Bioethics Forum Essay

The Enhanced Games Are Paying Athletes Well – Too Well

Last year, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev beat the 50-meter freestyle world record at a speed trial in North Carolina and walked away with a million dollars. But very few people thought that he’d beaten a “real” record because he was doped to the gills.

The event was a pilot for the Enhanced Games, a new sporting competition that will take place on May 24. It appears to be the first multisport event that openly sanctions and endorses performance enhancing drugs. Among traditional sports like running and swimming, it’s by far the best paying event in the world.

The Enhanced Games has attracted fierce criticism from sports ethicists and bodies like the International Olympic Committee and International Federation of Sports Medicine, which accuse the event of making a mockery of sporting fairness and endangering athletes. But some bioethicists commend the games for potentially destigmatizing performance enhancing drugs, and many bioethicists have long opposed the anti-doping paradigm championed by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The debate about whether doping should be allowed isn’t new, and I’m not here to rehash it.

Instead, I want to highlight how the financial incentives of the Enhanced Games are threatening athletes’ autonomy.

The Enhanced Games is paying athletes far more than other traditional sports competitions. Athletes who break world records can receive up to $1 million. Even those who don’t break records get paid just for showing up – the organizers boast about “top-tier appearance fees” and six-figure prizes. By comparison, American athletes earn just $37,500 for winning a gold medal at the Olympics, Japan pays gold medallists $45,000, and some countries – like Britain, Norway, and Sweden – pay them nothing.

For many competitors, the sums paid by the Enhanced Games are life-changing. When that much money is on the table, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for athletes to decline participation, even if they have serious concerns about pumping their body full of drugs.

Payments can coercepeople into doing something by making it difficult to say no. If people are broke and desperately need money, a huge payment might mean they’d participate in something they wouldn’t otherwise consider. Even if people are not desperate, an unusually attractive payment can influence their judgment about risks. They might focus so much on the reward that they don’t properly assess the dangers. Either way, their autonomy is compromised.

In addition to using massive financial incentives, the Enhanced Games’ organizers are targeting vulnerable people. And most elite athletes are vulnerable because they are scraping by. The Enhanced Games notes that 59% of American Olympians earn less than $25,000 annually, even in Olympic years.

Irish Olympian Shane Ryan went from earning about $21,000 a year to the chance for a six-figure prize when he signed up for the Enhanced Games. He and other athletes have said that the large payments influenced their decision to participate. American sprinter Fred Kerley said the “only thing about signing up to this game is to make money.” British Olympic medallist Ben Proud said that the million-dollar reward “felt like too good an opportunity to turn down.”

In addition to being vulnerable financially, most enhanced athletes are vulnerable because of their age. They are in their 30s and facing a brutal binary – enhance or retire. The Enhanced Games looks like a last shot at financial security. When Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen came out of retirement for the Enhanced Games, he was blunt. “Look, first and foremost, it’s cash,” he said, describing a payday that’s “hard to ignore.”

Athletes are not required to dope to participate in the Enhanced Games. But not doping puts them at a disadvantage, reducing their chances of winning $1 million for beating a world record. Research shows that prize money directly influences doping rates.

The obvious way to reduce the risk of coercing athletes is to close the gap between what the Enhanced Games offers and other options available to them, including other competitions. Ideally, the Olympic Games would be paid more. But that’s not realistic; the Olympics is financially unsustainable. So, the Enhanced Games must pay less. I’d suggest roughly what athletes already earn competing in competitions that prohibit doping, or what they could earn in a job outside sport: a fair living wage or, conservatively, minimum wage.

The Enhanced Games markets itself as a celebration of human potential and athletic freedom, but its financial structure tells a different story. When athletes admit that money is their sole motivation, rather than free choice, we’re witnessing the erosion of freedom. True autonomy requires the ability to say no without catastrophic consequence. By dangling life-changing sums in front of athletes who are already financially precarious and aging out of their careers, the Enhanced Games offers a persuasive illusion of freedom. Until the financial gap between enhanced and clean competition is narrowed to something reasonable, that illusion will continue to come at a cost to athletes’ genuine independence.

Byron Hyde, FRAS FRSA FRAI MRi, is a philosopher of science and public policy at Bangor University in Wales and Bristol Medical School in England.