New commercial partners and continued investment in events and innovation contributed to a solid year with strong cash reserves, the World Athletics Congress was told when the 2024 Annual Report and Accounts were presented on Thursday (11).
World Athletics 2024 Annual Report and Accounts
The year ending December 2024 finished strongly, with like-for-like revenues up 10.5% to $59.8m on the previous year – commercial and broadcast revenue accounting for US$44m. This revenue figure excludes the quadrennial Olympic Dividend of US$39.6m, which was also received within this financial year to create a final revenue for the year of US$99.4m and a cash position of US$40m.
Two new sponsors, Sony and Honda, came on board in 2024 as well as Deloitte as a supporter and Morinaga, Pocari Sweat and Corpay as suppliers. A new EBU broadcast contract and a commercial rights profit share contribution all boosted revenues during the year.
The year 2024 was transformational for competitions and events at World Athletics, driven by an ambitious innovation agenda and a renewed commitment to athlete experience, event quality and global engagement.
Related to this, there was early investment into the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship. Delivering five World Athletics Series events, compared to three in 2023, and the staging of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games saw expenditure increase slightly by 12% on the previous year, with more than half of all spend on competitions, events and prize money for athletes.
Athletics was again the No.1 Olympic sport at the Olympic Games in Paris, with the biggest broadcast reach of any Olympic sport. A total of 1.2 billion people tuned in to watch athletics.
In terms of competition, 75 countries made it to a final at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with 43 countries winning a medal. That brings the total number of countries to have won a medal in athletics at an Olympic Games to 105. No other sport has this reach.
More than 21,000 athletes competed in Diamond League and Continental Tour events, with over 7000 athletes recording a personal best and just under 300 national records set. On the road, more than 300 Label races were staged, with 5.5 million participants from 57 countries.
Following a comprehensive review of the grant funding for Member Federations and Area Associations during 2024, grant funding increased slightly (2%). US$12m was spent on the administration of grants and funds to Area Associations and Member Federations to develop and promote athletics around the world, supporting the World Plan for Athletics 2022-2030.
“Athletics is currently a hot commodity and people want to be a part of it. But we need to adapt to new and changing realities and keep new generations of fans engaged with our sport,” said World Athletics President Sebastian Coe in the report’s opening message.
“One important way is to continue to focus on innovating our sport and the product, which is embedded in our new four-year strategic plan, Pioneering Change (2024-2027), and supported by a dedicated innovation team developing data driven strategies.
“The decision to award prize money to gold medal athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and all medal winners at the LA2028 Olympic Games, was discussed and ratified by the World Athletics Executive Board. It is the continuation of a journey we started back in 2015, which sees all the money World Athletics receives from the International Olympic Committee go directly back into our sport, which includes our athletes. This will continue.
“The strength and increased popularity and profile of our sport is clear from the new investment that we are seeing others pour into our sport through new events, new formats and new partnerships. I welcome this. We have an extraordinary opportunity, right now, to make a strong and growing sport stronger and even more popular.”
World Athletics