Challenges: Americans got attracted away from track almost 40 years ago. You know, more compelling telegenic sports...
It's great that some well pocketed gents want to try something new.
It's great that they want to consciously create a series of US bound summer track meets for Americas athletes to earn a better living.
The idea of creating meets where American athletes can make a "very good living" here at home is truelly very nice.
Could that be the first mistake?
Consider this: the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, (MLS) were built on the backs of owners scr3wing over the athletes for Decades. So...there's that.
What sells on American tv/digital?
Sex, violence, and stupidity. All the sports have violence or lend themselves to so may "cuts per minute video" / excitement.
Looking at a great meet like the Payton Jordan... Everyone in the stands is a geezer like most of us...and...and this is a huge, huge, huge problem and challenge... There are more runners on the track at that meet every year -- By Far -- than there are people (old d runner dudes and barely some family members) in the stands.
(You almost Never see or meet both of an athletes parents at a meet. It's an American problem, a modern problem. Now how are you going to sell out a small 10,000 person Stadium/venue, when the athletes can't even get mom and dad to show?)
Aside from the thought / illusion that the amazing and fantastic athletes attract the crowds to the above major league sports...is the reality that the fans are attracted to the sport itself -- And The Now Well Established Team-Franchises/Tribes.
Baseball is a little different...because of the ritual of "a day at the ballpark, hot dogs and peanuts..."
So here are some hard questions that the kind folk at TTSS admit they have no answers or solutions for...yet.
But rather than just ask the first, hardest question -- how to get people to show up??? -- Let's work the problem backwards.
10,000 people are in the Icahn stands on July 6th.
How did they get there?
Literally and inspirationally.
Bussed in on a prison field trip? Unlikely.
How to absolutely succeed at making Icahn Stadium full, two days after a major "trip away," classic American holiday?
There is absolutely no guaranteed advertising solution to accomplish that. None.
Sidebar: to get the "digital distribution" to be successful, one assumes the organizers and ESPN, certainly want the stands to be "full." Heck, sadly, RIO couldn't even sell out the Olympic world party...
Now, we (or I), could ask everyone here to contribute their brilliant advertising and promotional ideas to "pack the stands."
There'd be like one and a half good ideas till you started arguing and some weirdos started calling each other "cucks."
Sadly, I don't think anything obviously known to advertise a sporting event will work.
How about a gift certificate for a free pair of sport shoes from a Major Chain / Footlocker / Nike ?
Nope, probably not.
There is probably no amount of advertising dollars that could accomplish a full Icahn house.
How to guarantee a full house?
Pay them. Pay them to attend. What's Americas "guaranteed price" for a full stadium?
My gut tells me $200.00 dollars a head. You buy a twenty dollar ticket, you get a $200.00 rebate (Amazon Gift Card) when you leave the event with your ticket.
So that gets you a packed house and crowded stands on tv. Next you'd probably have to have game show style applause lights.
*So let's say you don't want the audience to be paid. Pay the athletes enough to compete "old school, in the nude. That, knowing America, would probably work -- but then you'd have to show it on PPV. So let's say you don't want that, either.
What could create a full house?
Let's say the investor went "all in," and funded a trust/corp to guarantee the league for a Decade. That could secure some stability and confidence in and by ESPN.
And/or, cut a deal with ESPN to fund / guarantee the league for a decade and if ratings reach X, ESPN gets -Massive Bonus. (ESPN is looking for ways to attract a younger audience, the NFL is dying, etc.) Yeah, that's a stretch too.
Okay, so you're thinking none of those ideas is going to work -- "you can love capitalism all you want, but the free market system has already done its job and weeded out the weak and dying."
How do you fill a small track stadium, get 10,000 Americans to show... Usain freaking Bolt couldn't do it. Somewhere between Usain freaking Bolt and the second coming of Jesus is the answer.
Or, let's say Ten Million Dollars in advertising budget couldn't do it. But a fraction of that could...
So (and this will never happen), you have the investors give away / raffle $100,000 ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars per 5 meets @ year for ...5 years... sponsored by NIKE. That is...the investors put up the money and the promotion for Nike...or Campbell's Soup /(whatever).
Depending on the state, you probably couldn't sell tickets. No purchase required, etc.
Or maybe you give away 100k in college scholarships per meet.
Okay you say those are stupid, stupid ideas. And there's legal wrinkles.
But Coukd They Work?
Ahah!
POSSIBLY.
And that's better than you can say about Anything that 40 years of post meet drunken Track And Field News writers etc. brain storming sessions could come up with. (For 3+ decades people have written "letters to the editor" with ideas to save the sport.)
So ask again if those are stupid ideas after you've considered every other idea that hasn't worked in the last 40 years, again, again and then again...
Could a Grand Cash Prize -- "Must Be Present To Win" / attendance required...work?
Very possibly. And the advertising budget would be cheaper by far than what it would take by traditional promotional means to "maybe" get ten k people to show up July freaking 6th. "I'm tired from the 4th."
It's part of the American spirit to say "nothing's impossible," "there are no impossible problems" etc.
It's a wonderfully nice thing they are doing.
But what if it would be more successful to take all the money budgeted, divided by 50 and give the cash away to 50 young, good looking, strangers, and then film them on their spending sprees, before and after w/consequences??? And make a season of reality TV?
How many think THAT would be more compelling tv viewing -- more successful and garner better ratings??
It most probably would.
And THAT, is your challenge in America today.
Either that or hire the Kardashians to be throwing event targets.
--Bread and Circuses, my friends, bread and circuses.
Hopefully these nice folks find a way where no
Capitalist Spirit has seen one in going on half a century.
Good luck to Track Town Summer Series.