The 2028 European Athletics Championships and a £3m prize fund: when money is paid by placing

At Birmingham, the woman who finished eighth in the women's pole vault walked out of the competition area with chalk still on her shoes. She did not cry, did not wave to the stands, just walked to the bag drop and sat down, both hands on her knees. Nobody in the arena knew that eighth place would become the last line of a cheque from 2028 onward. Whoever finishes ninth, even by seven hundredths of a second or three centimetres, will receive nothing.

Thirty years behind the changing-room door have taught me that the smell of victory and the smell of tears are the same. They taught me something else too: the order on the results sheet and the order on the payout sheet have never been the same sheet.

A prize fund announced two years early

European Athletics has announced that the 2028 European Athletics Championships in Silesia, Poland will carry a record prize fund of about £3 million, nearly €3.5 million. The money goes to the top eight in all 50 events.

The ladder per event: €30,000 for gold, €15,000 for silver, €10,000 for bronze, €5,000 for fourth, €4,000 for fifth, €3,000 for sixth, €2,000 for seventh and €1,000 for eighth.

A few years ago, prize money at this championship was calculated from the World Athletics scoring tables. Ten awards of €50,000 each, split five men and five women, went to the highest-rated performances — the media called them the “Gold Crown”. At the Birmingham edition, Great Britain and Northern Ireland won 19 medals, nine of them gold. Not one of those golds made the top 10 on the scoring tables to claim €50,000.

Elsewhere, World Athletics is preparing the Ultimate Championship in Budapest: a three-day event with a $10 million prize pot, about £7.4 million, described by the governing body itself as “the richest prize fund in the history of the sport”.

The arithmetic reconciles to the euro

Add the per-event ladder: 30,000 + 15,000 + 10,000 + 5,000 + 4,000 + 3,000 + 2,000 + 1,000 = €70,000. Multiply by 50 events and you get €3.5 million. At the implied rate in the announcement — €30,000 equals £25,720 — €3.5 million is roughly £3 million. The headline figure matches the structure beneath it exactly.

The core of the change is that the prize fund moves from a lottery model to a payroll model. The old model paid for the quality of a performance: the total depended on how many athletes cleared a scoring threshold, and a weak edition could pay out far less than a strong one. The new model pays for finishing position, evenly across every event, from track to jumps, throws, shot put and combined events. Organisers have swapped a variable cost for a fixed, known, budgetable one.

For athletes, earnings variance falls. A gold medal is now worth €30,000 by default, regardless of how the scoring tables rate it. In exchange, the reward for a personal explosion all but disappears: a national record that does not change your placing earns nothing extra.

Based on my experience covering athletics championships, this is the kind of change spectators never see on the track but athletes feel in their bank accounts. In some years, a fourth-place finisher in the 800m knew exactly what she would be paid before stepping to the line. Previously, she did not.

The new structure favours deep squads. Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with 19 medals at Birmingham, are the clearest example: under the old model those nine golds brought nothing; under the new one each gold brings €30,000, and placings from silver down to eighth are paid too. A broad, evenly strong team harvests far more than a team with a single star.

Host nation Poland sits squarely in the winning group. Silesia hosts in 2028, which means a large home squad plus home advantage — the largest pool of athletes capable of finishing top eight. A placing-based payout becomes, in effect, a subsidy for host-nation depth.

There is another layer: this is a continental championship, below the Olympics and the World Championships in the hierarchy, paying for the first time in the manner of top-tier events. The continental championship is being repositioned as a commercial product rather than a purely honorary fixture.

The contrarian view

Two things need separating.

“Record £3 million” is a record for the European Championships, not for athletics. The comparison, set beside the Ultimate Championship's $10 million, shows its true position: large for a continental event, far smaller than World Athletics' new showcase. That a three-day meeting compresses more than twice the money into a fraction of the time also raises questions about the sustainability of a prize-money race between organisers.

More importantly, a bigger prize fund does not mean a higher competitive standard. More money does not tell us that European athletics has more stars, that records are being pushed deeper, or that the gap between the leaders and the rest is narrowing. Those variables are independent. A money story cannot measure the quality of medals.

The announcement says nothing about where the money comes from. Whether the fund is provided by the host, by European Athletics or by a sponsor remains open. Until a funding mechanism is confirmed, this record sum is a promise without collateral.

One detail is easy to miss: only eight athletes per event are paid. Ninth place receives zero. A record prize fund does not automatically become shared prosperity.

In the changing room I learned that a record is only a number, while history is what they never say out loud.

What remains after the finish line

The eighth-place finisher in Silesia will collect €1,000. That sum changes no one's life. But it marks a new principle: placing is paid, and the extraordinary moment is not paid extra.

What I want to know is this. Twenty years from now, when that woman retells the afternoon, will she mention the number in her account, or the sound of her own breathing in the last lap?