Most of my critiques come from their social media presence on instagram and youtube.
It seems the company is EXTREMELY oriented towards michael johnson which makes sense as a commisioner role, not as an athlete. Unfortunately, many track fans were not alive when he was the best track athlete in the world. The younger generation will not buy into GST if they keep posting MJ interviews, MJ trading cards, MJ quotes, MJ pictures. This league needs to be about the athletes who just won olympic medals. The current faces of the sport.
They need to use their signed athletes more heavily and announce the new signings, not fill their followers' feeds with MJ content.
I think GST is a great idea, and they market themselves as taking a new approach to track, but they need to make it more about NOW, and a lot less about MJ trading cards or upcoming race analysis.
PS. Trading cards of Syd or Kerr or additional signed athletes would be a good idea. But MJ is not the face of track anymore and the power of GST is not in making youtube videos of race previews, its about creating a unique Athletics product.
Anyone feeling this way? Am I totally off base?
According to Kyle Merber they have a very spread out and lengthy marketing build up meaning despite having commitments and contracts in place for many athletes they can't/won't be promoting them or using them in place of Michael Johnson until that time comes.
Michael Johnson is just a placeholder. having Syd and Kerr are good and all, but you can't really make a meal out of it until you have their competitors, the field, and the rivalry.
Its their decision not to shoot all their shots now and be out of ammo come 2025.
This is my take, as well. OP, I’m guessing the marketing will change drastically once a large number of athletes have been signed. Brands will typically start with a soft marketing phase - to get traction going, social media algorithm centering them, establishing any ‘heritage’ foundation it can use to give itself credibility.
It’ll all likely evolve to the competing athletes in a few months.
This is all on the side of even the logistical stuff I don't get. 24 races across 3 days. No athletic endeavours in between track races (aka field events) which I don't think we will realize how much we miss them until they are gone. You want to presumably get large crowds into big venues for 3 straight days with an average of 4 mens and 4 womens races a day (there are 24 total events across mens and womens per "slam" right?).
Yes! How are we supposed to fill a three day schedule with only a few races? The perfect track meet is about 4 hours long and has less than two minutes between each race. Anything else has missed the mark.
Fire the gun, race, set up the blocks, fire the next gun. A track meet should not take three days. Sorry, I am a die-hard fan and the idea of sitting in the stands for hours and hours, day after day sounds boring. My wife and kids would for sure not be interested.
Most of my critiques come from their social media presence on instagram and youtube.
It seems the company is EXTREMELY oriented towards michael johnson which makes sense as a commisioner role, not as an athlete. Unfortunately, many track fans were not alive when he was the best track athlete in the world. The younger generation will not buy into GST if they keep posting MJ interviews, MJ trading cards, MJ quotes, MJ pictures. This league needs to be about the athletes who just won olympic medals. The current faces of the sport.
They need to use their signed athletes more heavily and announce the new signings, not fill their followers' feeds with MJ content.
I think GST is a great idea, and they market themselves as taking a new approach to track, but they need to make it more about NOW, and a lot less about MJ trading cards or upcoming race analysis.
PS. Trading cards of Syd or Kerr or additional signed athletes would be a good idea. But MJ is not the face of track anymore and the power of GST is not in making youtube videos of race previews, its about creating a unique Athletics product.
Anyone feeling this way? Am I totally off base?
That's the least of their problems. Their main problem is they are going to have a 3 day track meet and scoring everything on doubles most people don't care about. I'm supposed to care what Quincy Hall can run a 200 in?
Or if they get Gabby Thomas to sign up, and does 200/400 I'm supposed to be excited she'll never race Sha'Carri or Shericak if they are 100/200?
At least Kishane Thompson didn't win the Olympics as he doesn't run the 200 so I don't have to worry about him.
Too many small failed meets ruin the sport. I'm happy Flow Track didn't purchase the worst, low interest DL meet at Eugene. I heard Mexico City may be the next DL spot.
