Question about making a living as a ski professional...

[squawbum]

Hello there. I would like to get some insight from you pros with experience in the reality of making a great living becoming a ski professional and making lots of money doing it. I ask because my daughter has decided that she wants to pursue mogul skiing glory and I'm wondering if she can earn a great living doing it like my oldest son's dream of golfing glory. He is one of the top junior golfers in CA and his future is bright and the path to making lots is very clear in golf. In golf, there is no subjectivity in one's performance. No judging. Just your score vs. other competitors. To be a national champion in golf, you just have to be the best. No national team or anything holding back an individual from achieving the highest levels. An average Joe schmoe can qualify for and win the US Open golf championship (like Lee Trevino did or countless others) without team membership or membership of any kind in any golfing organization. Is this also the case in mogul skiing?

I'm doing some research and I'm not seeing a clear path to dollar signs for my daughter in moguls skiing. Hannah Kearny, one of the most accomplished female mogul skiers in history CAN'T afford college after she retires this year! I don't get that. How can someone win so much (40+ world cup titles, current 4 time defending world champion, etc.) and not have a dime to show for it? My daughter is a great skier and on the Squaw Valley freestyle team and has lots of potential, but the years of training, the effort and cost to get to the promised land doesn't seem like much of a promised land except for gold metals and glory. But at the end of the day, money trumps everything and I don't want my daughter to be banged up and give her life to an effort that will leave her in the poor house when she's can't compete and is only in her late 20's.

Maybe I'm thinking the professional skiing competition tours are like the golf tours but I must be wrong. In golf, anyone can play their way onto a tour and compete for prize money. If you make the PGA Tour, the average winner's check is over $1M. And that prize money is direct deposited into your bank account the following monday of the competition! The average PGA Tour player earns around $1M a year in prize money, just by playing and being able to stay on the PGA Tour. Hannah Kearny is the current Tiger Woods of mogul skiing. Does she not earn prize money? I don't get it.

Can someone please explain how the pro mogul skiing tour (or any professional skiing tour) works to me or point me in the right direction so I can figure it out for myself and see if there is a financial future in mogul skiing? Thanks in advance!

[skifishbum]

dad keep'er off the booty shakin pole and it'll all be good
pm hugh conway for additional insight

[Benny Profane]

I can't understand that either. Every year I rush to the hill to watch the pro tour come through, and pay a lot of money for a few tickets to see it. And it's all over my TV set during the winter, so I always make sure to patronize the numerous sponsors who support such a popular sport.

[adrenalated]

Maybe you could let your daughter choose what's important to her in life instead of you telling her. Just a thought.

[FatChance]

The best way for a ski professional to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune...

[::: :::]

is she sponsored yet?
if not, think hard about how that's going to work...


and re: the boy...you realize that winning pro events, even small ones, is difficult for even the pros...money isn't guaranteed in pro golf either...i think your "average tour player's earnings" is a little thrown off by the guys at the top...i don't think they're all banking $1mil/yr

[raisingarizona13]

The best way for a ski professional to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune...

This for sure. I haven't met many "pros" that I didn't suspect come from large amounts of family money.

[PNWbrit]

Try to steer her towards a career in dentistry.

[Sirshredalot]

I was out on a photo shoot as front-of-the-lens talent for a national advertising campaign last summer (on my mountain bike, not skis, not that it matters). During the shoot, I looked down at Alta and thought of all the skids bunking there during the winter who would step over their own mothers to get a paycheck for slutting for the cameras in this ad campaign. I earned $200, and it was because I knew the guy running the campaign, not because I'm especially rad.

I know a couple people who are Olympic/World Cup action sport athletes who are middle-of-the-pack. They've got some World Cup and World Championship podiums and multiple National Championships. At their best moments, they can claim to be legitimately the best in the country and top 10 in the world. Their sponsors and the national team organization pick up the tab for their travel and their equipment, and they hang on to whatever purse money they get, and they hustle (coaching, speaking appearances, holding down a day job with very flexible hours) for any income above that. I get the impression that it would be a financial windfall for them if they got Olympic medals on prime time tv, but that doesn't happen to most people. They would tell you that they wouldn't do it any other way, but it is clearly not the most lucrative career path for them. FWIW, I suspect that Hannah K. would find a college ready and willing to give her some sort of scholarship or a sponsor to help pick up the tab for school if she wants, but I'm not at all surprised to hear that she doesn't have $200k in her bank account to pay for four years of tuition and living expenses. But look at Jeremy Bloom as a counter-example: competitive mogul skiing actually cost him his college scholarship.

In short: golfers are some of the most overpaid athletes in the world and freestyle skiers are some of the most underpaid. They're not at all comparable. When the time comes, I will steer my daughter to alpine racing. At least in racing, the world's top racers make a decent living, careers can be longer, and if you're not quite US Ski Team caliber, there are college scholarships available at good schools.

[TBS]

OP=Hugh Conway?

[Benny Profane]

OP=Hugh Conway?

Funny, that thought occurred to me, too. So troll like.

[PNWbrit]

golfers are some of the most overpaid athletes in the world.

Along with baseball.

(for Iceman)

[Benny Profane]

In short: golfers are some of the most overpaid athletes in the world and freestyle skiers are some of the most underpaid. They're not at all comparable.

