Marcus Banks
Huge podcast star and UFC commentator Joe Rogan is not a fan of the Olympic Games and explained exactly why.
The 2024 Games in Paris is well underway with China currently topping the medal table at the time of writing.
Team GB have got off to an impressive start in France with multiple gold medals already in the bag across a number of events.
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The games is attracting a worldwide audience as expected with over 28 million viewers tuning in on NBC and Peacock in the United States alone.
One man who is not a fan of the Games however is Joe Rogan, host of one of the biggest podcasts in the world in ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’.
Despite some of the world’s most incredible athletes competing against each other, Rogan slammed the Games and labelled them ‘a giant scam’.
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“The Olympics is a giant scam,” Rogan said on a recent podcast. “There are two things going on simultaneously, okay? You have the best athletes in the world participating in their disciplines.
“And then on top of that, you have enormous amounts of money being made, and none of it’s going to the athletes. It is a giant scam.”
He added: “So the kind of people that are putting together that ridiculous ceremony, we got a bunch of drag queens in ‘The Last Supper’ that nobody understands because it’s not made by athletes, it’s not made by the Olympics, it’s made by the people that are in charge of putting the Olympics out.
“So they’re the ones who are reaping all the money and sucking all the cash out of these athletes.”
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Athletes do not receive any financial rewards from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for reaching the Olympics or winning any medals.
The Games began as an amateur competition to celebrate athleticism and sports and revenue is instead distributed to international federations and national Olympic committees (NOC).
Some governing bodies have decided to pay athletes who win gold medals, World Athletics became the first international body to award prize money at the Paris 2024 games.
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A prize pot of £1.9m has been set aside for winners in the track and field events, gold medalists are expected to receive £39,400. The payments will continue at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Rogan continued and claimed the Olympics started with the right intentions and blames television networks for the lack of movement in athlete pay.
He added: “Back then, there was no television revenue. There was no one, no one was making billions and billions and billions of dollars. So, the Olympics started with, you know, a very pure intention.
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“The pure intention of just, you know, winning. Being the best. But somewhere along the line, it became this f***ing enormous business, and the athletes never got cut in.
“Everybody is like, ‘shut the f*** up!’ Because they’re just stealing. They’re just stealing money. Imagine that was the case with the NBA, or the NFL, or UFC. Imagine if the athletes got zero money, and everybody else is driving around in Rolls Royces, and living in mansions. It would be crazy!”