It is not too late to pivot Grand Slam to four Ekidens. This would be very fun and cool. The closest running can be to the Tour de France. Could do mass races too in order get some money. Look at marathon majors Abbot has a “grand slam” series of races with this model. It is a mass sport you can model it better than the marathon majors in order to shift focus on elite race
Too many small failed meets ruin the sport. I'm happy Flow Track didn't purchase the worst, low interest DL meet at Eugene. I heard Mexico City may be the next DL spot.
I assume you are joking about Eugene? It is one of the icons of the sport. The athletes love it, the facilities are amazing, and the weather is almost always perfect for great racing.
I saw a guy run 3:43 in the mile there and lose. Good luck finding that at many other American track meets. Pre is a great meet!
This is all on the side of even the logistical stuff I don't get. 24 races across 3 days. No athletic endeavours in between track races (aka field events) which I don't think we will realize how much we miss them until they are gone. You want to presumably get large crowds into big venues for 3 straight days with an average of 4 mens and 4 womens races a day (there are 24 total events across mens and womens per "slam" right?).
Yes! How are we supposed to fill a three day schedule with only a few races? The perfect track meet is about 4 hours long and has less than two minutes between each race. Anything else has missed the mark.
Fire the gun, race, set up the blocks, fire the next gun. A track meet should not take three days. Sorry, I am a die-hard fan and the idea of sitting in the stands for hours and hours, day after day sounds boring. My wife and kids would for sure not be interested.
From an execution standpoint this is the number one thing I don't get. I wrote about this before - for this to garner any return it's going to need a TV deal and sponsors. But sponsors and networks like the perception the product is valuable and the way that is judged is by people there in person watching it. Half filled stadiums excite nobody - so let's think about the meet in L.A. Who is coming to watch this 3 consecutive days?
Driving in traffic, paying for parking, paying for entrance and then sitting down in a stadium to watch 8 events go off in 3 hours with only "storytelling" filling the void? Okay so maybe you are hoping to get 50% new spectators for days 2 and 3 - I just don't know if we have that many track fans or even impending track fans here in the US.
I hate having this feeling but I do - it smells a little like something that is going to be very good and lucrative for a select few for a very short time (including "commissioner" Johnson and ultimately does nothing to genuinely enhance/grow/promote the sport in the long run.
I am worried about the knock on effect on the Diamond League. How many GST contracted athletes will run a single DL? I'm going with: 0
MJ likes to say that he's creating more matchups but I don't see how Balkanising the sport achieves that. I'm also not convinced by the product itself of having the same 4 athletes in every race. I like the variety of the DL. We're lucky as a sport to be blessed with so many outstanding athletes. Reducing it down to so few doesn't make it more interesting. I also like how it switches up at middle distance, sometimes it's 1500, sometimes it's mile. Sometimes it's 3000, sometimes it's 5000.
More questions than answers right now...
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
I am worried about the knock on effect on the Diamond League. How many GST contracted athletes will run a single DL? I'm going with: 0
MJ likes to say that he's creating more matchups but I don't see how Balkanising the sport achieves that. I'm also not convinced by the product itself of having the same 4 athletes in every race. I like the variety of the DL. We're lucky as a sport to be blessed with so many outstanding athletes. Reducing it down to so few doesn't make it more interesting. I also like how it switches up at middle distance, sometimes it's 1500, sometimes it's mile. Sometimes it's 3000, sometimes it's 5000.
More questions than answers right now...
It'll be more than zero
But if it's successful it will cannibalise the top end of the DL, and replace it with athletics-ninja-warrior nonsense
Their ambition is to monopolise top end sport.
They will preach about growing the sport/market but only true suckers will believe it (and journos paid to be so)
Read Peter thiel's zero to one of you want to know how these people think and what their plans are
They want to start with a foothold then strangle everything else they can. The olympics is the big bad wolf, too powerful, but the end game is all the top end. I pray for its quick failure
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
I am worried about the knock on effect on the Diamond League. How many GST contracted athletes will run a single DL? I'm going with: 0
MJ likes to say that he's creating more matchups but I don't see how Balkanising the sport achieves that. I'm also not convinced by the product itself of having the same 4 athletes in every race. I like the variety of the DL. We're lucky as a sport to be blessed with so many outstanding athletes. Reducing it down to so few doesn't make it more interesting. I also like how it switches up at middle distance, sometimes it's 1500, sometimes it's mile. Sometimes it's 3000, sometimes it's 5000.
