Those who have to collect their income from small scraps to be able to play sports are never at the top of the tax statistics – and many even have to dig out of the bottom to get to the sport they love.
– It’s probably easier for visible profile athletes to collect income, but it’s really difficult there at the other extreme. I’m somewhere in the middle, says Lapua Virkiä’s batting joker, Superpesis’ multiple batting queen Janette Lepistö.
Relatively good salaries are paid in Women’s Superpesis, if the comparison point is other women’s ball leagues. Even so, in Lepistö’s income, the compensation paid by the club only makes up a part of the income for the whole year.
– The salary from the club was my only source of income when I was a student. This made it possible to not have to go to work in addition to studies and sports, which is the everyday life of many athletes.
– At the moment, the biggest part of the income comes from work, and the compensation from sports is a nice addition. There are individual top players who are professional baseball players, but some have to pay to be able to play, Lepistö states.
Lepistö has trained as a master of health sciences and a licensed nutritionist. He works in both the public and private sector under his own business name.
Sponsors for many behind a rock
Alpine skier Nanna Kiviranta plays sports in the C national team, where playing sports is a completely self-funded activity. Parents have been an important help throughout my career, but sponsors play a big role when there are no grants or side job income.
– My sponsorship income consists of quite a few companies and relatively small amounts. The biggest support comes from a couple of sponsors, for whom I offer outerwear advertising spots, Kiviranta calculates.
Para rider Laura Kangasniemi is partially able to work due to a brain injury. He also relies heavily on sponsors in his sports career.
– My job is sports and sponsorship income is the biggest source of income I have. Partnerships run through my own company, and through it I also hold motivational and speaking gigs for different companies, says Kangasniemi.
– Acquiring sponsors is shockingly difficult. Maybe the credibility of a para-athlete is lower, even though both disabled and non-disabled are athletes, he reflects.
Nanna Kiviranta has also noticed that getting sponsors requires a huge amount of work.
– I have spent quite a lot of hours, first of all, looking for companies that I could contact and then how to approach them and how to present myself.
– I have sent at least a hundred e-mails. Often the answer is that individual athletes are not supported, or that the athletes to be supported have already been selected, or that in this economic situation, there is no support at all, Kiviranta continues.
The time that an athlete spends looking for partners is taken away from the time that could be used for sports and recovery.
– When we were at summer camp, on the day off I was thinking about what I would do. I then thought that if I could put a few cooperation proposals here. After all, it’s basically just work. On the other hand, it’s quite an educational process when you do it yourself, Kiviranta thinks.
Baseball is the most followed women’s ball game and the sponsorship of individual athletes is in some cases better. The differences within the sport are still big, and you can’t live on sponsorship income.
– We get to collect our own sponsors and get compensation after the season through a tax card. With it, you can significantly increase the value of your own contract, Lepistö states.
On the other hand, Lepistök also finds the situation somewhat difficult.
– It’s a bit boring to waste money for free from company X. You think about it, could you give something to a company that wants to sponsor me. Is it just passive marketing or could the athlete give something else in return?
Some are still partially corvided
Athletes can use their social media accounts to highlight goods or services or sell, for example, their fan products. Direct advertising income can come from, for example, YouTube videos.
The newest players on social media are crowdfunding platforms, which enable athletes to earn income directly from their fans and supporters. In these services, athletes can offer behind-the-scenes material or advance information about important moments in their career.
For an athlete with a more modest income level, social media is mostly a place to build a brand, which can then lead to finding new sponsors.
– I don’t have any kind of social media collaboration that would purely make money. I have been able to give my partners social media visibility. I have also received some products or services and told about them on social media, Nanna Kiviranta explains.
– I like to post about the life of an athlete anyway, so it’s easy to bring up those partnerships at the same time.
Laura Kangasniemi has found social media to be useful, for example, in the sale of fan products.
– I work through Some. It also increases awareness. It is one tool, and in the future I would like to do more work there, he says.
For Janette Lepistö, social media was a good extra income before her career.
– When I sometimes updated Facebook more during my studies, it was a collaboration for which I received monetary compensation. The companies contacted me and I was able to choose what suited my own brand and my own values, Lepistö recalls.
– Some is probably a significant source of income, especially for individual athletes. It’s great that there has been a channel that helps the sport not suffer.