BONUS: How do Olympic athletes make money?
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Hey, Million Bazillionaires. Today we're answering a question about how athletes get paid. And we mostly thought of the answer to this question like, what do professional players on team sports get paid? That's what our question asker, Alistair, wanted to know. But as you know, there's more than one type of professional or semi-professional athlete out there. And we wondered, how do athletes get paid when they play for the Olympics?

My name's Colin Huffman. I'm on the Team USA curling team, and I'm based in Seattle, Washington. I competed in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, China in the sport of curling, and I'm hoping to go to the 2026 Games in Milan, Italy. Wow, he's the real deal. A real-life professional athlete on our show? Curling is a sport on ice. You play with teams of four people.

And you're sliding big granite stones from one end to the other, trying to essentially get closest in the middle of a target. So you're holding like brushes in your hand and sweeping the ice. And there's people directing you on what to do and when to do it. It's a super fun game. I've been doing it since I was a little kid. And I definitely think it's a great sport to get into. You know, I really didn't know what to expect from a sport called curling. The only curling I know is curling up in a blanket with my favorite book.

Right. This actually sounds like the complete opposite of that. I got into curling when I was born, essentially. I have no memories of life outside of the curling club, to be honest with you. I kind of got into it at a very early age and just never stopped. When I was growing up, there was nothing cooler than the thought of being able to participate in Olympic Games and...

You know, through it, I've been able to achieve a lot of dreams of mine. When you win a medal at an Olympic Games, you get paid for a medal. So if you get a bronze, you get a payment of, I believe it's like $15,000 or $17,000. Silver is like $25,000-ish. And gold is $37,500. $37,500.

That's a lot of money. Yeah, I guess there's more to winning the Olympics than just, you know, international fame, glory, the recognition of being the best in the world at your sport. Right. The prize of winning thousands of dollars is a nice added perk. The other way that you can get paid through the Olympics, they actually pay athletes in like a monthly payment. So for curling, we have A tier, B tier or C tier athletes.

Right now, the way the tiers work is it's $750 a month for A tier, $500 a month for B tier, and I think $300 a month for C. Last year, we were A tier. Unfortunately, $750 is not nearly enough for us to be able to survive off of, essentially. For us to be able to

pay for all of our bills, and buy enough food. Like I'm a big guy, I'm 220 pounds, I eat a lot. It doesn't really touch real kind of cost of living. So we have to do a lot of other things, like almost all of us have full-time jobs. Okay, this whole Olympic athlete thing is sounding a lot less appealing. Most athletes don't win a medal, so this might be the only money they make while playing in the Olympics. It sounds like they'll need other ways to make money outside of just training and competing in sports.

I wonder what they do. Our team had a lot of opportunities to work with different companies. In my time, we've worked with Allianz, Jack Link's Beef Jerky, an underwear and like sock company called Chill Boys, Upper Deck, who makes trading cards. Any money that comes into the team bank account is...

We split it up according to a system that we've created. It doesn't just go all to one person. So if someone comes to me and they want to give me $100, I'd keep $80, and $20 would go to the rest of the team. That sort of thing. Do you think they're ever tempted to keep the money for themselves, though, and cut out the rest of the team? No.

The reason we do that is because we recognize that one of us may be more visible than the others. That doesn't necessarily mean that we want all of the opportunities to go to just the popular folks because we want to keep everyone happy. So the best way to do that is to share and it's worked for us so far and I think we'll continue to do so throughout our time as a team. Aww, that's sweet.

Well, that's one more way athletes get paid. So to hear how professional league sports players get paid, check out our episode, Why Do Athletes Get Paid So Much Money? on your favorite podcast app. It's out now. And thanks!