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Building the Field

Prize Money vs. Appearance Fees

by Tim Layden

Issue date: July 22, 1998

Other Flashbacks July 21, 1986: Turner's Goodwill not a very good show July 21, 1986: Jackie Joyner, our woman in Moscow August 8, 1994: Dream Team or amateur hour? July 22, 1998: Dan O'Brien, still the man July 22, 1998: Prize money vs. appearance fees July 27, 1998: Donovan Bailey and Michael Johnson

The Toronto 150 was conceived as a creative means to pump life into the sport. The Goodwill Games, for their part, have attempted to use prize money (not principally appearance fees) to stage a world-class meet. A small group of athletes -- including Johnson, O'Brien, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Marion Jones -- were paid promotional fees to work for the meet and compete in it. Almost everybody else is running for prize money: from $40,000 for first place in five marquee events (not accidentally, Johnson's, O'Brien's, Joyner-Kersee's and Jones's, plus the men's 100) to $6,000 in low-profile events.

Incomes of track and field athletes are generally a mysterious mix of shoe-contract money and appearance fees, which for top performers can total far more than $1 million a year. Yet in a marketplace in which celebrity is often measured by salary, these invisible riches have no promotional value. Many people know that Johnson is fast; few appreciate how wealthy his speed has made him. "Visible prize money is the only way to save the sport," says agent Brad Hunt, who represents Johnson, among others. "But every time the European agents get together, their top priority is to avoid meets with prize money."

Largely because of the Goodwill Games' reliance on prize money, the meet lacked three of the sport's hottest names. Sprinter Frankie Fredericks of Namibia didn't come because, he said, "they made me an insulting offer." Said David Raith, the Goodwill Games sports vice president who put the field together: "His offer was at least as good as the one we made Greene and Boldon." Translation: Fredericks wanted a big, Johnson-scale appearance fee. Also missing were miler Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, who negotiated with Raith until three days before the games, then elected to stay in Europe (and avoid the windy Mitchel Athletic Complex track in Uniondale, N.Y.), and distance runner Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, who never considered veering from his European schedule.

But runners Noureddine Morceli of Algeria, Daniel Komen of Kenya and Merlene Ottey of Jamaica (among others) came to New York for nominal or no appearance money, airfare, lodging, meals and a chance to win cash. Considering that only 10,000 spectators rattled around the 80,000-seat Rome Olympic Stadium to watch El Guerrouj set the 1,500-meter world record on July 14 in an old-fashioned, prize-money-free meet, the Goodwill Games' experiment seems to have been worth conducting.

Issue date: July 22, 1998

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