When we think of athletes being professionals, we often think of the big bucks that are in major sports. But for most Olympic and Paralympic sports, the pot of money is pretty small and that's because the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) behind them are running on shoestring budgets. On this episode we talk with Ramsey Baker about the challenges small NGBs face and how they think about sponsorship and broadcast rights in working to increase their budgets. Ramsey is a SVP at Aggregate Sports, a consulting firm that helps NGBs find sponsors and broadcast partners. Prior to joining Aggregate Sports, Ramsey spent 18 years at US Figure Skating in various leadership roles including Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Director. Also, a doping case has rocked the swimming world. The World Anti-Doping Agency just confirmed that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for TMZ ahead of Tokyo 2020, but took those positives to be inadvertent and dismissed the cases. However, this has many up in arms. We have plenty of news from Paris 2024, including:

• More hospitality houses
• An installment of our new medal-payment novela, in which the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations is furious with World Athletics (get your popcorn for this one!)
• Intel has an number of AI initiatives ready for Paris
• A Russian modern pentathlete wants to go neutral, and gets a rude awakening
• NBC will give some athlete parents heart monitors so TV viewers can see their reactions
• Paris police have cleared out another group of refugees

In our visit to TKFLASTAN, it's been a slow week, but race walker Evan Dunfee has some great news!

For a transcript of this episode, please visit http://flamealivepod.com.

Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

Photo courtesy of Ramsey Baker.

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Keep the Flame Alive: The Olympics and Paralympics Fan Podcast with hosts Jill Jaracz & Alison Brown. New episodes released every week and daily during the Olympics and Paralympics. Also look for our monthly Games History Moment episodes in your feed.

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