Bullshit. You make what they'll pay you. Many many more people play, watch, and follow golf than trick skiing. Most people don't give a fuck. Therefore, more sponsors herding towards the eyes.

Golfers are also some of the hardest working pro sports athletes in the world. They are always practicing. He'll, they shoot balls into the night even after competitive rounds. And nothing is garaunteed. Not like these ridiculous baseball contracts that are paying dudes a King's ransom to sit at home, retired.

[PNWbrit]

And nothing is garaunteed.

You're always a safe bet Ben.

[TahoeJ]

Bullshit. You make what they'll pay you. Many many more people play, watch, and follow golf than trick skiing. Most people don't give a fuck. Therefore, more sponsors herding towards the eyes.

Golfers are also some of the hardest working pro sports athletes in the world. They are always practicing. He'll, they shoot balls into the night even after competitive rounds. And nothing is garaunteed. Not like these ridiculous baseball contracts that are paying dudes a King's ransom to sit at home, retired.

This. Not to mention, I don't think people even realize how fucking amazingly good the guys on the PGA tour actually are. It's ridiculous. The gap between tour golfers and the average golfer is ten times wider than pro skiers vs. average skiers.

And on that note, I was once a top junior golfer too - dime a dozen and still a long, long way from any tour.

[PNWbrit]

I was once a top junior golfer too - dime a dozen and still a long, long way from any tour.

I'm stunned.... the bigging up golfism was barely even a clue.

[ClarkleberryFinn]

Don't worry, she can always be a ski instructor after

[creaky fossil]

I'm stunned.... the bigging up golfism was barely even a clue.

missed that, my Evelyn Woodhead Sped Reddin Korse was a ripoff and I'm gonna sue

[Like a Boss]

He is one of the top junior golfers in CA and his future is bright and the path to making lots is very clear in golf.

You are kidding right? Has to be a troll.

[squawbum]

Thanks for the thoughts! It is obvious that skiing is not a sport where one can make a great living doing professionally at least today. It just seems that with the popularity of the sport world-wide, that there could be more financial opporutinty for young ski athletes. Someone is making a lot of money in the ski business as there are many ski competitions around the world. It seems as though it is not the athletes. Its seems as though the athletes are being used by whoever to make the money and then they get spit out when they're used up. Driving the athletes are glory, Olympic, World Cup, Extreme or whatever and the people making the money are using that motivation and laughing all the way to the bank.

The PGA Tour model could be applied to a ski tour model. The PGA Tour model is brilliant. Skiing might not be as popular as golf but is still very popular and the cost to telecast a PGA Tour event is astonomically higher than televising a skiing event. Oh well. I guess people don't like watching skiing on TV? The problem is the events that are televised are NOT exciting and hard to follow. The downhill is fun to watch. I haven't really seen any of the park/slopestyle stuff on TV. I tried but its too confusing to know how someone wins and how to root for someone and honestly, who wants to root for a bunch of kids that look like stoners with way too baggy clothing. The extreme skiing stuff is great, but as a televised competition, the difference between athlete's performance is too subtle for regular viewers to get and understand and the fact that it is judged is lame. Ski cross is actually a lot of fun to watch.

Ski competions need to be easy to understand and fun to watch and provide drama to the average viewer. Televising ski competitions could be very cheap relative to televising golf and therefore can be profitable for networks. There are so many great ski clubs and organizations and passionate ski fans that could volunteer to run the tour events at their local mountain, like volunteers do for every event on the PGA Tour and the title sponsors of a ski tour event would pay for the televising costs and prize money in exchange for the marketing opportunities. The TV networks make a ton through advertising, but they have very little risk because the cost of televising the event is paid by the sponsor. They just make the money and then pay the tour annually for rights to televise the tour. If you had a $500K purse per event with the winner getting $250K per win or something like that, that would attract a lot of top ski athletes for a nationally televised tour event. And the competition could be open to anyone that could qualify.

The competition would have to change. Like a skiing event that starts with say a big air where you earn points for each rotation or inversion or whatever, something totally objective and points for landing in a certain zone-the farther you land the more points you earn and then after the landing a course with massive natural moguls where you have to crash gates for points while zipperling. Then you take the overall time to finish the course in seconds and minus the points you earned during the run and come up with a score. Lowest score wins. You could have qualifying heats, then come up with a semi finals and then a finals or do a tennis style bracket. Something like that would be exciting and fun to watch.

Anyways, I gotta go back to work and stop rambling. I guess I'll just keep supporting what my daughter wants to do and anyways, being a great skier is never a liability in whatever endeavors she ends up pursuing.

[PNWbrit]

who wants to root for a bunch of kids that look like stoners with way too baggy clothing.

Hell the fuck yeah.

Make them wear Pringle sweaters, nice slacks and amusingly patterned argyle socks.

[Meadow Skipper]

Hello there. I would like to get some insight from you pros with experience in the reality of making a great living becoming a ski professional and making lots of money doing it.

That's where I stopped reading.

[creaky fossil]

no doubt. "experience in... reality"?

[Benny Profane]

Sounds exactly like the Fair Wages asshole.

[Meadow Skipper]

Ben, consider refraining from trolls - it doesn't work for you.