With Paris 2024 just one-day away, the stage is set for the remarkable athletes from Africa to etch their names in history, representing their nations and the continent with pride and distinction.

We caught up with Rebecca Eliot, founder of ProTouch Africa to chat about the Olympic Movement and African Olympians, who to watch, her career journey into sports and passion to shape the future, by finding a new way to fund the next generation of athletes from Africa!

In the lead up to this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, it has been estimated that the budget was around 8.9 billion euros, split evenly between spending on infrastructure and operating expenses. Yet, most Olympians barely scrape by.

Very few Olympians have the opportunity to train full time, many have full-time jobs or side hustles to pay their bills, purchase equipment and pay their coaches. Most athletes globally, who compete at the Olympics can only hope to break even as they hunt for modest stipends and scarce sponsorships that often don’t cover the costs of years of training, equipment, medical and travel expenses.

 “Even though there is prize money for performance at some of the qualifying events, this is not sufficient to cover the costs to become an Olympian. While the concept of purely amateur competition has long since disappeared from the modern Olympics – with athletes often receiving payments from sponsors, as well as professional athletes taking part for years – Olympians are not remunerated at the Olympic Games”.

“More than 80% of Africa’s athletes make less than $15k per year, over 85% don’t have agents, significant sponsors or funding – this is the problem that ProTouch Africa plans to solve”, Rebecca announced this week.

The Olympic Movement

The goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world through sport, practiced in accordance with Olympism and its values.

The IOC is a privately-funded non-profit organisation and distributes over 90% of its revenues to organisations throughout the Olympic Movement worldwide. It contributes funding to International Federations to support them to operate, govern, develop and promote sport at an international level. It also contributes to National Olympic Committees globally – including the 54 African NOCs – in order to support their Athletes nationally. However, it is up to each IF and NOC to determine how to best serve their athletes and the global development of their sport.

“There were over 1 000 athletes from Africa that participated in Tokyo – in Paris this year there will be significantly more out of a total of 15 000 participants. Tokyo was affected by the pandemic and many athletes were not able to travel, qualify or secure sufficient funding to cover the costs associated with participating. But this is about to change for some athletes”.

First Sports to Offer Prize Money

World Athletics’ recently announced, as the first sport to offer prize money to Olympic champions, a prize pot of $2.4 million for 48 gold medallists ($50,000 each) ending a 128-year tradition. Relay teams will split the $50,000 between their members. Payments for silver and bronze medallists are planned to start from the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

In addition, the International Boxing Association (IBA) took a bold decision to award all Olympic medallists at Paris 2024 prize money – more than $3.1 million USD will be distributed to over 100 boxers. 

SASCOC also recently announced that South African Athletes who win Gold medals at this year’s Olympics will receive R400 000 and their Coaches R100 000, Silver medallists will receive R200 000 and their Coaches R50 000 and R100 000 for Bronze medallists with R25 000 for their Coaches. At the time of this article being written no other African nation has announced their medal reward pool.

“This is good news for the athletes from Africa, ready to make their mark but I believe the solution needs to extend beyond this, into public private partnerships and the leverage of technology to enable more funding opportunities that can go directly to the athletes. Not just in an Olympic year, but for all the years that come before in preparation for this”, Eliot added.

“To do this we need to activate a global fan base – including the 150-million African Diaspora – and make use of technology and digital platforms, to unlock value for these fans and the brands that support athletes from Africa too”.

ProTouch Africa, a sports tech business founded in South Africa and now in the UAE, is spearheading the development of the World’s first fan-owned Athlete Impact Fund for athletes from Africa, built on the blockchain and leveraging tokenization. Its vision is to unlock the potential of athletes from Africa through its Podium Pursuit Collective.

 

A Purpose-led Community

Deeply inspired to enable the next generation of African athletes Rebecca is passionate about activating a purpose-led community, driving interactivity and unleashing alternative revenues – far beyond traditional sponsorship – to support African Athletes.

Having spent over 30 years in loyalty and rewards strategy consulting and technology solutions, her move into sport and fan engagement came about as a result of trying to find a solution to keep funding a family-owned UCI Continental Road Cycling Team from Africa.

This team – ProTouch – was the top-ranked Continental Road Cycling Team in Africa from 2019 – 2022 and over this time supported twenty-six road cyclists, from six African nations [including five national champions and two African continental champions] by providing the opportunity to compete in international competitions.

“We truly began to understand that the toughest challenge our athletes face is that of funding, and opportunity to compete on the World stage. This is particularly true in Africa, where many athletes sadly fund themselves to the top stages of the world. Many top talents simply have no access to funding and may never even be found” she added.

