Who Got Paid? Inside the 2023/2024 World Cup Money List

By Gavin Kentch

Very few people go into cross-country skiing to get rich; this is good, because even fewer do get rich. That said, for a select handful of athletes, high-level nordic skiing can actually be remunerative.

Here’s a look at the season-ending money lists for the 2023/2024 World Cup season; this should help illuminate both how much money is being made at the very top end of this sport, but also how quick the dropoff is after that. Exhibit A, Sophia Laukli, an athlete who literally won a World Cup race this year, effectively said coming into this season that she’s doing trail running in part because she truly enjoys it but in part because, as between it and World Cup skiing, trail running is the sport that pays the bills.

The bottom of this article presents lists of athletes’ winnings from just World Cup prize money alone; some skiers have endorsement deals in addition to this, such as Jessie Diggins’s affiliation with Toyota that so inspired Chad Salmela (see above). Beyond that, uh, Jessie Diggins (headwear sponsors: Allianz and The Emily Program) and Rosie Brennan (headwear sponsor: HEX Cook Inlet, an Alaskan natural gas company) come to mind, and not much else.

For an incomplete survey of some other World Cup athletes: Sophia Laukli, who has 42,000 Instagram followers, does not have a headwear sponsor. Ben Ogden, who reached a World Cup podium this year, does not have a headwear sponsor. Gus Schumacher, who also won a World Cup race this year, races with a Protect Our Winters logo on his forehead. Luke Jager’s headband stumps for Healthy Futures, an Anchorage-based nonprofit that aims to help Alaskan youths build the habit of daily physical activity. JC Schoonmaker’s headband shouts out his home venue, Tahoe XC. Scott Patterson’s headband mentions his summer employer, Anchorage engineering firm Coffman Engineers.

I haven’t asked the athletes about this specifically so this is admittedly just my sense rather than sourced reporting, but if anyone mentioned in the above paragraph is receiving a meaningful amount of endorsement income from the entity emblazoned above their brow, I would be pleasantly surprised. The U.S. ranked fourth in the Nations Cup standings this year, but is… probably not fourth in an unofficial ranking of countries where it is possible to earn a living as a professional nordic skier.

(But the Birkie is doing its part! Diggins and Schumacher each took home at least an additional $17,500 for their victories at this year’s American Birkebeiner, which is prize money that would not be included on this list. Athletes with podium finishes at U.S. Nationals or the SuperTour also receive prize money, although given that first place in a national championship race is good for $1,200, down to $750 for a SuperTour win, this is closer to covering travel expenses for the race than it is to net profit.)

Athletes pay taxes on their World Cup winnings, which are sent via bank transfer after athletes enter account details into a secure internal FIS database. Some venues withhold a portion of prize money up front for income tax (in Sweden, for example, the withholding is 15 percent for American or EU residents).

I truly do not know if American athletes then potentially pay taxes on this prize money again as earned income in this country. I do not currently have an active law license, knew not a whit about tax law even when I was practicing, and am the last person from whom you should take tax advice. Which this is not.

Anyway, here are some numbers. All figures here are sourced from the official FIS year-end money lists, which are available here and here. Numbers are given in the official currency of the Fédération Internationale de Ski, Swiss francs (CHF); multiply by 1.13 to obtain their equivalent in U.S. dollars at Monday’s exchange rates. Diggins, for example, earned USD 291,600 * 1.13 in prize money last season, or $329,508.

Women’s money list top-10

1. Jessie Diggins, USA, 291,600 CHF
2. Linn Svahn, Sweden, 225,900 CHF
3. Frida Karlsson, Sweden, 187,500 CHF
4. Jonna Sundling, Sweden, 136,350 CHF
5. Kerttu Niskanen, Finland, 128,300 CHF
6. Heidi Weng, Norway, 119,850 CHF
7. Kristine Stavås Skistad, Norway, 117,300 CHF
8. Victoria Carl, Germany, 107,850 CHF
9. Ebba Andersson, Sweden, 92,000 CHF
10. Emma Ribom, Sweden, 78,450 CHF

Men’s money list top-10

1. Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, Norway, 326,950 CHF
2. Harald Østberg Amundsen, Norway, 247,800 CHF
3. Erik Valnes, Norway , 171,750 CHF
4. Pål Golberg, Norway, 124,300 CHF
5. Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget, Norway, 116,600 CHF
6. Friedrich Moch, Germany, 94,325 CHF
7. Hugo Lapalus, France, 61,000 CHF
8. Simen Hegstad Krüger, Norway, 58,450 CHF
9. Lucas Chanavat, France, 54,000 CHF
10. Federico Pellegrino, Italy, 44,475 CHF

Other American women

11. Rosie Brennan, 74,400 CHF

25. Sophia Laukli, 19,200 CHF

33. Julia Kern, 12,100 CHF

61. Novie McCabe, 1,300 CHF

77. Lauren Jortberg, 500 CHF

American men

27. Gus Schumacher, 24,550 CHF

35. Ben Ogden, 15,850 CHF

37. JC Schoonmaker, 14,200 CHF

54. Scott Patterson, 4,250 CHF

58. Kevin Bolger, 3,400 CHF

68. Zanden McMullen, 2,050 CHF

73. Zak Ketterson, 1,700 CHF

87. John Steel Hagenbuch, 1,400 CHF

106. Logan Diekmann, 800 CHF

113. Luke Jager, 500 CHF

“Normal” prize money is awarded down to the top 20 finishers in a given World Cup race, in accordance with the following table:

Prize money for the win is worth five times more in a standalone World Cup race (15,000 CHF) than in a stage World Cup race (3,000 CHF); however, the overall winner of a multi-stage tour then receives a much larger payout at the end of the event. There is also prize money awarded for team events; divide the below figures by two for a team sprint, and by four for a relay, to see how much each member of the winning team receives:

To dive into the specifics a little more, Diggins earned 15,000 CHF for each of five “normal” World Cup wins, which is not nothing. In fact, it is a total of 75,000 CHF, or over $84,000! But she really cleaned up with her wins in (a) the Tour de Ski and (b) the World Cup overall. The first of those earned her 80,000 CHF, and the second 60,000 CHF. Winning the Tour de Ski brings with it 300 points toward the overall standings; it also brings with it roughly $90,000 in prize money.

On the one hand, at the highest levels of this sport, there is real money involved here. On the other hand, the 2023 transfer fee alone — not the salary, just the fee paid from a footballer’s new club to their old one for the privilege of then paying a salary to an athlete — for Dominik Szoboszlai, a midfielder for Liverpool whom you have likely never even heard of, was 70 million euros ($76mn), so this is all relative.

In conclusion, you should give $25 to NNF when they come knocking next fall, and should support your local World Cup skier before then. It is expensive to spend weeks or months in Europe at a time; there are at most three American skiers on this list, and probably just two (Diggins and Brennan), whose winnings cover their expenses.

You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.