I changed the title of this thread to better explain what it's about. The original title of this thread was, "Competitor Group backlash".
Personally, I thought the NY Times article was poorly written. It starts with the title.
The New York Times article is entitled, "Races End Fees to Top Runners, Drawing Outcry".
What an awful title. It should have been something like "Hedge fund pulls support for professional runners, draws outcry." I mean the title says "Fees" - what the hell does that mean? it says "races" which is a generic term and were talking about a specific firm.
When I wrote for papers, I had no say on the title of the article but the editor probably did a poor job of selecting one because in reading the article it's all over the place.
I guess it's complicated because you can talk about whether people like appearance fees or not and get totally sidetracked. Like Barnow, I don't like appearance fees in theory and would rather see prize money, but that's irrelevant, it's about the total amount of money they are spending to support pros.
But really they should have written an article about how many of your mom and pop race is now run by hedge funds focused on profit. Others are run by non-profits and the divide between that.
So many people in the comments section think, "Oh this is good. Entry fees will go down." False. Hedge funds are driving the escalting fees. It's also going to profit, not the sport.