How Much Can Swimmers Make in Crowded Back-Half of 2022? A Lot.

With FINA’s announcement on Monday morning that it would be hosting a multi-discipline World Aquatics Championships in 2022, there will now be World Aquatics Championship meets in four straight years:

• Budapest 2022
• Fukuoka 2023
• Doha 2024
• Kazan 2025

That is on top of the Olympics, the Short Course Worlds, the World Cups, the ISL, European Championships, Commonwealth Games, World University Games, Mare Nostrums, and all of the various other meet series that have crowded into the swimming calendar. And that’s not to mention the water polo, diving, open water, and synchro events.

Lots of SwimSwam readers, and surely others, have wondered aloud ‘why’ this is happening. Is it a cowtow to the Americans, who had nothing else to do this year? Is it to fight back at the ISL?

The answer, as it so often does, probably is much less nefarious and much more obvious: the money. As it often is.

And FINA aren’t the only ones who stand to gain, either.

While FINA has not announced the host city fee for the 2022 World Championships, their 2019 financial statements list 9.3 million in Swiss Francs from “Host Cities partnerships rights and fees” for the Gwangju World Championships. That’s about $10 million based on today’s exchange rates.

So what more motivation does FINA really need other than a host city and federation willing to pay up?

While FINA likely turns a profit on the meets anyway, they don’t keep all of that money to themselves. In Gwangju, they distributed more than $6 million in prize money across all disciplines.

With all of these meets coming up, athletes will have the opportunity to rack up big money. Building off Retta Race’s evolving international quad calendar, here is the money that’s up for grabs in the near future.

2022 Big Swimming Money Meets:

Notes: based on most recently-announced prize money, swimming only.

• June-July: 2022 World Aquatics Championships Budapest – $2.7 million
• June-December: 2022 International Swimming League Season – $13 million (including salaries)
• July-August: 2022 Commonwealth Games – No known automatic prize money (though most federations award big)
• August: 2022 European Aquatics Championships – $270,000
• TBD: 2022 FINA World Cup – $1,452,000
• December (TBC): 2022 World Short Course Championships – around $2 million

This winds up being sort of a rough cut, because some of these meets pay appearance fees, record bonuses, some of them cover travel costs, some come with bonuses from federations, etc.

Layer on top of this another $60,000 or so from Mare Nostrum, and a handful of other money meets, and the next few years could wind up being a lot of money in swimmers’ pockets.

In fact, it’s likely that this will be the richest year for award money in swimming history – even without an Olympic Games. The final number for prize money (again, excluding federation bonuses, travel costs, etc.) will be in the neighborhood of $20 million or more.

While that’s still far from the money that athletes in major pro sports like football and soccer and basketball receive, it is a huge step for swimmers and swimming.

More major meets are good for everyone – the governing bodies, the athletes, the fans – and now it’s up to the athletes to make the commitment to go out and chase that bag.