With little or no help from their federation, faced with less generous sponsorship budgets, high-level athletes must now have new skills, between SME boss and community manager. And sport in all this?
“Last year I performed for zero euros.” Meba-Mickaël Zézé has however fueled in 2022, with a time under 10 seconds in the 100 meters at the meeting in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The best French sprinter with world records managed without a sponsor and without state subsidies. So the athlete launched a pot, which drags on at a snail’s pace (6,000 euros collected out of the 50,000 expected, thanks to some 250 donors in six months).
The 29-year-old sprinter wants to see this as an encouraging sign: “I need to feel a popular movement behind me. The fact that people I don’t know send me money, sometimes without even going through the kitty, it touched me a lot, it overmotivates me. My message touched a lot of people who imagined that this was not the daily life of a top athlete. “ And yet yes. Even in the famous king sport that is athletics. Even in France. Even one year from the Paris Olympics, which will begin in a year to the day, July 26, 2024.
These Games, Mathilde Andraud will see them on TV. Not because of a lack of level, but because of a lack of money. “All my career, I have been helped by my parents”, sighs the 34-year-old champion. She already speaks in the past of her career, marked by a host of French javelin throwing championship titles between 2012 and 2016, with the key to qualifying for the Rio Games. If the federation pays for his plane ticket and his accommodation on site, this is not the case for his coach. She then set up a crowdfunding campaign.
“Certainly, I raised 4,000 euros. But it was mainly my friends who contributed.”
Mathilde Andraud, former French javelin throwing championat franceinfo
Embarked on extended studies to become a physiotherapist, she cannot take a job in addition to her sports career. His level does not allow him to sustainably receive federal aid. And when she knocks on the door of the sponsors, “They were looking at how many followers I had on social media. And clearly, a few thousand was not enough for them. When I went to the gym, I found myself next to girls who do cross-fit and who received clothes in spades.” So Mathilde Andraud dropped out, weary. “I graduated in 2014, and the first year I was taxed was on 2018 income. Do you realize?”
“It has become a second job”
A situation far from isolated. At the Rio Olympics, Dimitri Bascou won a fine bronze medal in the 110 meter hurdles. The French hurdler thought he had reached a new level in terms of notoriety and sponsorship contracts. He quickly became disillusioned. “It’s complicated to negotiate with an equipment supplier to ask for more. The room for maneuver is reduced. And you must not believe that you can play the competition. Nike, Puma, Adidas, they all know the price list of each other and none will break the market. “
Result: the one who knows a very good second half of his career finds himself without an equipment supplier and without a major sponsor. The fault, among other things, of a digital presence deemed insufficient. “It’s almost become a second job. I should think about it when I go to training. I wish I could do without it.” But he has no choice. Yet ten years younger than the French hurdler and above all the 200m world champion last year in Eugene (Oregon), the American sprinter Noah Lyles posed the equation to the Guardian : “I thought my job was to run. But no, it’s to sell shoes.”
It was the day her antique Peugeot gave up the ghost that Margot Chevrier turned a corner on social networks. She shoots a video, captioned as follows: “I’m going to have a hard time pole vaulting in my living room if I can’t go to the stadium anymore.” The French pole vault champion, who has become a pedestrian again, goes around the concessions surrounding the Nice stadium where she trains. “I had tied up the file well, I had the agreement of a dealer of a large European group, seduced by the visibility that a car flocked to my name could give with my poles on the roof, which does not go unnoticed. The headquarters of the brand in question, in Paris, finally blocked the project. Reason given: the champion does not “weigh” enough on social networks.
A hard lesson for Margot Chevrier who has since made great progress (and recovered a Toyota). She is inspired by stories and reels (short and funny videos) that are a hit on Instagram to revisit them in her own way. During her last internship, she takes a photographer in her luggage rather than a physiotherapist and comes back with “180 GB of content, enough to see coming to schedule posts in advance. And as long as you do, do not edit a video in the call room of the French championships.”
