Track&F is dead, Bislett Games only on norwegian TV

I agree with you.....the IAAF SHOULD BE DISBANDED....

they sold the rights to Sky SPORTS FOR 6 YEARS..SKY have no interest in track ,they just buy up content to prevent others from showing it....the IAAF should be there to spread the message of track not choke it to death...

I think the IAAF and the OLYMPICS are the ruination of track ,any sport that has it's pinnacle every 4 years is going no where fast....it should be based on the tennis and golf tours..a major on each continent every year where

everyone meets one an other based on rankings no country bullshit..there must be somebody out there to save it.

was this the same Bislett Games that were on Outdoor Life Network a minute ago?

That is funny in a way since I watched it on OLN in the US!

It was on TV4 in Sweden. That's the country to live in if you're an athletics fan.

Eurosport is at every hotel in Europe. It's not a crappy WCSN webcast. It's a real T.V. show. They should put videos on iTunes and show it on other PDAs like the treo. Sure the the shows suck now. In a few years when Super 3G mobile gets here we'll be able to watch quality T.V. at 3Mbps speeds while running. NTT Docomo is deploying Super 3G with 2.5 GIGA bps now.

Thanks for the old news.

I think track fans are fed up with phony, fraudulent times....anybody with half a brain knows that a 26:30 ten k and a 3:43 mile are the stuff of druggies....good for the fans, let them go to watch high school and college track and xc where the athletes are all clean. Cool!

I think you all are jumping to conclusions, but I also agree IAAF has no clue with this issue, neither does USATF but that's another can of worms I don't want to touch.

Wejo mentioned that there were fewer fans in the last meeting in Athens. There never really was any popularity for the sport down there to begin with. Take a look at videos/pics from the mid/late 90s for events held down there(Athens). Not only down there, but in the vicinity like Rome. When El G ran 3:26 in the late 90s, it was in a back drop of empty seats. Same goes for his 3:43 mile.

When they had WC down there a while back, tickets were not sold out, barely half the stadium was filled.

The main problem, as far as Europe goes, is that they don't have enough of their own countrymen doing well or even participating in the sport and so it's hard to relate to some row of Kenyans all wearing fluorescent green uniforms. Or some Americans wearing tights.

IAAF needs to start programs for youth in European nations to develop interest in the sport and slowly build that way.

indiorunner wrote:

The main problem, as far as Europe goes, is that they don't have enough of their own countrymen doing well or even participating in the sport and so it's hard to relate to some row of Kenyans all wearing fluorescent green uniforms.

This is incorrect. If you watch any track meet in Switzerland, Finland, Sweden or Norway they are always sold out. Switzerland, in particular, has very little in the way of successful athletes to follow.

Action is needed before athletics loses its lustre

Steve Cram, Tuesday June 6, 2006 The Guardian

There are those who would have you believe that all of the world's environmental problems can be entirely explained by global warming. Similarly the imminent World Cup is ready to take the blame for everything from domestic violence to deciding the result of the next general election and athletics is not about to miss the opportunity to shovel a fair dollop of unpalatable responsibility in the direction of the fated golden orb.

Friday night saw the first Golden League meeting held at the Bislett Stadium in Oslo in front of a far from sell-out crowd. For those who are unfamiliar with the convoluted nature of the athletic season the Golden League consists of the six big-money meets that are meant to be the showpiece events outside of the major championships and as such are given the prime slots in the summer calendar.

In the heady days of the 80s the Oslo meet was early in July and was broadcast on BBC and ITV and taken live by ABC in America. The terraces were packed so tightly that standing was the only option and the old stadium shook to the noise generated by nearly 25,000 fans with many more hanging from the windows and balconies of the surrounding buildings straining to get a view.

It often clashed with Wimbledon or perhaps the open golf and occasionally football. But it was an appointment event in its own right. This year's event was moved forward by more than a month to avoid clashing with even the most mundane of World Cup matches and for the first time in recent memory it failed to appear on TV of any description here in Britain and in many other European countries. The superbly refurbished Bislett is now an all-seater stadium with a much-reduced capacity and still there were a significant number of empty seats despite the fact that in purely athletic terms they probably had some of the best fields ever assembled in that meeting.

These are worrying times for the sport and the hotel bars and lobbies are filled with agents, managers, promoters and occasionally forward-thinking athletes all trying to come to terms with dwindling crowds and most alarmingly the lack of exposure on television. Inevitably football and the World Cup are put forward as the guilty culprits.

What passes for our annual team event, the European Cup, has also been moved to a midweek slot so as to accommodate TV's needs relating to the football and to fully run the white flag up the pole BBC Radio 5 Live will not be broadcasting any of this weekend's grand-prix meeting at Gateshead despite it being a season curtain raiser for many British athletes.

The World Cup is undoubtedly difficult to compete with for all sports. However those involved in the planning and structure of the international athletics calendar need to get heads together sooner rather than later to address the more deep-rooted issues that are affecting a once popular sport that is now becoming a scarcity on television screens outside of the Olympics and the world championships.

The balance between maximising returns on rights selling and widespread exposure needs to be redressed in favour of the latter. Viewers cannot be expected to get excited about athletes they haven't seen before. To attract more TV interest the meetings and the right packages need to be more imaginatively structured with less attention paid to the desire to somehow create a unifying image or brand across the range of events and meetings.

For instance a lot of time and effort and no doubt funding went into a world-ranking system based on points that is completely ignored by everyone except the IAAF. While the international federation continues to expand territories and products it seems to be blind to the decline in interest in the sport's traditional heartland Europe. The standard of this summer's European Championships when benchmarked against world standards will bear testimony to that.

Thankfully in Britain 2012 has given the sport an opportunity to buck the trend and certainly the London grand prix in July will be a sell-out with the big budget ensuring world-class athletics. Gateshead on Sunday is also experiencing encouraging ticket sales and with good weather it too could be mostly full.

As I mentioned last week the appearance of the joint world-record holders over 100 metres, Justin Gatlin and Assafa Powell, would have given things a much-needed lift. At least after asking around in Oslo I managed to get to the bottom of Gatlin's non-appearance. Apparently he wants to watch the World Cup.

Meanwhile, ESPN shows a hotdog eating contest in prime time.

Pathetic

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