Rewarding Our Sportsmen and Women Equally

Let me begin, like others in this House, by expressing my appreciation and admiration to all our national athletes, regardless of whether they may have medaled in these most recent Games. This extends, of course, to our most recent medalists in Paris: Jeralyn Tan and Max Maeder, as well as Yip Pin Xiu, our country’s most decorated sportsperson.

All of us who have played sport will understand the enormous sacrifice and challenges these athletes had to endure to climb the pinnacle of sporting achievement. Their feats would not have been possible without years of grueling dedication to their chosen sport, culminating in translating those countless hours into a competition-day delivery that would have had to be one of the best in their lives.

This was undoubtedly the case for Jeralyn, Pin Xiu, and Max.

Jeralyn had trailed by five points at the halfway mark, but was able to muster a fierce comeback that forced a tiebreaker in the final round. It was her enormous composure and mental prowess in the face of tough odds that led us to our first Paralympic boccia medal.[1]

Kitefoiler Max had to overcome a somewhat slow start in the first race of the final to pull into second place, but it was his steady consistency in the face of poor weather conditions during the finals that saw him snatch a place on the podium. In doing so, he tacked and jibed his way into history as our nation’s youngest Olympic medalist, and into our hearts.[2]

And Pin Xiu displayed her usual fortitude, not allowing the complacency of being the world record holder or already having won gold twice in the 100m S2 backstroke to faze her, as she clocked a historic three-peat that saw her taking home a gold on the second day of the Games,[3] followed by another two days later in the 50m backstroke.[4]

We celebrate and honor their achievements.

Reasons for noninterference in sporting rewards

Without diminishing the passion and hard work of our athletes that have driven them to sporting success, I would like to share some thoughts about how we reward them. As those in this House are aware, we currently have programs that offer monetary rewards for medals. I had previously filed a question to this House, asking the Minister for Culture, Community, and Youth what the parameters were for determining the cash incentive amounted offered under the Major Games Award (MGA) of the Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC), and why a distinction existed between the SNOC’s MGA and the Athletes’ Achievement Awards (AAA) Singapore National Paralympic Council (SNPC)’s cash amounts, when measured at comparable international levels.[5]

Questions of this nature are not unique to me, of course. PAP and Workers’ Party Members of Parliament had previously asked questions about the seemingly unequal reward and recognition accorded to both athletes with and without disabilities. This is clearly a matter of bipartisan concern.

In the Parliamentary Reply by then-Minister for MCCY Grace Fu, she explained that the SNOC and SNPC were nongovernmental organizations, and that the MGA and AAA were decided by their sponsors and donors. This response was essentially repeated in Minister Edwin Tong’s response to previous PQs that have been filed.

The SNOC and SNPC are undeniably NGOs. But are they NGOs of the same standing and milieu as, say, Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), Sayoni, or Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME)? The SNOC was established to receive the official invitation by the IOC to send Singaporean representatives to the Games.[6] The current president of the SNOC is Minister Grace Fu, and past presidents and council members include Ministers and MPs.

And who are these sponsors and donors? The SNOC states on its website that the primary sponsor of the MGA is the Tote Board family, comprising Singapore Pools and the Singapore Turf Club. The SNPC has similar language describing the primary sponsor of the AAA. The Tote Board is a government agency, and its activities, and those of its subsidiary entities, are regulated by various ministries. Each year, the subsidiaries contribute hundreds of millions to nation-building efforts, and indirectly to the budget through taxes on betting.

Hence, while it is true that the SNOC and SNPC are NGOs, and that the sponsors of the MGA and AAA are varied, it is difficult to see why the government has decided that it cannot exercise greater influence over the amounts granted by the two sporing award programs.

So if the government doeschoose to exercise greater influence over the MGA and AAA, the question that remains is whether the current amounts granted in each are reasonable from an economic and moral perspective.

Matching rewards to demand and supply

What should the value of such an award be? Some have claimed that we ought to respect the economics of supply and demand. While I do not believe that economics should be the basis for justifying such rewards, allow me to elaborate on why such arguments may be naïve.

The supply side is straightforward: this is the effort expended by the sportsmen and women that compete in major international games.