More questions than answers right now...
It'll be more than zero
But if it's successful it will cannibalise the top end of the DL, and replace it with athletics-ninja-warrior nonsense
Their ambition is to monopolise top end sport.
They will preach about growing the sport/market but only true suckers will believe it (and journos paid to be so)
Read Peter thiel's zero to one of you want to know how these people think and what their plans are
They want to start with a foothold then strangle everything else they can. The olympics is the big bad wolf, too powerful, but the end game is all the top end. I pray for its quick failure
Yeah I pretty much agree, it's hard to see what this does other than offer fantastic (and certainly well deserved) wealth and status to a very, very small few while the rest of the sport suffers from a chronic lack of money.
I don't dispute MJ's opportunism here, athletics is certainly undervalued. It will be interesting to see it play out. Personally I think the concept with the doubling is highly flawed but at the same time I can't see it not being a success if they get the best athletes, which with the money on offer I am sure they will.
SC members - icrlp05, Ruton Towers and Soy - those are some amazing posts. I basically 100% agree with EVERYTHING you've posted. In my mind, this is basically LIV Golf except instead of the Saudis running it you have private equity. There's nothing inherently wrong with the current product we have except people aren't getting rich enough. This thing is trying to take all of the value away from the 12th, 15th placer, field eventer, etc. and hand it to SML.
I deleted the posts about Pre as it was factually incorrect. NBC holds the rights to Pre.
Posting little except Michael Johnson content, they went from zero to 28,000 Instagram followers in two months. They're creating an audience they can reach directly with content at very low cost. Letsrun has 10,000 IG followers for comparison.
You clearly don't know anything about private equity if you uniformly hate it in every industry. Private equity gets plenty of (deservedly) bad press when a firm buys a solvent company, burdens it with debt and walks away. But many other private equity firms only invest in founder-led companies, and provide capital and expertise that allow good businesses to get better and scale in a manner that would otherwise be impossible. If you don't like this kind of financing, go visit a developing country that doesn't have it and see if the business owners agree with you.
I think that he is going in a totally different direction than the LetsRun type track fan. He and his investors are going after a new market of young men and woman who we could never imagine watching distance races. Look at the sports on TV, 3 on 3 basketball, X games, etc. I do not believe that they are banking on the traditional track fan.
I think that he is going in a totally different direction than the LetsRun type track fan. He and his investors are going after a new market of young men and woman who we could never imagine watching distance races. Look at the sports on TV, 3 on 3 basketball, X games, etc. I do not believe that they are banking on the traditional track fan.
That's fair - but sometimes you just have to accept that your fan base is your fan base right? Do you try and grow it by improving the product for them and using them as your advocates for recruiting new fans, or do you say "we are going to something completely different and cater to this new, untapped audience"?
LIV golf tried the latter. 3 Day events, shotgun tee starts, teams, players allowed to dress like your average weekend hack and listen to music on the tee-box. Well sadly for LIV I don't know if they have captured any new fans at all - certainly not past the "I'll watch the first one to see what its about" effect. I wouldn't even know where to watch a LIV event and I don't care - the "new" format doesn't interest me in slightest.
Back the sport of running, brands try this on a product level all the time and fail. "Capturing new consumers" with variant ideas on product - reinventing the wheel for no reason, and long term it fails every single time. Look at Nike, best example - the gave up on running shoes for runners hoping to catch the "mass market" but insanely (for them) forgot that it's the real running shoes and runners that wear them that drives your mass market, your sportswear, your fashion channels. It doesn't seem to make sense - but it's the way it is. That's why Hoka and ON are killing it right now - they just kept making running shoes for runners and the trickle down effect just happened.
I don't see the GST format as innovative at all. It's different but Ruxton T said it best -
"Grand Slam Track is the solution that nobody asked for to a problem we didn't have".
That's a brilliant line. Doing something different just for the sake or doing something different never works. It's that simple. If it doesn't solve a problem on any level, on any part of the spectrum from minor to major, it's not going to work. It's this simple.
This post was edited 42 seconds after it was posted.
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