By dint of work, the one who combines pole vaulting and medical studies is close to 17,000 subscribers on Instagram. “85% of which are guys. And we’re not going to lie to each other, there are a lot of them who aren’t particularly fans of pole vaulting”recognizes the champion. “Compared to what American athletes post, I saw another one just now who twerks on a paddle… What I post on the networks, it’s wise. I do a photogenic sport where I jump in my panties, why would I be ashamed of it?”
The Olympics are now played on LinkedIn
Instagram and LinkedIn are the two social networks where athletes must “break through” to please advertisers – and slip in more or less discreet product placements through images. “We had training organized by the French Federation, and they advised us to always be positive, not to give our opinion, to stay smooth…” But that’s not at all the style of middle-distance runner Hugo Hay, who is laid-back on Instagram and very (very very) laid-back on Twitter (as you can read below). “LinkedIn, I’m here because you have to be there, but it’s really not my thing”, he blurts out. The semi-finalist in the 1,500 meters at the last Games went knocking on the doors of companies in his department to make ends meet. Even if it means swapping his eternal jogging. “It’s fine, I avoided the suit and tie, it would have sounded wrong. Jean-shirt, it’s more than enough.”
A few posts and a few interventions in companies are the price of peace of mind. Well almost. “Once, one of my sponsors reproached me for a post on Facebook. My private Facebook and more. It was at the time of the motion of censure against the pension reform…” And on Twitter? “No, Twitter, I don’t show it too much to my sponsors. It’s better not…”smiles the one who was caught by the IOC for a tweet at the end of the evening watered during the Tokyo Games.
“Taking care of your social networks, thinking like a community manager in addition to being an SME boss, it has become a prerequisite for today’s athletes”says Karim Bashir, a former British fencer, who wrote an online course on the IOC’s Athlete365 platform to help athletes make ends meet. “Clearly, an athlete has a lot more to think about than in my time”, abounds Emma Terho, a former Finnish hockey player who became president of the IOC Athletes’ Commission. The program, which offers Facebook tutorials as ways to create your brand or think about your retraining, has met with great success: 80% of the athletes participating in the Tokyo Games were registered there and, since 2021, the number of members “increased by 50%”. Among the facilities offered to help athletes exist on the networks, an agreement with Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) to obtain a certified account in two steps, as well as the possibility of obtaining a professional shoot to offer beautiful photos to advertisers.
Influencers in the starting blocks
“We are considerably behind the United States, where university sport allows athletes to be showcased all year round.believes Thibaut Perrillat, founder of Lactic, an incubator aimed at helping athletes to showcase themselves on social networks, especially LinkedIn. I started by publicizing the story of my brother, French marathon champion, in a series of posts. It attracted many companies, eager to help. We didn’t sign everything. But sponsoring an athlete, today, is not limited to affixing a small logo to the strap of the jersey. It’s long-term influencer marketing.” A diagnosis that is based on a few simple principles such as staging your quest, assuming your expertise and not hiding your weaknesses.
Tracks that can allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition, which goes well beyond the tartan of athletics tracks. The influencer Léna Situations and her collection for Adidas displayed in 4×3 in the Paris metro is only the tip of the iceberg.
“A connected watch brand prefers to send its equipment to influencers” rather than athletes, plague Hugo Hay. “I have already been told that I was now in competition with guys who do breakdance, whose more artistic side ensures more visibility for the brand for shoes, for example”, points out sprinter Dimitri Bascou. Which explains for example why the American hurdler Masai Russell, who will aim for an Olympic medal at the Paris Games, presents itself on its site first as “influencer and vlogger” before discussing his status as an athlete. Or that one of the most followed French athletes of the young generation, Baptiste Cartieaux, travels to competitions with four people, including a drone operator, to be filmed before, during and after his races.
The price to access glory, unless you believe in miracles. This is precisely what happened to British pole vaulter David King, who did not expect to hit the jackpot by launching a kitty before the Tokyo Games in 2021. “A few people who participated in my GoFundMe continued to fund me afterwards.” A not insignificant sum – a few thousand euros each month – “without asking anything in return, except for news of my career. We hope to see each other again at the Stade de France in August 2024. That’s the plan anywaysays the one who moved to Arizona. But I agree: to come across these generous people who have extra money, it’s a real stroke of luck.”