How do athletes in niche sports like breaking, table tennis and artistic swimming make money?
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How do athletes in niche sports like breaking, table tennis and artistic swimming make money?
At the Olympics, the top athletes in every sport get the opportunity to show off their skill and artistry in front of millions of viewers. While basketball and tennis remain popular year round in the U.S., niche sports like artistic swimming, breaking and table tennis are given a rare opportunity to bask in the spotlight.
But beyond the games, it can be difficult to sustain a career as an athlete if you’re competing in a niche sport. Million-dollar endorsements and playing contracts aren’t waiting for you when you get home, although U.S. athletes across all sports will receive a nice cash prize if they medal. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee awards athletes $37,500 for each gold they win, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze.
To make a living, these athletes often take on extra gigs, which they balance as they train for hours each day.
Marketplace spoke to athletes in artistic swimming, breaking and table tennis to find out how they’ve made a living and what revenue streams are available to them.
Despite the challenges they face, they told us they’re optimistic about the future of their respective sports and that opportunities to make money are on the rise.
| Table of contents: Click below to jump to a section |
| 1) How do artistic swimmers make money? |
| 2) How do breakers make money? |
| 3) How do table tennis players make money? |
1) How do artistic swimmers make money?
At the Paris Olympics, the U.S. artistic swimming team nabbed the silver, earning its first Olympic medal since 2004.
If you’re training with an Olympic-level national team, that’s a full-time gig in and of itself, said Anita Alvarez, a member of the silver-medal winning team and a three-time Olympian.
Members get a stipend from the U.S. Olympic Committee, which helps. When Alvarez first joined the national team, she was getting a stipend of about $200 to $300 a month.
“Now, based on how many Olympics you’ve been to, how many world championships, things like that, you’ll get more,” she said. She’s currently getting about $2,000 a month.
Artistic swimmers can also make money through competitions like the 2024 World Aquatics Championships. First-place winners receive $20,000 in solo and duet events.
But while Alvarez has to work less than she used to, allowing her to focus more on training, swimmers like her still have to find other ways to make money. Alvarez moved from New York to California when she was 16 so she could train full time with the national team. Supporting herself has been a challenge over the years, especially living in California, which has some of the highest housing and rent prices in the nation.
“For example, I do some coaching within the sport,” Alvarez said. Coaches might charge $30 an hour if they’re teaching a club team, but then can set their own rate if they’re doing private lessons, she said.
Artistic swimmers have also found alternative revenue streams thanks to the popularity of platforms like Instagram and TikTok. For example, Alvarez’s teammate Daniella Ramirez made TikTok videos about how artistic swimmers manage their hair.
“She, since then, has been making a living, basically, off of her Tiktok and Instagram reels,” Alvarez said. The popularity of those videos has not only been “huge for her,” but “huge for the sport,” Alvarez added.
There are also opportunities in the entertainment industry, Alvarez said. “We have so much skill and talent in the water in general that anything water-based is doable for us,” she said.
Swimmers can get hired for work parties, music videos, commercials, weddings, Cirque du Soleil shows and movies. Alvarez can earn $300 for one-off shows if she’s referred through the entertainment company she works for, while a commercial or film work can net her $10,000.
“A couple years ago, I got hired for ‘[Black Panther:] Wakanda Forever,’ the movie, for an underwater stunt,” Alvarez said.
But it can be tough to juggle other jobs. You have to find “little pockets” of time to earn an income, Alvarez said.
“I was working at a sporting goods store for probably three years after my first Olympics. And I would work late nights. I would go from the pool straight to the store and work until closing,” Alvarez said.
Janet Redwine, a member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic Artistic Swimming team, said she and most of her teammates were fortunate to have financial support from their families as they trained in California for the games.
After artistic swimmers are done with the competitive circuit, they can still stay involved in the sport by coaching, which Redwine did for a while.
“I just felt this really great desire to give back what I had been given,” said Redwine, who’s now director of program success at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
Alvarez said she thinks more people are starting to understand how challenging artistic swimming is and are gaining greater respect for the sport.
During the 2024 Olympics, the team moonwalked during a routine set to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.”
“That was kind of everywhere throughout the Olympics, which was cool, and people posted about how impressive and hard it was,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said she hopes artistic swimming becomes more mainstream. While she’s done short-term collaborations with companies, she’s aiming to develop longer partnerships with them.
“There’s so much potential for us as athletes, as artists, as performers and entertainers. There’s so much that comes with our sport and what we do,” Alvarez said.
2) How do breakers make money?
Breaking, also known as breakdancing, made its debut at this year’s Summer Olympics. Sunny Choi — a female breaker, or B-girl, who competed for the U.S. at the games — told the publication Boardroom.tv back in 2022 that breakers need additional revenue streams beyond competitive events.
“Many breakers have dance studios, teaching, or a side job,” Choi said in the interview. “[Breakers will] have other side hustles or things to supplement.”
Breakers might be able to find work doing Cirque du Soleil shows, commercials and hip-hop theater. Only a very small percentage of elite performers are able to sustain a living purely through competition, said Ian Flaws, the founder and director of The Bboy Factory, a breaking studio in Denver.
“I always tell my students you can’t really rely on winning a competition to pay your rent. There’s always a bigger, badder dude out there,” Flaws said.
