– Accounts Day!
That’s how the newspaper headlines rang out several times during the cross-country Tour de Ski, which ended on Sunday, when Finnish skiers took three jubilant first places.
Especially the last day of 2023 was a great day of reckoning for Finns, when Kerttu Niskanen and Perttu Hyvärinen swam to victory in the 10 km traditional skiing competition.
Niskanen was also the best in the 20 kilometer pursuit race. He was third in the overall race of the Tour.
Along with fame, professional athletes seek first and foremost mammon, because it is their livelihood.
For Hyvärinen, the first victory of his career in the World Cup, at the age of 32 and more than ten years after his debut race, was a revolutionary and emotional experience, but one thing left a hole in his teeth.
– It’s annoying when it came here and not in the normal World Cup… There’s a small difference, skier from Savoie granted to Sanom.
Normally, you earn about 16,000 euros for a World Cup race win, but at the Tour de Ski, you only got 3,200 euros for a single race win.
Here are the Tour de Ski jackpots
The prize pool distributed at the Tour de Ski was a total of 770,000 Swiss francs, or about 828,000 euros. In the prize money of the Tour, the emphasis is on the overall race rankings.
When the Tour de Ski was organized for the first time, at the turn of the year 2006–07, the prize money was considered a luxury. We talked about the skiing “Tour de France” compared to the famous cycling race.
When Virpi Sarasvuo (nee Kuitunen) won the Tour for the second time in the 2008–09 season, his prize money was close to 100,000 euros.
In the last decade, the Tour’s prize money was radically reduced, even halved.
The problem was that the top skiers often missed the Tour while focusing on the prestigious races. Therefore, the prize money has been on the rise again in recent years.
Read more: Comment: Tour de Ski is a tourist advertisement that does more harm than good – even the ski jumping qualifier knocks out the top product in skiing
For example, in the 2021–22 season, the winner of the overall Tour race received 55,000 francs, at the current exchange rate 59,000 euros. Now the winners, Harald Östberg Amundsen and Jessie Digginsreceived 86,000 euros.
The overall prize pool of the Tour de Ski was distributed according to the following table. The amounts have been converted from francs to euros and rounded to the nearest hundred euros.
At the Tour de Ski, only the top three received prize money from a single race. The amounts were approximately 3,200, 2,200 and 1,100 euros.
At the end of each day, the skier who was in the lead in the overall race received an additional bonus of 1,100 euros.
The points competition was more difficult for the public to follow, but the Tour included that too. Points were awarded to the top ten in the sprints and certain intermediate points of the normal distances. The top three in the points competition received prize money at the end: 6,500, 3,400 and 2,300 euros.
The top three men in the points competition were from France Lucas Chanavatof France Jules Chappaz and Norway Edvin Anger and Sweden in women Linn SvahnUSA’s Jessie Diggins and Sweden’s Frida Karlsson.
Kerttu Niskanen earned a total of around 49,500 euros on the Tour, when he was third overall and won two races. Krista Pärmäkoski got a whopping 16,000 euros for his seventh place in the overall race.
In men, Perttu Hyvärinen also won the prize money in the overall race when he was 17th. Hyvärinen received a total of 5,400 euros from the Tour.
This is the kind of money the World Cup offers
The cross-country skiing world cup continues in Germany’s Oberhof from the 19th to the 21st. January.
The prize money in the World Cup has also increased since a couple of years ago. In addition, money is now awarded to the top 20 in the individual competition and the overall competition, while in the 2021–22 season, the top ten were awarded from the individual competition and the best six from the overall competition.
In the cross-country skiing World Cup, with the exception of the Tour de Ski, the prize pool is distributed as follows. The amounts have been converted from francs to euros and rounded to the nearest ten euros.
Last season, Kerttu Niskanen achieved by far the best result of his career in terms of prize money. He was third in the World Cup overall race, second in the Tour de Ski overall race and won two races. Niskanen received a prize money of 149,600 Swiss francs, approximately 161,000 euros.
Data on prize money since 2002 can be found on the FIS website of the International Ski Federation. According to it, Niskanen has earned 457,000 euros in prize money during his career at the current exchange rate.
Last season was by far Niskanen’s richest, because by the middle of this season he has already earned the second highest amount of his career, 60,400 euros.
Krista Pärmäkoski has received 695,000 euros in prize money during her long career. The 2016–17 season was the most profitable, 164,000 euros.
Iivo Niskanen falls short of the prize money of the women’s Finnish star duo. According to FIS data, he has received 284,000 euros in prize money throughout his career.
When you rewind the statistics, one Finn stands out for his own readings. Virpi Sarasvuo collected 986,700 francs in reward money, 1.07 million euros at the current exchange rate.
