The Money Report: How Much Do Malaysia’s Olympic Athletes Make?

How much money do Olympians make? It depends on the allowance they receive from their government, their incentives when they win a medal, and whether they have sponsorships as well as financial support from private entities.

We mentioned earlier that Nader Al Masri gets financial support consisting of $100 per month from the Palestinian Athletics Federation.

Azerbaijan, as we stated here, allocated the following medal incentives to its athletes during the 2004 Athens Olympiad:

Gold: AZN 100,000 and NOC–AZN 50,000
Silver: AZN 50,000 and NOC AZN 30,000
Bronze: AZN 25,000 and AZN 20,000

Reports have it that these amounts will be increased in Beijing but we don’t know by how much. By the way, for those of you who must know, AZN 100,000 is equal to USD 120,700.06 according to this currency converter.

Meanwhile, here’s the Olympic Council of Malaysia’s blog is reporting that Malaysian athletes who qualified for the Olympics received “RM5,000 from the National Sports Council (NSC) for earning qualification on merit for the Beijing Olympics”

Said athletes are also entitled to a monthly allowance of RM1,000, which is paid from the time they qualify until end of August.

In case you are wondering, RM stands for Malaysian Ringgit; Rm1,000 is equivalent to US$318.557 according to this currency site.

So Malaysian athletes are, in terms of state financial support, better off than their Palestinian counterparts.

Stay tuned as we look for the money report for other countries.

Update: A listing of financial incentives to Olympic athletes from different countries is published at How Much Money Do Olympians Make.

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Azerbaijan: Incentives for Athletes
Palestinian Authority