Some competitions might pay winning teams $1,000, which has to be divided among everyone, while some competitions have paid as high as $15,000 for the winner in one-on-one competitions, Flaws said.
If they’re doing a mix of competitive events and side hustles, like teaching, they might earn between $25,000 and $100,000-plus a year, Flaws said.
Some competitions have become more generous. There are events that will now offer prizes for more placements beyond the winner, Flaws said.
As interest in breaking has grown, people have started to open studios and educational facilities, Flaws added. In 2012, when Flaws first opened his studio, there were maybe three or four studios specifically for breaking in the country. Now there’s at least one in every major city.
“I think coaching and teaching is a really good, sustainable career path within the dance,” Flaws said. Dance teachers can earn between $30 to $200 an hour depending on the instructor and class size, and for private lessons, students might pay $60 to $100 an hour, Flaws said.
Companies are taking note of breaking’s rising popularity. Victor Montalvo, a U.S. B-boy who took home the bronze in men’s breaking, served as an ambassador for Delta Air Lines during the games.
Jack in the Box has recently been sponsoring a lot of events, and Nike released its first breaking shoes ahead of the Olympics, Flaws said.
Some brands have supported breaking for decades, like Red Bull, which organizes Red Bull BC One, an annual competition that was created back in 2004.
Breaking may not be returning for the 2028 Olympics, but Flaws said it was already growing without it.
“Globally, I think it’ll just continue to get more and more popular,” he said.
And some of the Olympic breakers might be able to parlay their appearance into moneymaking opportunities even if they didn’t medal. Or even if they gave a widely derided performance, like Australia’s Rachael Gunn, or B-girl RayGun.
Gunn, who went viral for her dancing, could make money on the speaking circuit or through a reality TV show like “Dancing with the Stars,” wrote Dee Madigan, executive creative director at the advertising agency Campaign Edge, in The Guardian. Some brands might even hire her for their ads, Madigan wrote.
3) How do table tennis players make money?
At the Summer games, Olympian Kanak Jha went the furthest a U.S. player has gone in men’s table tennis, reaching the final 16.
But even a top player like Jha had to resort to crowdfunding to support his career. Back in April, he created GoFundMe to help pay for training, travel and a private coach, among other expenses. In total, he’s raised more than $30,000.
“It’s impossible to be a professional table tennis player living in the U.S. Financially, it’s impossible,” Jha told The Associated Press.
While players can earn prize money through tournaments, competing in them can be a gamble. “I would say the average serious player plays probably a tournament every month, minimum. If you do well in the tournament, you’re making money. If you do poorly, depending on where the tournament is, you could lose money,” said Sean O’Neill, a two-time Olympian who competed in the ‘88 and ‘92 games.
That’s because you have to take into account expenses like airfare, hotel and food, said O’Neill, who’s also president of U.S. Table Tennis Hall of Fame, a nonprofit that honors athletes in the sport.
This year’s U.S. Open is offering $10,000 for the winner of the Men’s Singles and $10,000 for the Women’s Singles. The U.S. National Table Tennis Championships offers between $5,000 and $8,000 for both Men’s and Women’s Singles. And at most four-star USA Table Tennis-sanctioned events, first place winners can receive between $1,000 to $2,500 for Open Singles where both men and women play together, O’Neill said.
Stars are based on the prize money, the number of tables and playing conditions. Five-star events, like the U.S. Open and U.S. Nationals, are the highest, O’Neill said.
Beyond competitions, there are some other revenue streams that table tennis players can tap into.
“We will also get money from our sponsors, and our sponsors generally tend to be equipment companies,” O’Neill said.
If players have a paddle with their name on it, they might get a small commission from the brand for every paddle sold. Or, if they’re a member of the national team, they might have a deal where they represent the brand, and could receive between $10,000 and $20,000 a year, O’Neill said.
To supplement their income, some players will also run table tennis camps, which might net them $500 to $1,000 a day, and coach students, which might earn them $50 to $150 an hour.
“The problem with that is you’re not training if you’re coaching,” O’Neill said.
Corporations will also hire players for meet-and-greets, while sports organizations like the PGA Tour have hired table tennis players to play against their athletes for fun, O’Neill said. And if they’re a former Olympian like O’Neill, they can earn money by being a commentator for NBC’s coverage of the games.
In Europe, where players participate in leagues, table tennis can be more lucrative. The league salary for the best male players is between $50,000 and $100,000-plus, while the best female players make between $30,000 and $40,000, O’Neill said
The very top male players in Europe can make between $100,000 and $750,000 if you take into account their salary and other table tennis-related revenue, like sponsorships, O’Neill said. Some governments will pay Olympic winners a substantial sum. Chinese table tennis player Chen Meng is receiving $525,000 from China for nabbing the gold at the Paris Olympics.
But the sport has changed since O’Neill first began playing as a kid in Virginia. Last year, the U.S. started its first professional table tennis league, which O’Neill said compensates its players an undisclosed amount.
And now, there are table tennis clubs where parents can send their kids to improve their skills, O’Neill said.
“I had to go to Sweden when I was 10 years old to find competition because there was only one other player in the U.S. at the time, and he lived in Iowa,” O’Neill said
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