Joe Rogan and JRE guest Aron D'Souza level "scam" allegations against the Olympics: "None of that goes to the athletes"
Joe Rogan recently shared his thoughts on the Olympics and expressed his dismay at some of the practices of the multi-sport Olympiad event. He discussed the matter with the founders of the Enhanced Games, a unique Olympic-style event where athletes could compete without bans on performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), on an episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' podcast (JRE).
During his conversation with Enhanced Games co-founders Dr. Aron D'Souza and Christian Angermayer, Rogan accused the Olympics of running a financial "scam" with their athletes. The veteran UFC commentator stated that while the event generated billions in revenue, the athletes got almost nothing.
Speaking to Dr. D'Souza and Angermayer on the JRE podcast (#2166), Rogan said:
"The Olympics is kind of a scam because it generates billions of dollars in revenue, and the people that are there to perform make almost none of that."
Dr. D'Souza agreed with Rogan's statement and added:
"That's correct. Actually, the International Olympic Committee doesn't pay the athletes. They may get some money in sponsorship from their national Olympic committee, but ultimately, the billions of dollars come into the Olympics, and none of that goes to the athletes. It gets wasted building stadiums, it gets wasted paying officials."
Catch Joe Rogan's comments below (1:15):
Dr. Aron D'Souza explains to Joe Rogan what inspired him to start the Enhanced Games
During his appearence on a recent episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' podcast, Dr. Aron D'Souza outlined what inspired him to start the Enhanced Games. He dropped an intriguing statistic on Joe Rogan during their conversation and detailed why he pursued the goal of finding out what the human body is ultimately capable of.
Stating that 44% of all athletes competing in the Olympics have admitted to using steroids, Dr. D'Souza also addressed their pay scale in the same JRE episode as mentioned above and said:
"44% of Olympians admit to using banned performance-enhancing drugs in the last year, according to research commissioned by the [World Anti-Doping Agency]."
Dr. D'Souza continued:
"And then I learned that the average American Olympian only earns $30,000 a year. And I thought to myself, 'There's something really wrong in the system and instead of, you know, trying to reform it, let's take a blank slate of paper and invent the third Olympiad from scratch." [ From 0:42 mark]