For comparison, a couple more Norwegian stars. Therese Johaug won 2.18 million euros in prize money in his career. Johannes Hösflot for Kläbo 1.43 million euros in prize money has already flowed into the coffers at this stage of the career.
It is worth noting that FIS’s reward statistics only include the World Cup. Iivo Niskanen has become a superstar especially thanks to his Olympic victories and his world championship at the Lahti WC home games.
The international federation does not pay prize money for Olympians, but the Finnish Olympic Committee and the Finnish Ski Federation reward their athletes for their success. Nowadays you also get prize money from the World Championships, in which case the FIS is the payer.
However, partners play a particularly important role. First, success helps in getting significant sponsorship deals. In addition, skiers receive very significant bonuses from their ski manufacturers and other partners for the success of both prestigious competitions and the World Cup.
For example, Iivo Niskanen gets According to Ilta-Sanom in a good year, 100,000 euros from the ski manufacturer through the basic contract and bonuses. At the Beijing Olympics, he received 85,000 euros in bonuses from the Olympic Committee.
Nowadays, it is normal for top athletes to incorporate their activities for tax reasons, among other things.
Iltalehti reports last spring, that Kerttu Niskanes has become a millionaire. Kerttu Niskanen oy’s cash reserves exceeded the million euro limit in the 2022 financial statements. At the end of November 2022, the company had 1.06 million euros in equity and only 105,000 euros in debt. After expenses and taxes, the profit was 367,000 euros.
Ilta-Sanomat reports in the spring of 2023, that Iivo Niskanen oy had made a profit of 1.115 million euros in five financial periods.
In addition, athletes direct their income to athlete and coaching funds.
An athlete’s fund that provides security in the post-career period is a form of legal tax planning that has been possible for athletes since 1999.
In turn, athletes can withdraw money from the coaching fund against receipts for their sports expenses, such as travel, coaching and equipment.
Read more: Are you wondering about tax information for athletes? This is how the system that enables professional sports works, which, according to the world champion, has serious flaws
The biggest winter sports take cross-country skiing
In cross-country skiing, a total of 55,000 Swiss francs, or about 59,000 euros, is awarded in prize money for a single World Cup competition. In ski jumping, the amount is around 92,800 euros and in biathlon 93,750 euros.
Among the World Cups under the FIS of the International Ski Federation, the prize money in alpine skiing is in a class of its own. After that come ski jumping, cross-country skiing, combined and freestyle sports. Biathlon is managed by the International Biathlon Union IBU.
In alpine skiing, the prizes vary depending on the race location, but the prize pool for the smallest single race is 155,000 euros. In the famous Kitzbühel plunge, the most money is distributed, 333,500 euros. The winner of the Kitzbühel jump gets 100,000 euros and the 30th place winner gets 2,000 euros.
Bonus pots are caused by many factors, but especially tell about the appreciation, interest and appeal of the sports. For example, in Central Europe, biathlon and ski jumping are in a class of their own in terms of audience numbers compared to cross-country skiing. At the same time, they attract partners in a completely different way and fetch better TV money.
Vice President of FIS Martti Uusitalo says that in the FIS World Cup competitions, each competition organizer determines the reward amounts themselves. However, with the exception of alpine skiing, practically all competition organizers only pay the minimum amounts required by FIS.
Uusitalo is happy that the Tour de Ski prize money has increased, but skiing still has a lot to do.
– It is of course positive that the development of prize money has gone up, but FIS’s clear vision is that prize money should be able to increase in all FIS sports. In cross-country skiing, the prize money is quite modest if compared to certain winter sports, let alone tennis or other global sports.
– The goal is to increase the prize money. The journey is still quite long.
Each organizer of the World Cup race pays the fees. It is part of the agreement where the race organizers receive the TV and marketing rights of the race from FIS. Through that, the competition organizer will also have income, which is supposed to cover the fees and competition arrangements.
In biathlon, the situation is different, when the national federations manage the above-mentioned rights and money.
The following table compares the prize money of the World Cup games. In alpine skiing, Levi’s slalom is included in the table, where the total pot was around 155,000 euros – it is the most common sum in alpine skiing, although there are bigger pots available in many competitions. The amounts have been converted into euros.
It is more difficult to calculate the money received from the overall championships, because the systems vary significantly from one sport to another.
For example, in cross-country skiing, Kerttu Niskanen won the distance cup in the 2022–23 season, but there is no separate monetary reward for that. On the other hand, on the biathlon side, in addition to the overall competition, the best of the sprint cup, joint start cup and other similar ones will receive 12,000 euros at the end of the season.
In the table below, you can see the rewards for the overall competitions of the World Cups of skiing and biathlon. The amounts have been converted into euros.