Michael Johnson announces $30 Million raised for Winners Alliance pro track league starting 2025 Apr-Sep

The NFL does what track fails to do- draw in people who don't understand or actually care about the game.

They market their teams and the individuals.

I have a friend from Romania, she said she watched one football game and had no idea what was going on and thought it was sooooo boring.

It's not about how "exciting" a sport is- break down most sports and they're boring or "dumb".

It's about creating personalities and creating interest.

It's not necessarily the team- tennis and golf are examples. It's making the athletes into personalities.

DL coverage is objectively boring as hell to a prospective fan. Far too much dull time and exciting commentary is rare because everything is in realtime. Often the commentators will miss everything going on.

Obviously this is anecdotal but you're wrong- right off the bat, you're wrong.

I've watched Diamond League events with non-track fans who were only watching because they were with me. They enjoyed it- it's a concise package, event after event.

I agree that commentators can call the races more and talk less about trivial garbage, but they explain field events perfectly for the person who lacks knowledge in them.

People complain about "down time" in track- do you mean like the time between football plays? Or the incomplete pass or run that goes nowhere?

Every sport is boring to the person who doesn't understand it.

Most track and field athletes don't want to be personalities. Most of them just want to focus on running and don't want to try to be a "personality".

Yes, but there are some who do. Think about it- how many NFL players can the average person name?

Most of them are anonymous. You need a few stars with a little charisma.

this os great

1) I assume it will cut a lot of events.

2) I'm assuming it will try and get commitments from athletes to multiple meets. The Diamond League really operates as a bunch of individual meets with a final and the prize money has not increased.

Our sport has a lot of structural problems (anyone can create a meet being one of them, and throw some appearance $ at a star and get them to show up), we treat the 100 the same as the javelin at least in terms of prize money in DL, but the bigger issue is none of the meets really mean much of anything.

Hopefully $30 million gives them some runway to create something and sign a few stars.

And also hopefully the Michael Johnson name and others involved bring sponsors. Track gets decent ratings on TV (much better than MLS soccer for example) but no one has really committed any amount of money to try and profit from it. Most of the major meets are one-offs that are sustainable as one-offs.

TV Revenue Sharing splits the pot at the gate. The players get half, the League/etc gets half. After that each side subtracts overhead and splits the rest.

I'd love to know the split from a Diamond League but there isn't a ton of money being generated. And thus a lot of it goes to stuff that is trivial for other sports (transportation, hotel rooms for 100 athletes, etc). But until a sport brings in a decent amount of revenue there isn't much to give the athletes.

Is there a long term existential risk to events that aren't included if this league is wildly successful? Any chance of any new events being added or other rule changes?

Mr Johnson,

Please take a look at the American Track League and see how NOT to run a series.

Track is not and never will be the NFL, NBA, etc. and that's OK. Track is a participation sport. We have participation numbers other sports couldn't dream of.

The best way to draw a crowd to watch pros run is to hold the pro races at established high participation meets, e.g. Penn Relays, Texas Relays, youth meets, etc.

Indoor track is a better spectator sport than outdoor track.

If MJ big plan is arbitrary teams, DJ, fireworks, and a tee-shirt gun, he may as well set the $30 mil on fire.

I'm not fully buying what MJ is selling (yet) and would like to see the books on this before I get too excited. I would be curious to know if this is truly operating cash funding or just some form of in-kind venture from the multiple agencies that seem to be involved. They easily can inflate their numbers.

Until we see some more details on what this means in terms of star athlete commitment and the general operating platform, I'll remain cautiously skeptical. I'll write this, however. It would be wonderful if the DL was forced to dismantle or improve due to incoming meet competition. The DL meetings are an embarrassment in their current form and the athletes are treated worse at these things than the sleazy agents.

Mike will need experienced Hollywood industry executives who have a proven record of making $billions in the MLB, NFL, NBA, etc. Finally we will then get paid like Shohei, LeBron, Lionel, etc.

this is how track was done before the olympics, look up lon myers. this guy raced 100yrds to i believe 10 miles. some of the races had built in handicaps. say he would race 440yrds and the other guy would do like 360yrds and people would make bets to on who would win.

This is the pipe dream of all basement dwellers of LR. jakob vs a 400m guy at 600m and that sort of things, or do it like the late 1880s and find guys with similar times and use math and AI to figure out what the slower guy has to run so the races will be close. like 100m vs 97m

but yeah look up Lon Myers and see what kind of handicaps competitors would get to try and see if he could still beat them

It would be wonderful to finally have the permanent US National 50,000 seat Track and Field/Soccer stadium at LAX/Inglewood that we've been promised for ages and ages.

Love the idea but "Winners Alliance" is an atrocious name