Season in Review: Who Got Paid?

By Gavin Kentch

The 2024/2025 World Cup season drew to a close three-plus weeks ago, though that feels more like three months by now judging by how hard your average pro skier is recovering/traveling/backcountry skiing/sitting on a beach these days. But it is also precisely two weeks till the canonical May 1 start to the next training year; fugaces labuntur anni. So before we all do this all over again, here are some quick looks back at the season that was. Today: Who got paid.

Below are the top-ten money winners last season, by World Cup earnings, for both women and men. Figures are given in CHF, or Swiss Francs; multiply by 1.22 to achieve the approximate equivalent in American dollars.

(Prize money typically goes twenty-deep in a standalone World Cup race, then as little as just three-deep for a stage World Cup race. There are also fairly large payouts for high finishes in the overall and Tour de Ski standings, and decent payouts for each member of a high-placing team sprint or relay team.)

Women

Men

This is an obscenely top-heavy list for the men: Klæbo, in first, made nearly as much as Valnes, Amundsen, and Anger, in second through fourth, combined. Klæbo took home over five times as much cash as Niskanen in tenth. On the money list, as in so many other places last season, there was Klæbo, and then there was everyone else. (That said, total single-season prize money remains the rare record that Klæbo has not yet claimed: FIS paid out 430,700 CHF to Therese Johaug in the 2015/2016 season; Martin Johnsrud Sundby set the men’s mark that same year with 407,200 CHF.)

Things were much more evenly balanced for the women this season as Diggins was just 3,300 CHF ahead of Johaug for first, a gap of roughly 1.5 percent. If you drill down on this a little, however, Diggins did quite a few more races than Johaug across the entire season; her average winnings per race start were lower than the Norwegian’s. Both women likely have enough money to their name that they do not really care — and would likely have traded a not-small portion of that cash for stronger performances in Trondheim.

In addition to prize money from individual races, Johaug pocketed 85,000 CHF for finishing first overall in the Tour de Ski. Astrid Øyre Slind, in second, won 55,000 CHF at the top of Alpe Cermis, while Diggins claimed 40,000 CHF for third in the Tour. Diggins received an additional 60,000 CHF for winning the overall crystal globe for the 2024/2025 season. At the top of the sport, there is real money here.

For everyone else… here are the overall money-list rankings and cumulative earnings for all American athletes who won prize money racing on the World Cup last year:

Women:

Men:

Everyone on this list save the three collegians is a pro skier (and they all finish undergrad this spring, and will likely be pro skiers as of next month). Julia Kern was on a podium this year, and had three additional individual top-ten finishes in a standout season for the 27-year-old. She won roughly $21,000 in prize money.

Gus Schumacher is ranked sixth on the current men’s FIS distance points list, was 14th in both the overall and distance standings, and notched his second career podium plus seven additional individual top-tens. He took home $35,000 in prize money, which is not nothing, but maybe is also not all that much for a man who was roughly the fourteenth-best in the world at his sport. For perspective, the number-fourteen athlete in ESPN’s preseason NBA rankings, Celtics shooting guard Jaylen Brown, earned a base salary this season of $49.2 million.

These are, literally, professional rather than amateur athletes, but no one in this country save Jessie Diggins is making real money off this sport, is my point. Support NNF, to be sure, but also support your local pro skier, and the clubs they train with.

And spare a thought for athletes who paid their way to Europe for race starts and who aren’t even on this list: Luke Jager. Alayna Sonnesyn. Michael Earnhart. And others. This is a difficult sport for anyone, no less so for those athletes who are still on the bubble of being consistent World Cup performers. I do hope to bring you a sourced article at some point looking into how much this sport costs American skiers pursuing it at its highest level (also, to be fair, what other income streams are out there beyond just straight prize money); until then, I promise that financial support of your favorite skier will not go amiss.

Correction: In the above paragraph I originally referred to three athletes who “paid their way to Europe” to race and who did not win any prize money for it. This was largely in error: Luke Jager and Michael Earnhart were both on the USST B-Team for the 2024/2025 season, and so were fully funded for USST camps and races. Alayna Sonnesyn, meanwhile, while not on the national team last season, did receive funding from both NNF and Team Birkie, and may not have had to pay much out of pocket for last season’s racing (this is a good thing imho). There is a larger point here about these athletes putting in the time to race in Europe and having nothing to show for it prize money–wise; that point remains accurate, not to mention the underlying moral that few people in this country are getting rich off this sport. But my statement that these athletes paid their own way to Europe was incorrect. I regret the error, and sincerely appreciate a reader’s gentle correction on this point. —GK

Sources: FIS prize money database | men’s prize money list | women’s prize money list

[I wasn’t going to include this money ask at the bottom of this particular article, but then I reasoned that I made somewhere between Kevin Bolger and Sophia Laukli money off of writing about skiing last year, and I like to think that I am roughly as good at writing about skiing as Bolger is at, you know, actually skiing. So I still think that you should support NNF or a pro skier over me, but if there’s money left over after you do those things, here’s my standard pitch:]

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