But as any athlete will tell you, their driving motivation to perform at their best in the sporting arena often has very little to do with monetary gains. Indeed, most do it for the love of their game, and would almost certainly do it for comparatively little money. And the fact that so many of our athletes do so, for generally low levels of remuneration, is a living testament to that reality. Many have put their lives on hold to bring glory to the nation.

Still, there is no denying that even our leanest and meanest athletes need to eat, drink, and earn a living. At the margin, rewards for performance at the highest levels do make a difference in ensuring that our sportsmen and women are able to continue their pursuit of their passion, not least by allowing them to persist in the rigors of their training and climbing the ladder of competition during the lean years, where success is neither assured nor yet attained.

In contrast, demand derives from us, the audience and supporters and lovers of a sport. Our interest—and willingness to pay for the joy and entertainment we receive when we watch sporting events—is what allows a sport, any sport, to be viable enough that professionals can emerge.

It is along these lines that some have chosen to argue that the comparative lack of demand in Paralympics means that there is little economic justification to rewarding our Paralympians with the same order of monetary compensation as our Olympians, when they medal.

Here is the problem with such an argument: while such dynamics may be true for any sport as a whole, it does not translate into actual compensation for individual sportsmen and women.

After all, raw market forces have seldom been the sole driver for monetary compensation in sport. If so, the U.S. women’s soccer team—which both draws far larger crowds, generates significantly larger revenue, and has achieved much greater sporting success than the men’s team—would not have filed suit against its soccer federation, for reasons of unequal pay,[7] Nor would the athletes playing in the billion-dollar NCAA leagues continue to receive only limited compensation in the form of tuition waivers, living expenses, and endorsement rights.[8]

And let us take such an argument to its logical conclusion: if we were to reward our athletes according to eyeballs, then surely our awards must vary by sport: differing rewards for soccer versus sepak takraw versus silat, in accordance with their popularity. But we do not, and rightly so; we recognize that we wish to support a wide range of sport, because we see the value in each one of them.

Rather, salaries and rewards in sport as often determined as much by sponsorship interest, relative bargaining power, and institutional strictures, much like the payouts for the MGA and AAA are.

Going beyond the market

I have sketched out the case for why economics does not offer an unequivocal case for unequal treatment between the MGA and the AAA. But it is worth, perhaps, exploring the moral arguments, which I believe are even more compelling.

Hence, another argument sometimes made to justify the differential rewards is that Paralympians compete in finer categories;[9] consequently, their field of competition is correspondingly smaller, and hence they deserve less of a reward for rising to the top of that narrowed field.

To me, this is again a distinction without a difference. Fields widen and narrow every year, for all sorts of reasons. Birth cohorts fall in size in certain Chinese horoscope years, and rise in others, but we don’t tell those born in the year of the Dragon that their “A” Division golds somehow deserve more acclaim than those won in other years. Similarly, we don’t tell our female weightlifters and bodybuilders that—because their sport is less popular among women than it is with men, or that more bodyweight categories exist in one gender versus the other—they should receive a smaller reward when then win.

Rather, our awards are simply organized by the coverage of the competition: if the rules for participation allow for global, continental, or regional, we scope out award sizes accordingly, regardless of how many competitors eventually sign up. This approach is defensible, because it does not prescribe, in advance, whether any given sport or athlete should be deemed more worthy of a greater reward, based on their observable attributes. Instead, it focuses—as it should—on how many potential competitors there might be, based on the geographic scope of the competition.

This argument also glosses over the fact that what the different categories capture are disabilities. Lest we forget, Paralympians placed in these different categories are competing not on the basis of these classifications, but in spite of them. Hence, I personally find any suggestion that the athlete is somehow, even if indirectly, benefiting from this smaller field morally repugnant.

Opportunity and equality for all

This speech has been about equal compensation. But life, of course, is about much more than that. I will conclude by explaining why equality in monetary rewards for sport implies something that goes well beyond the pecuniary.