Searching for a solution to keep funding the team, she came across BLOCKSPORT AG [a Swiss-based technology business providing white-labelled branded fan app, digital memberships, digital collectables and play-to-earn games to sports brands globally] and this was the start of a journey into fan engagement and a partnership to provide digital solutions, to sports teams clubs and federations in Africa.

Instead of registering a team in 2023 and impacting only a small number of athletes in one sports code, ProTouch set about building a platform – inspired to activate a purpose-led community, drive interactivity and unleash alternative revenues far beyond traditional sponsorship – to sustainably support African Athletes to perform on the World Stage in the future.

Assembling the Ecosystem

For the past 12-months they have been assembling an ecosystem that brings together more than 4,500 top performing athletes from fifty-four African Nations, across thirty-six sports codes, their 30-million fans globally and the brands and causes that are important to them.

With the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on the horizon, the timing could not be better to activate this cause and leverage this platform, to make a significant difference in the lead up to LA2028 and beyond!

The Podium Pursuit Collective Fan App – already live in beta, can be downloaded here – is the “Digital Club House” where fans can access and connect with all their favourite athletes and teams from Africa. It provides an aggregated newsfeed and social media wall, a match centre that includes all upcoming and past matches, all the latest individual athlete results and stats of athletes from Africa on the World stage.

Game highlights and exclusive behind-the-scenes content will also be enabled and fans are encouraged to participate in prediction games, polls, voting, and earn rewards for completing fan missions and interacting on a regular basis in the form of daily rituals.

“In this first phase, we provide athletes from Africa their very own Digital Athlete Profiles [think LinkedIn] for Africa’s top sporting talent. Podium Pursuit is showcasing Africa’s top performing athletes and giving them a powerful platform to market and promote themselves. These profiles go beyond traditional statistics, offering fans and brands a deeper understanding of the athletes’ stories, ambitions, and achievements. It’s a platform where athletes can digitally share their journey, their dreams, and connect with a global fan base that is hungry for inspiring stories”, she added.

These Digital Athlete Profiles are published in the African Athlete Exchange – an AI-powered Marketplace, that in future phases will also connect brands with top-performing athletes, who share their values.

At the Tokyo2020 Olympics there were eleven Gold Medals won, from seven African Nations primarily in the Track and Field category, with only one World Record in Swimming. Thirteen Silver Medals were achieved by eight African Nations and thirteen Bronze Medals, by nine African Nations.

This year, it is believed that there will be significantly more opportunity for Africa’s top talent to win more medals – based on more recent performances at the Athletics and Aquatics World Championships, Diamond League events and of course Eritrean Biniam Girmay’s fantastic four podiums while making history as the first black African to win three stages at the at the Tour de France. In his own words “It’s our time”!

Other amazing performances include Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon breaking her own world-record in the women’s 1500m (3:49:04); Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati 800m – leading three men under 1:42.; former medallist Hughes Fabrice Zango from Burkina Faso, setting a new Triple jump meeting record at FBK Games (17.57m); South African’s Alan Hatherly win at the XCO World MTB Cup and Candice Lil’s UCI Cross Country WC Silver medal.

As always the Track and Field categories will be where Africa dominates, but let’s not forget the swimmers and of course the South Sudan Men’s Basketball (basketball’s youngest nation, qualifying for their first Olympic tournament) too.

As a strategic sports tech business focussed on fan engagement, Web3 and Tokenization ProTouch, together with its technology partner Blocksport, provides strategies and technology solutions to brands in the sports industry in Africa and globally, and is already engaged with top football, rugby, hockey and basketball brands from Africa.

The Blockchain plays an enormous opportunity for sports in Africa. Blockchain technology enhances fan engagement, security, and generates new revenue streams for sports brands. Blockchain offers all sorts of benefits when it comes down to deeper fan engagement as well as the creation of new revenues – play-to-earn games, fan missions, premium subscriptions via exclusive content, in-app streaming, behind-the-scenes and inside-the-locker room content, and private training sessions for example. Furthermore, decentralised broadcasting and content distribution offers direct fan engagement where blockchain can facilitate direct transactions between content creators (such as athletes or teams) and fans. Fans can pay for exclusive content, and creators receive fair compensation without the need for intermediaries.

“These are all components that make up our Podium Pursuit Collective’s solution and I cannot wait to see how we will shape the future and fund the next generation of athletes from Africa, and maybe even the World!”