what their customers feel like they're worth. Creating software can be an unpaid hobby, a government job, a private job, or a personal business.

If it became a government job, then they wouldn't be able to get rid of the athletes when they're too old to perform. The solution of course is to distribute gold medals and awards according to age and experience rather than athletic performance.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 2:13 PM UTC

a2tech wrote: post #14

This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.

Are you per chance stamping parts out in a factory?

The Soviet Union used to give the award "Hero of Socialist Labour" to top performers in the labour force, and public spaces everywhere had billboards celebrating local labour performers.

Could you name any top labourer in your region, your country or the world? Any certain factory worker that comes to mind?

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by jalapenos » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 2:16 PM UTC

thoroughburro wrote: post #357

jalapenos wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a layman like me finds it instinctively dumb for the following reasons. If I watch the hundred meter sprint, I kind of get it. They're aiming to run super fast. It's a relatable activity. See it in the movies. Would do it if a dog is chasing you. Swimming - crocodile chasing you. Javelin, they're chucking a spear really far - not so useful now, but I get it. People used to do that to fight or hunt. Others, like po…

As a different layman, your objections seem ridiculous and might be summarised as “I would prefer to watch professional wrestling or a stage fighting demonstration in which the actors are trained to strongly emote the storyline of the action to the audience.” Or, “I prefer sports which uninterested parties can easily understand.” Nothing you’ve said speaks to objective entertainment value.

They poke each other simultaneously with a barely visible "sword" and you only know who won if you know what the lights on the board mean.

Someone getting punched and falling down - immediately clear who's winning, makes sense. Ball gets kicked in a net - immediately clear, makes sense.

Common knowledge of sword fighting, albeit coming from movies, is: if you get stabbed by a sword, that's bad. You're not winning. And yet in fencing, they get stabbed and then some lights appear and they have "won" somehow.

What I personally prefer is only relevant to the extent you will feel better about your day if you believe you have beaten a stream of text on the internet. What matters is what's universally true, and obviously it's universally true that for spectators to enjoy watching something their ability to understand it is a factor.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by stakhanov » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #360

stakhanov wrote: post #335

Funny how "not getting paid" went from being a requirement [1] to being a scandal. Maybe, the government could make an agency that will employ them all and pay them a wage. Of course, it would only be fair that, if all the downside is taken up by the agency, then it will also get all the upside. Meaning: If any agency athlete starts raking in millions in sponsorship deals, then those millions will go to the agency, a…

IDK, to me there’s a difference between “not full-time employed as an athlete” and “not helped with expenses for participating in the Olympics”

Expenses could be orders of magnitude more than an individual's fulltime salary. Just think of the equestrian disciplines, for example, where it's pretty obvious that being independently wealthy with millions to spend on your campaign with zero hope of making that money back is just what it takes to participate. You're spending those millions and devoting your life to athletics, in preference to any pursuit that's actually, you know, productive, to compete with other similarly-positioned people for what, within the circles you travel in, passes as the ultimate status symbol.

Even as things currently are, it absolutely infuriates me, that my money is taken from me involuntarily (as an involuntary license payer for public broadcasting in Germany) and given to the IOC to line the pockets of corrupt officials and further aims that I disapprove of, like overtourism and everything that surrounds the building of an olympic village etc. Every single cent's worth of transfer from my pocket to Isabel Werth's is just adding insult to injury.

Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)

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Post by jalapenos » Thu, Jan 09, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

mvc wrote: post #289

jalapenos wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fencing as done now looks legit stupid, so does racewalking. Javelin, while slightly more cool, is you throwing a stick. Mildly interesting for a few seconds. Football is a top tier sport because it's entertaining. People will pay to see it. Hence there's money to be earned. If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty…

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I use in real life, albeit much less than on the internet because there are more costs to being a disagreeable prick in real life - so I have to say the same thing but ten times slower as I word it diplomatically.

No it doesn't make people like me but I get much more pleasure from disagreeing with and pushing against bad or wrongful things than being liked. Not saying that's good or bad, but that's how I am.