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Professional soccer, basketball and, more recently, baseball and hockey have opened up their team uniforms to commercial sponsors while receiving mixed reviews from fans. McIntosh’s deal is believed to be the first time an individual athlete has been allowed to include a personal sponsor’s logo on a national team swimsuit and, judging by the number of calls Swimming Canada marketing director Alan Raphael has received, it has piqued interest around the world.

In the three-way deal, Red Bull pays Swimming Canada a licensing fee to unlock the space on her suit and McIntosh negotiates directly with Red Bull on the endorsement value of that placement, and that money is hers.

It’s a model that Swimming Canada hopes to repeat with other athletes and brands, albeit likely with fewer zeros involved. So future team suits could include the team’s sponsor, Speedo, and an array of others from Red Bull to financial institutions, airlines and grocery stores on some swimmers’ suits.

“We have actually had a number of requests from other countries and other federations asking about how we’ve gotten to this point and how it works,â€� Raphael said. “They’re seeing that we’re being leaders in the space.â€�

There’s another factor at play here: Swimming Canada has to get creative to generate more revenue to offset declining federal government funding.

Its last annual report shows 55 per cent of revenue coming from Sport Canada, down from 60 per cent a decade ago. And it’s about to decline further. Swimming Canada says its Sport Canada core funding, which is meant to cover day-to-day operations, is being reduced by $200,000 this fiscal year with more reductions coming in the next two years.

Swimming Canada is joined by more than 60 per cent of national sport organizations that are getting a funding reduction, according to an information session with federal officials three weeks ago. 

Sport Canada hasn’t increased the core funding that sustains national sport organizations since 2005, so winter and summer sport organizations have been scrambling for years to handle rising costs and inflation. But the latest funding framework agreement, which increased the sports and disciplines eligible for a share of the same funding pie, has made things even more dire, says long-time sport administrator Peter Judge, the head of Canada’s freestyle skiing federation.

“Everybody has squeezed every ounce out of everything that’s available. It’s beyond a crisis,” said Judge who has five decades of sport experience. “Any of these innovative kind of (money-making) thoughts are going to be become more the norm than the exception.” 

Sports like freestyle skiing and snowboarding have long made space for personal sponsors on helmets and equipment and everyone is looking for new ways to help athletes capitalize on their short careers and keep federations afloat.

“There’s lots of different models out there, I think (this three-way deal) is a smart one,â€� said Judge, noting that it provides the athlete with a way to get fair value for what they’re worth and gives the sport federation a new way to earn revenue.

McIntosh is the first swimmer that Red Bull, known for its energy drinks and investment in sports teams and athletes, has partnered with globally. Red Bull is also entering its first partnership with a swimming association. 

McIntosh won three golds and a silver at the Paris Olympics last year and, last month in Victoria, she became the first swimmer since Michael Phelps to set three individual world records in a single meet. Over the course of nine days at the world championships, the 18-year-old from ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ could win as many as five gold medals.

McIntosh is a marketing dream as a generational talent who was a teenage star in the Olympic pool in Paris, her second Games, and she has the potential to get even better over the next Olympic cycle and beyond. How lucrative this suit branding could be for other swimmers who don’t have the same podium potential, and don’t threaten world records practically every time they get in the pool, remains to be seen. But Raphael says they recognize that not everyone has McIntosh’s star pull and are open to varying licensing fees so other athletes have a chance to get deals.

“Unlocking of a suit, that’s a bit of a tricky space and we’re trying to work that through. There would be a minimum (fee), but we want to find a number that’s fair and balanced to all the national team athletes,â€� he said.

“If we start putting together two, three, four, five of these athlete deals together, there’s going be a significant benefit to Swimming Canada.”

Raphael says there has been interest but no other deals are currently in the works.

The most lucrative time for athletes and sport federations — the Olympic Games, with its huge national and global audiences — is still a no-go zone for this kind of sponsorship deal. The detailed and heavily enforced regulations of the International Olympic Committee and the Canadian Olympic Committee, designed to protect official Games sponsors, restrict what athletes and sport federations can do with their sponsors, which has long been a sore point.

So no Red Bull on McIntosh’s Team Canada suit come the 2028 LA Olympics?

“Currently … we’re not allowed to do that,â€� Raphael said. “Hopefully things change.”