Certainly, our country recognizes and celebrates the achievements of our Paralympians in many ways beyond the financial. But in my view, not only are such accolades insufficient; they also strike me as inconsistent. If these nonpecuniary benefits alone were sufficient, then surely no additional MGA or AAA would be necessary? Conversely, if we see the value to a monetary reward of even a single dollar, then it behooves us to explain why we are comfortable with a distinction between our able-bodied and disabled sportsmen and women. To put it in more concrete terms, we should be able to explain why Ms Yip Pin Xiu, our country’s most successful sportsperson, has been rewarded comparatively less than others, for achievements of a comparable caliber.

Sir, I believe we should take the economically and ethically justifiable step of equalizing the monetary rewards offered to our Olympians and Paralympians in their respective award programs. I believe that the government, as a key stakeholder in the IOC, as the controlling body of the Tote Board, and as the elected leaders of our people and society, can make the call to do so. We should not defer the decision to other bodies with less standing.

Other countries have also taken steps to move toward parity between the two. Canada announced at the start of this year that the medals for Paralympians will be equal to those of their Olympian counterparts.[10] The United States has done so since 2018,[11] and even renamed their national governing body the Olympic and Paralympic Committee.[12] Host nation France increased funding by two-and-a-half times so that they are able to reward medalists equally.[13] We routinely argue in this House about ensuring equal opportunities for each and every Singaporean. We have repeatedly spoken of fostering a society of compassion and empathy. And we await the passage in this House on a nondiscrimination bill, an idea that the Workers’ Party has championed for a long time. Let us begin here, then, by recognizing the accomplishments of all our sportsmen and sportswomen equally, with the rewards that the

[1] Chia, N. (2024), “Paris 2024: Jeralyn Tan Makes History with Singapore’s First Paralympic Boccia Medal,”ActiveSG Circle, Sep 2.

[2] Mungcal, A. et al. (2024), “How Max Maeder Won Olympic Bronze for Singapore,” Straits Times, Aug 10.

[3] Mohan, M. (2024), “Paris Paralympics: Singapore’s Yip Pin Xiu Wins Gold in 100m Backstroke S2 Event,” CNA, Aug 30.

[4] Mohan, M. (2024), “Singapore Swimmer Yip Pin Xiu Wins Second Gold at Paris Paralympics,” CNA, Sep 1.

[5] These levels are categorized according to the scope of the respective games, with awards for wins at the SEA Games being the lowest (at $10,000 for individual golds and up to $30,000 for team golds), and the Olympic Games being the highest ($1,000,000 for individual golds and $2,000,000 for team golds). See SNOC (2018), “Singapore National Olympic Council Major Award Programme 2017 to 2020,” Singapore: SNOC.

[6] Peh, S.H. (2017), Rings of Stars and Crescent: 70 Years of the Olympic Movement in Singapore, Singapore: Singapore National Olympic Council.

[7] This case was ultimately dismissed by the courts, albeit due to a technicality—the fact that the men’s a women’s teams negotiated different deals—rather than the merits of the unequal salaries. See Alex Morgan et al. v United States Soccer Federation Inc., Case 2:19-cv-01818-GBK-AGR.

[8] The NCAA moved to legalize the use of athletes’ name, image, and likeness in 2021, and in 2024, a court settlement further expanded these monetization rights. The situation continues to evolve, but college sportsmen and women can now endorse products and make personal appearances in exchange for compensation. See Daugherty, G. (2024), “NIL and the NCAA: What Are the Rules?”, Investopedia, May 29.

[9] These differ by sport, but the Paralympic Games offer opportunities for at least one of 10 eligible impairments, associated with physical, visual, or intellectual disabilities.

[10] Canadian Paralympic Committee (2024), “Canadian Paralympic Athletes Will Receive Financial Recognition for Podium Performances,” CPC Updates, Jan 23.

[11] International Paralympic Committee (2018), “Paralympians to Earn Equal Payouts as Olympians in the USA,” Press Release, Sep 24.

[12] Allentuck, D. (2019), “Paralympians See a Big Welcome in a Small Title Change,” New York Times, Jun 29.

[13] Pringle, E. (2024), “Some Paralympic Athletes Will Receive 75% Less Than Their Olympic Peers for Winning a Gold Medal,” Fortune, Sep 2.