ATHLOS announces it will move to a team-based model in 2026 with multiple meets

weird concept. women aren't underrepresented or underpaid in track&field, as far as I know. And their fields are typically a bitter thinner than the men's fields.

in fact, in the US, with title ix being what it is, women have more opportunity than men at the higher levels.

The team concept is nonsense. High school and college athletes barely care what place their own team finishes in during track meets. Why would casual fans care about made up teams?

I have zero interest in a single-gender track meet. Athlos took the one thing that ISN’T broken in T&F and proposed a “fix.”

it's nonsense at the professional level. it makes a huge difference for HS kids when they're on a team that is good enough to have group success. People generally want to be part of something that's meaningful with a group. If the team stinks, it's a lot tougher to get the buy in.

No one is stopping investors from funding a male-only track league. In fact, most money in sports business is poured into male-only leagues.

Track & Field is more important for women because they don't have as many opportunities in other sports as men do. For example, we are losing many sprinters and throwers to football. Are we losing a similar number of top female athletes to other sports?

sure, football is gigantic presence in America that every other sport has to deal with. And yet somehow, men's track and field events are typically much deeper than the women's.

And there would most certainly be invisible forces stopping anybody from creating anything that's men's only.

Besides those invisible sources, there isn't really a market for "guy power" the same way there is for "girl power"

99% of sports industry has been for "guy power" for most of their history.

And you are upset because a handful of investors are defying the trend?

Hey Gault,

It has been just shy of a year since this was announced by Athlos. We are now about four months from when this league should be hosting its first meet. I have seen nothing on the website, Twitter, or Instagram besides "the league is coming this fall." Any chance you could reach out to them and see what the status is? Is it still happening? Did the Grand Slam Track fiasco spook them? Have they at least determined the locations yet?

What sort of teams? How to classify?

This is Track & Field not a circus side show.

I really enjoy the women's events in the diamond league etc. However, I watched the first Athlos and was quickly fatigued by the extremely sycophantic "slay queeeeeen!!!" vibes and treating every athlete like a girl boss. I remain hopeful that society has moved on a bit and this particular era of "slay queen" is over or ending. I mean, didn't they give each winner a literal crown and make them dance?! 🫣😂

After a certain point it's very cringe or even patronising, making a professional athlete wear a crown and dance about to a song they've chosen as their theme music. I get that some women might like that, but for others it was just uncomfortable. As for the men involved or watching, I feel like they might go once to prove a point but they already make up the majority of attendees for mixed gender meets- perhaps women should be the majority attending and watching Athlos- if not why not? If women don't care about this meet is it up to men to ensure its survival?

Moving to a team format seems really ambitious. It's hard to care about teams in athletics. The problem is that teams need a partisan support to generate interest and rivalry. That usually means embedding them in locations, either countries or cities, so the sport becomes a projection of national or local pride. Just saying "this is Team Tara and you should care about how they do" won't work. There's nothing to make people care or attach themselves to a team.

Athlos should just build on the model it has: a series of meets with both athletics and a good music act. It's pretty cool to go to a track meet that has a festival atmosphere with good music and booze.

I looked at the Twitter page.

Ohanian says something like, "I might already be dropping some Easter eggs in my tweets so you all just have to find them out for yourselves."

The day before they posted a short video of an unidentified white female getting her nails done (they only show her hands) and she says "I have to get my nails done for this Athlos trip" with an airplane emoji. I don't recognize her voice. She then grabs her passport at the end.

There is another tweet where he says, "We unveiled some more clues about @athlos
league at Possible in Miami." It is basically a convention that Ohanian and Sha'Carri Richardson attended. One short quote - "If we do our job well with Athlos, we should all be looking at multiple Athlos meets all over the world."

Another tweet mentioned going globally - "As ATHLOS prepares to scale globally, the league appoints CMO Kayla Green as Acting President to drive the next phase of growth.

This clearly indicates that they are planning meets overseas in addition to in the US. Where? When? Who knows. The did post a tweet from when they attended the London Marathon - maybe that is one of the "Easter eggs" Ohanian is talking about. Maybe London is planned for meet. Wouldn't be surprised since Keely, Georgia, Amy hunt, and Amber Anning all competed last year.

I still don't know how they expect this league to work. Grand Slam Track failed and it was held during the spring/summer with perfect weather when interest in T&F is at its highest. GST had both men and women and had some of the biggest stars in the world. Athlos will try to run a league with only women, in October when interest has waned (especially after Ultimate is done), the weather is questionable (what's London like in October?), and runners are beginning a training block for indoor. One of the big draws of the original meets was the concert. Let's face it, some of those in attendance were there ONLY for the concert. Not many, but some. Are they planning on having a concert at every meet? If not, how will this impact fan attendance?

There's nowhere to hold a London meet after the football season starts in August and the London Stadium is back to West Ham's tenancy. Unless they use a track with no stadium seating, so just grass banks to sit on. Birmingham or Manchester are possibilities, even Gateshead, but transport links there make it unattractive

GST #1 issue is that they had like 1/100th of the amount of money they needed to try their idea out. Granted that is true of just about every sports league other than maybe LIV. GST probably would still have failed but the fund raising they did gave them no shot….

But I'm also a realist -- it is hard to make money in this sport.

I think, realistically- it's hard to make money in this sport in the USA.

That's where marketing comes in. Individual sports work in the USA- tennis, golf.

It's how you market the sport and the athletes in it.

I do agree that they have to pick the right venue/city and, if need be, give tickets away to kids on school teams and their parents to get them there.

Give tickets to college track and field athletes.

Gimmicks at the meet are fine. Our local Single A Mets team has so many gimmicks it's distracting from the game. AND they're always giving away free tickets to local groups and businesses.

It's also in the presentation. When they talk about prize money it sounds bush league. They leave out the facts that there is appearance money/travel expenses for some and that they're actually paying multiple events with the same prize money structure. Golf pays one.

Tennis usually 2-4. Talk about total money AND start talking about appearance fees.