Americans Please Help

[U-H.Com 10+ year member]

This is way off topic, but I am having a seriously hard time finding ANY information. Does anyone know anything about the sport system in the States? Such as funding for high performance athletes and olympic athletes? I am doing a presentation on a comparison between the Canadian system vs. that of the USA. I can't find kind of figures for how much the government spends on sport in the States...can ANYONE help me at all? Even tell me what department sport falls under in the gov't? Any help would be greatly appreciated...

I've been told that the gov't doesnt spend any money on sports in the states...Its all done by sponsorships...is this true? In Canada, the gov't spends about $90M on sport a year...

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[smokeoff 10+ year member]

I am not an expert by any means but I have never heard of our Gov giving out money for sports. I truely think it is mostly done by big company sponsorships. Nike is a big one because of the shoe and chlothing donations along with the money as well.

 

[tommyk90 5,000+ posts]

Hmmm, i can't recall anything about the government spending money on athletes. All the sports here(NBA, NFL, etc.) are funded by the team and from sponsorships.

Never seen anything about the government spending money on athletes.

 

[U-H.Com 10+ year member]

Its not the professional side of sports that I am looking for info on. I know all of the major leagues have their own funding, but this is more for olympic style elite athletes. For example in Canada carded international amateur athletes receive gov't funding. Its something like $15000 a year since its pretty much a full time job...does this happen in the States?

 

[marleyskater420 5,000+ posts]

Never heard of it. The girl across the street from me is apart of the special olympics(she is mentally handicap) and is a 6 time gold medalist I believe, and she has never recieved money from the government I believe.

Our gov dont give a shit bout althletes.

 

[Gauntlet 5,000+ posts]

I'm not sure how it works with the atheletes themselves, but I know the government donated something like 15 million for security purposes at the 2002 Olympics

http://www.olympic-usa.org/about_us/document2.htm I have no idea if you'll find what you're looking for here....

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

Most of the funding for amatuer sports comes from the local level. For city rec leagues for example the city generally provides the locale (fields, goals etc...) and the officials are paid from team entry fees. Basically you pay to play. High school sports are funded by the school board and the state. NCAA is paid for mostly by sponsers and ticket sales (with football and basketball ticket sales funding most of the other sports).

At the national and Olympic level the government monitors the whole thing but most all of the money comes from entry fees (for nationals) and corporate sponsorships. Amatuer status is a big thing in the US. With the exception of a few sports, you cannot be on the Olympic team if you are being paid for something related to your sport. This has been relaxed a lot in the last few years, but by and large, national level athletes are training and competing out of their own pocket and work at something else to earn a living. Once you get to that level a lot of your equipment and travel is free but direct compensation is pretty rare.

Corporate sponsership is big business and falls under the company's advertising budget. You don't see much of it unless you are involved in the sport, which makes sense because you are the target audience that the sponser is advertising to. For example it doesn't make sense for Speedo to sponser basketball because they are a swimming equipment company. Go to a swim meet and you will see Speedo everywhere but Wilson will be nowhere to be found.

The Special Olympics is a non-profit charitable organization.