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After the Winter Olympics, winners vie for cash
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DALLAS – Salt Lake City extinguished its Olympic flame Sunday, so it’s time to move on to the next phase of athletic glory – figuring out which athletes will cash in.
Most eyes focus first on the 16-year-old girl who jumped into the spotlight by beating out Michelle Kwan and other more heralded rivals for the gold medal in women’s figure skating.
In the snowboarding halfpipe competition, American Kelly Clark won the women’s gold and Ross Powers led a men’s medal sweep for the United States.
“They have a marketability for companies that are trying to target a specific age group,” said Robert Tuchman, president of New York-based TSE Sports and Entertainment, a marketing company.
Others likely to turn Olympics gold into cash include speed skaters Japanese-American Apolo Anton Ohno and Mexican-American Derek Parra, both winners of gold and silver medals. And there’s men’s skeleton gold medallist Jim Shea Jr., a third-generation Olympian.
Out-of-nowhere winners, like Hughes, were U.S. women’s bobsledders Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers, the latter the first person of African descent to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics.
The Olympians received a blizzard of exposure as NBC estimated that 180 million unique viewers tuned in. They will also benefit from a patriotic mood in a nation recovering from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Outside of figure skating and maybe a few breakthrough stars, most athletes will earn less than $100,000 from a winter Games gold medal, they say.
“There are not going to be many massive endorsement deals,” said Merrill Squires, president of Dallas-based Squires Sports Group, a consultant.
Americans aren’t big fans of winter sports, a fact that hurts Olympians’ marketing power.
What’s more, most Olympic sports won’t get regular exposure in the United States after the end of the Winter Games.
“You’ve got to take the deals now,” Tuchman of TSE said. “In six months or 12 months, people will forget about you. The ones with staying power are the ones that have a good story to tell.”
An exception was skier Picabo Street, a winner in Nagano, Japan, in 1998. She proved to be a durable endorser.
This time, there may be too many winners for a star to emerge.
Richard Alm, The Dallas Morning News