Here’s How Much Olympic Figure Skating Star Nathan Chen Is Making From Endorsements

You could say Nathan Chen has unfinished business.

When the then-18-year-old figure skating star arrived at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018, he was the favorite to take home gold in the men’s individual event. Disaster ensued during his short-program performance, and he found himself 17th on the leaderboard before rallying back to a medal-less fifth-place finish. It was a massive letdown, one that couldn’t be soothed by the bronze he landed in the team competition.

As Chen returns for the 2022 Beijing Games, the 22-year-old has reasserted himself as a dominant presence in the sport. And brands are betting on it.

Forbes estimates Chen has earned at least $1 million in guaranteed payments from his sponsors in the 12 months leading up to these Olympics. He has also likely earned additional bonuses from his brand partners for his exceptional performances on the ice, and with a gold medal in the individual or team events in Beijing, he could perhaps double his earnings figure. Gold would mean a $37,500 payment from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee as well.

That total leaves him well shy of the world’s highest-paid athletes, not to mention former figure-skating star Kim Yuna, who earned $16 million in 2014, according to Forbes’ estimates. But Kim was an exception, a huge celebrity in her native South Korea. By the standards of Winter Olympians, who generally struggle across a fragmented marketing landscape to get even five-figure marketing deals, Chen is near the top of the heap.

“Nathan Chen has good brand appeal,” says John Grady, a sports law professor at the University of South Carolina. “[Brands] don’t necessarily want to give opportunities to the untested or lesser-known athletes in smaller sports.”

Chen has long-term deals with 11 partners, many of which overlap with Team USA’s official sponsorships, including Bridgestone, Comcast, Nike, Toyota and Visa. He also works with consumer brands Grubhub and Airweave and is part of a new NFT drop through game developer nWay.

Nicknamed the “Quad King” since he became the first Olympian in history to land six quadruple jumps (with four full revolutions) during his final skate in PyeongChang, Chen has been on fire over the last four years. The Salt Lake City native won gold at the world championships the month after those Games, beginning an undefeated streak of ten international individual events that finally ended with a third-place finish at Skate America in October 2021. He added a gold from Skate Canada to his trophy case a week later.

That level of success allows Chen to command five- and even six-figure marketing deals, even as endorsement opportunities grow more scarce for Winter Olympians and figure skating continues to fade in popularity. While the sport used to regularly spawn celebrities like Kristi Yamaguchi, Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes, its TV numbers have been in decline since the Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan saga leading up to the 1994 Games. Their Olympic short-program session drew 48.5 million viewers, more than double the nightly average of Sochi 2014 (21.4 million) and PyeongChang 2018 (19.8 million).

“It still probably has the cachet that it has had,” Grady says of the sport. “It just may not be quite the TV viewing priority that it once was.”

Chen begins his quest for gold in the men’s team event on Friday morning Beijing time (Thursday night in the U.S.). He’ll take the ice again in the men’s individual event on Tuesday (Monday night in the U.S.).

With additional reporting by Brett Knight.