Olympic being the oldest sporting event in the world comes with global following from around the world. Kids growing up dream of participating in Olympics and winning medals for their country in different sports. But how much is the Olympic medal actually worth ? the answer to this question is in two folds A) Monterey value of the medal itself B) the perks which comes with winning the medal for the olympian.
We will be taking a look at how much Olympic medal is worth in different parts of the world. Before we dive deep into the perks which comes with winning the medal we take a look at actual value of the medal itself.
Value of Oympic Medals:
- Gold Medal: $600 (The gold medal is made of only 1% of actual gold 92% silver and 7% of copper)
- Silver Medal: $326 (Silver medal has 92.6% of silver and rest is made of copper)
- Bronze Medal: $4 (97% copper, 2% zinc and some tin)
So as we can see the actual value of medals in Olympics is not much but that is not really the point so to speak. If any Gold medalist were to auction his winning medal it will worth much more than just the value of material/medal.
Do Olympic medal winners get any cash prize ?
Well the simple answer is no. Olympic committee only medals to winning athletes. However they dont put any restriction on federations who would like to offer cach prizes to its athletes. Majority of Olympic federations around the world offer some sort of cach prize or insurances to Olympic medalists of their country.
Singapore for example offer any athlete from Singapore around $1 million singapore dollars for winning the Gold medal. $370,000 for silver and $189,000 for Bronze. Some other federations offer cash prizes as well as insurances to winning athletes. Below table shows how much Athletes from different parts of the world can make in cash prizes.
| RANK | COUNTRY | GOLD | SILVER | BRONZE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $1 million | $370,000 | $189,000 | |
| Malaysia | Solid Gold bar worth around $650,000 | $325,000 | $150,000 | |
| Azerbaijan | $500,000 (shared by athlete and coach) | $255,000 | $130,000 | |
| Thailand | $314,000 (monthly payments over 20 years) | $175,000 | $100,000 | |
| Philippines | $237,000 (over 20 years period) | |||
| Italy | $189,800 | $95,000 | $50,000 | |
| Russia | $180,000 | $90,000 | $45,000 | |
| Australia | $130,000 | $65,000 | $37,500 | |
| France | $65,000 | $32.500 | $16,225 | |
| China | $31,400 | |||
| United States | $25,000 | |||
| Germany | $19,000 | |||
| India | $150,000 (1 crore indian rupee) | |||
| Brazil | $11,000 for every medal | |||
| United Kingdom | No cash prizes | |||
| Other countries | Every country's federations offer some sort of cash prizes |
What other rewards Olympic medalists get ?
Well winning olympic gold medal opens up whole lot of career opportunities. For example Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have won multiple gold medals and they have signed so many commercial sponsorship deals earning them fortunes.
Now every gold medalists don’t get the same recognition of course but some of the more main-stream sports do get alot of attention.
Apart from all the monetary value and perks of Olympic medals the biggest one being an absolute achievement of being the best in your sport genre is a reward itself.