If LeBron and brady didn’t warrant their own rooms and had to share on road trips their whole careers maybe Kerr and Hocker didn’t merit their own rooms either.
if bird and magic started their nba careers flying coach maybe track athletes should fly coach until they bring in the revenue bird and magic did
Said the prize money was so dumb when really fast guys are willing to come for $10k prize money. And I get downvoted to hell 2 months ago. I guess it didn’t matter because crime happened. But you’re basically telling me a Letsrunner could’ve ran this meet for a minimum of 5-10 years with $18 million. Damn Track is depressing we can run a league with a good NBA 6th man’s contract. MJ must’ve thought he was gonna get the WNBA treatment with the overvaluations and new investments. Still would’ve f*cked it up even if they threw a $100 million and I was over here crying about Ackman pulling out as an investor.
MJ and friends are grifters on top of not having any business sense. The most important characteristics of leadership are integrity and responsibility. Capability in the work area is not far behind, and these guys don't have that either (Running an entertainment business - not just being a fast runner). Sad that it got as far as it did and people were hurt.
Great article, adds a lot of new details that were speculated about but not fully known.
What I'd really like to know is what the ownership structure of GST is like, I do think that matters as we are assigning blame here, of which there is plenty to go around.
IF Winners Alliance owns >50% of GST, which wouldn't be atypical in a Venture Capital world, then they really do call the shots here and deserve much of the blame in my opinion. They've hired a leadership team to run the enterprise but would control the Board and major decisions. They'd have needed to sign off on the budget, financial plan, perhaps major spending items, etc...
IF, on the other hand, Michael controls >50% of GST, which honestly I think is more likely given the fact pattern but I don't believe has been confirmed, then this really is Michael's mess alone. Winners Alliance may in this case be seen as more of a passive investor and not in control of the decision making, in particular after they decided not to invest their additional $19 million.
If they could have sold 10,000 tickets at $50 (bringing in $500,000), it would cover less than the prize money for two races. So even in that pie-in-the-sky scenario, they would need tons of other money. TV rights probably netted them zero, which leaves advertising. In order to make the league work out for investors, they either needed a MUCH better ad sales team, or a better concept to sell, or both.
It saddens me that track can't attract advertisers like golf and tennis do. Instead we're stuck with semi-pro athletes and low-budget European meets offering pay-per-view streaming.
How much do athletes win if they win a diamond league event?
$10-$20k, except for the final.
Grand Slam was way too top heavy. It was bound to fail.
How could they expect to offer 5x the diamond league prize money off the get go?
Ridiculous.
That may be a valid criticism but this thing is out of money even before they paid a penny of prize money. Gross mismanagement.
I want to know how this came about.
Michael gets all the blame publicly but he’s not the CEO.
then who is the ceo?
"Grand Slam Track CEO Michael Johnson admitted Friday that the league cannot currently pay its athletes for the 2025 season..." - Weldon Johnson, 8/15/25
What never made sense to me is the business model. I'd love to see the pitch deck.
The reality is the average MLB payroll per game is roughly $2.1 million. That's in a league that gets $5 BILLION in tv revenue every year (local + national) and averages nearly 30,000 fans per game.
Grand Slam Track somehow thought they could make money paying out $3 million+ per weekend in prize money without a tv contract? How?
Even if the thing was well run -which appears to be the opposite of the case - how was it ever going to turn a profit? If it was well run, it would have be bringing in well over $5 million per meet in revenue to have any chance of just not hemorraging money. IF you get 20,000 fans at each day of GST, you aren't getting anywhere close to $250 each from each of them to get to $5 million. But at the rate they were spending, you'd need at least 10 million.
The WNBA in 2023 had a salary cap of $1.4 million per team. So their average player expense per game was $70,000 in salary (40 games- 2 teams at teach game) . They had an average attendance of 6,600. Even then they lost like $50 million.
Somehow GST thought they could pay out $3 million a meet and make a profit?
From day 1, just using basic napkin math, it was doomed to fail.
Weldon, I have no idea how it was ever envisioned they'd make money. It seemed like a moonshot. You would need Caitlin Clark type mania to have any hope. So if I was a potential investor and went to Jamaica and saw zero fans, I'd bail immediately as well.
It’s not that hard to spend 18M the way they were throwing money around.
3-5M on promotion and other crap
And what marketing were they spending on? Did these people even hire a local meet organizer? The fact there was no crowd in Jamaica makes me think they didn't.
there was a lot of emphasis on 'athletes deserve to be paid xyz' but without wondering that maybe there's a reason why they're not. Turns out Track & Field isn't popular enough to warrant such funds
people mock what the Diamond League pay out but it's 1. economically viable and 2. actual money
idk, the 3rd rate blog site is the defacto home of running on the internet, seems to be still alive in 2025, and based on how many ads i see every time i come here i would say they must be making pretty good cash!
GST sources say the $18m it received was spent on ambassadorial fees to the small number of racers who took on that status, but also start-up costs to build the league, staffing costs, production, marketing and branding.
If they could have sold 10,000 tickets at $50 (bringing in $500,000), it would cover less than the prize money for two races. So even in that pie-in-the-sky scenario, they would need tons of other money. TV rights probably netted them zero, which leaves advertising. In order to make the league work out for investors, they either needed a MUCH better ad sales team, or a better concept to sell, or both.
It saddens me that track can't attract advertisers like golf and tennis do. Instead we're stuck with semi-pro athletes and low-budget European meets offering pay-per-view streaming.
The economics made no sense without big sponsors or a lucrative TV contract -- and may not have made sense even if it had these. In addition, my understanding is that tickets in Philadelphia -- the only "successful" meet from an attendance perspective -- cost only $40.00 for a two day pass.
For an attendance comparison, the "successful" Philadelphia meet drew 10,000 people per day which is similar to what the Phillies' AAA affiliate in Allentown draws for weekend games.
I think $30m budgets for 4 meets and prize money is not out of line, with the quality of athletes involved.
the venues, administrative and business style is the problem.
jamaica was the iceberg hit in the titanic, for that venue wasnt a quarter full when Bolt Powell Blake et al were in their prime.
jamaica told investor that their honeboys were out to lunch and did not know the absolute fundamentals , which is soecific knoeledge of this niche sector.