How much does a professional skateboarder earn?
Becoming a professional is not an easy task. It is not just about doing the most difficult tricks or winning championships, in addition to that each brand looks for a certain image in a skater that represents the company. In addition, the vast majority of brands seek a personal relationship with the skater, especially board brands, because what will be very important is that the owner and those who skate for the brand know you and like you. Keep in mind that you will be spending a lot of time with them on tours, shooting videos, or on trips.
Assuming that you have been skating for years, and have met the necessary requirements to earn a living with the skate, this is what awaits you. I can only tell you in advance that the vast majority of professional skaters, with the exception of only a few, are people who earn almost just enough to live on and are people like you and me, and only a few are millionaires like Hawk, Nyjah or Paul Rodriguez .
contracts.
When you are pro, many brands start by putting a contract on the table for you to sign. This contract generally has a duration and you sign it committing yourself to spend a number of years representing the brand. Small board brands often won't make you sign a contract and it will be all verbal, but big brands like Nike SB or Adidas, for example, will force you to sign an official contract, with a certain duration and things like you can only wear sportswear. your brand, or that you have to go to a certain number of championships, or record a certain number of video parts, or be in brand ads, or post certain things on Instagram or TikTok. On the other hand, the contracts also show the budget that you are going to have on trips to go to demos, championships, film for videos or brand video premieres.
Another thing that appears in the contracts is "photo incentives". This is money that the brand will pay you if you appear in a magazine or in a video with a visible logo of the brand, and the money that they will pay you will depend on how well the logo is seen or in which part of the magazine the photo appears. , obviously it is not the same if you appear inside the magazine than if you do it on the cover. These "photo incentives" are precisely why you see pros in big competitions like Street League wearing shirts with large Nike SB or Cariuma logos, or wearing Monster caps.
In some contracts "Bonuses for winning championships" may also appear, in which if you are first in a championship the brand agrees to pay you the same cash prize that you earn for being the first.
Failure to comply with any of the conditions that appear in the contract by the skater can mean that you are kicked out of the brand.
Before I was talking about the duration of the contract, well, if you are a young skater who is rising like foam, the best thing is not to sign a contract that commits you to the brand for many years, you never know what can happen and the same today they pay you 100 dollars for 5 years, but in two years your name has grown and another brand offers you 500 dollars, if you have signed for 5 years you will not be able to leave. The opposite happens if you are already older and you know that you are not going to go further, it is better for you to sign a longer-term contract.
Royalties for boards sold
Normally when a brand puts your name on a board they usually pay you around per board sold on average. Apart from that, each brand of boards pays a fixed salary to its pros, and the final salary per month is the sum of that salary plus the royalties per board sold with your name, although with a little trick, the royalties must be higher than your base salary. Let's say you get paid 00 but that month they sold 300 boards with your name on them, they wouldn't pay you 00 plus 0 in royalties, just 00.
Royalties for shoes sold
With sneakers royalties it is a bit more complicated and there are several factors to take into account as a pro's cache, how big the brand is.
What is certain is that if you manage to get a shoe brand to make you one with your name, you have succeeded because you have to take into account that it is not necessary for the person who buys your shoe to really skate and the market of potential customers who are going to buy zapas is much larger than that of boards.
To give an example, a big brand can pay 5% for each shoe sold with your name and thus easily earn 0,000 dollars a year, just with your shoe contract, if it is a big brand like Nike SB , DC, Adidas or Vans.
In recent years, shoe brands have begun to link their shoe contracts with clothing contracts, so if you wear Nike SB, for example, that may force you to wear only clothing from that brand.
Sponsors from outside the skate industry
As the years have passed and skateboarding has become bigger and bigger, many companies outside of skateboarding want to benefit from the image of the skateboard, which is why you see brands like Red Bull, Monster or Rock Star paying large amounts of money to skaters in order to "become part of the culture". On average these energy drink companies pay between ,000 and 0,000 a year. Aside from that dough, energy drink brands are known for matching prize money when winning a championship, so if you come in first in a championship and win say ,000, the energy drink will pay you another ,000. Something that is in the contract of these energy drinks is that whenever you skate, you must always wear a cap with the company logo.
Championship earnings
There are two types of skaters: the skaters who never go to championships and base their careers on parts of video or photos, and the ones who go to championships.
Big events like the X Games or Street League pay skaters just for going to participate, even if you come last, an average of between ,000 and ,000, and they are invitational, so you must have a good name as a skater. Apart from that, as I said before, there are companies that match the championship prize if you come in first, so if you win one of these big championships you can get a good pinch for a weekend of skateboarding.
Social networks
We are in the era of "influencers" and in our skate world there are companies that pay per post on Instagram or Tik Tok, about 0 per post or more depending on the brand. brands that have nothing to do with skateboarding sometimes…
In summary
As I mentioned at the beginning, only a few skaters earn millions from skateboarding, and let's say that 99% of the professionals in the skate world get a fair living wage.
We must also take into account that a professional skater is self-employed, and is not hired by any company that pays social security and things like that, so at the end of the year each one must pay their taxes and that takes away a lot of what you earn
That being said, we can estimate that after taxes a pro can earn around ,000 a year at best, and there are only 15-20 pros in the world who earn more than 0,000 a year clean.