Grand Slam Track Says There Will be a Season #2 in 2026

This. When a medal is in play its really interesting, when only money is in play it sucks big time..

Thanks. It baffles me that they wouldn't have the courtesy to offer a sincere apology to ticket holders. Your valid decision to not buy tickets next year will likely be shared by many others who were let down this year, especially those who booked flights for it.

I don't know how GST moves forward successfully next year with all the damage they've caused. I think it boils down to trust, from multiple angles:

• Will fans have enough trust in GST next year to buy tickets and make plans to attend a meet (including flight and hotel arrangements if applicable)?
• Will top athletes have enough trust in GST to sign up to be racers? Sounds like Kenny Bednarek and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden intend to return next year, but how many others will? Notably, Sydney wasn't quoted in their announcement.
• Will sponsors have enough trust in GST to make an investment?
• Will cities have enough trust in GST to want to host a meet, after seeing GST reduce its Philadelphia commitment and completely bail on LA?
• Will streaming/network providers have enough trust in GST to strike a deal with them (not sure if their partnership with the CW and NBC/Peacock goes beyond this year)?

There are so many questions to be answered, and the way GST has handled this situation doesn't inspire confidence. If they were truly transparent, they would hold a press conference or at least an interview with a reporter/outlet willing to ask the tough questions (not Citius).

Instead of sugar-coating things, telling us you achieved your objectives for this year, and making a vague reference to shifts in the global economic landscape, Michael Johnson needs to be real with us. Tell us exactly why you're cancelling (not postponing) the LA meet. Looking at this year overall, tell us what went wrong, what you've learned, and what you're going to do differently next year to ensure GST is a success. Don't pretend that everything is fine, when it's clearly not.

A fun fact about the TM symbol is that it actually means that the mark (here, the mark = Grand Slam Track) is NOT trademarked. Instead, the organization using the symbol wants to signal to the public/competitors that they intend to trademark it eventually and in the meantime they’re publicly claiming it as theirs.

Regarding the promise of matchups, there’s a lot of irony in how all of this played out. By trying to garner star power., MJ implicitly promised huge matchups, especially ones we wouldn’t see in a traditional meet event load.

But the irony is that his bent towards his own event created 200 and 400 races in multiple event groups and actually reduce the chances of their being good matchups in those events. Instead, the best fantasy match up to occur which was Wanyonyi against the 1500 guys, happened in an event group that was a total afterthought for MJ and wore out the doubling format before even a shortened season ended.

I’m thinking about how Athlos felt like so much more of a success by starting so much small and trying to prove concept with a pilot rather than, oh I don’t know, trying to hit a Grand Slam in the first at bat.

Upon reading your post, I attempted to troll GST by trademarking the name for myself, but my application bounced as I only completed three of the four requisite forms...

I don't see how they are coming back from this.

Next year:

1) it will be very hard to get the best runners to commit again; the shine is gone.

2) at best, these athletes are getting paid VERY late; the most sought-after people in their profession are not going to work for someone with a history of late payment; that means the "only the fastest" thing is over.

3) at worst, they're not getting paid at all or will only get partially paid.

4) I don't know the details of their contracts, but it would be hard to do something like this without breaching your contracts; I suspect there's already liability here.

5) everyone's going to demand up-front payment next year. Good luck selling investors on that after what just happened.

6) it was never a sustainable business model; no way revenues came close to matching expenditures. Philly was promising, but the fact that the funding didn't have deep enough pockets or stomach or follow through on the most basic commitments that serve as the premise of the league (it was called Grand Slam Track!!!) means that no one can trust them anymore.

7) it's obvious from this that their investors don't have the kind of resources or resolve to withstand the years of losses that would be necessary to make a league like this successful; lots of startups lose money their first few years (or even decades!), but the fact that the investors pulled the plug this early is a terrible sign. Maybe an American track league could break even or eventually be profitable, but it would take a half a decade of losses to get there, best case scenario. They didn't survive their first year intact. There will be no year 2.

8) all startups are fragile; an especially speculative startup based on a sport with little to no history of profitability is going to be especially fragile. Once you lose credibility, you can't get it back. Not like this.

I'm sorry. It's over.

The conversation that MJ is having with the investors is not the one he is having with the public / athletes. If he has institutional money, then the lead investors are likely very heavily involved in all strategic and financial decisions at this point. Investors were almost certainly involved in the decision to cancel LA and may have helped him craft the message he just delivered.

Agree. Certainly not when your Olympic hero CEO and founder can’t sit there and own what ultimately amount to his failures in terms of concept and execution.

This was a hilariously bad “playbook”speech that came off as so disingenuous. What a fool he is.

Saying there will be a season in 2026 and actually having one are different things. I am not convinced. To be successful it should have similar attendence and ratings to other boring individual sports that people do instead of warmth like golf and tennis. Will GS track have the same ratings as the US open or Masters?

Yeah basically.

They had two meets that didn't bring in enough money to keep the format, and then so cut out a day and an event for the third meet right? And didn't even have the money to make the fourth meet make sense from a business perspective.

Highly unlikely this is going to be around next year. You don't have the financially failed first year they just had, and then get new investors eager to pay for a second year. MJ blew his shot on a new track league.

Probably would have worked better as a single night event so the entire audience can show up for one event and see the whole thing, with the pull being getting stars from adjacent events to competing against each other in one of their events (instead of doubling) and switching the event they compete in each meet (ie. 8/15 guys compete at the 8, then the 15, then the 8, then the 15). No doubling would mean everything is on the line in a single race which would have got rid of some of the issues they had. Make the prize money like half dependent on time bonuses to ensure fast races instead of championship-style slow tactical affairs for these single races, and have the runners actually be part of a Racer team vs a Challenger Team, with singlets for each team so audience can tell them apart, have each meet be a team competition as well as have the whole season be a team competition to see which team wins the most event, with a small additional reward for the winning team in each.

Only way to revive this thing is for MJ to find some billionaire track fan, for whom blowing 10 million or so dollars is pocket change and is willing to fund it until they iterate their way to a popular format that can actually survive.

Not this. GST proved that field is completely unmissed at a meet. That field is a drain on the sport.

No one stops watching a 400 to watch a long jump taking place. With a well-oiled start line steward, races can go off smoothly.......and quickly.

Case proven.

Phil Knight?

Nike sponsors the NXN & Nike Indoor/Outdoor Nationals events so there is at least some core competency of event management that they could scale up.

Make that Diamond League - 1, Athlos - 1, GST - 0

I'm so happy that GST ruined the American Track League and both USATF Grand Prix meets. 🙄

I love running.Love track and cross country. Been a runner for over 44 years. Its a tough sell to make money on track meets outside of the Olympics. Interest just isnt there to grow the fan base

Let’s go for Double Trouble. Have the runners been paid?

Unfortunately, the first meet sealed its fate that it was doomed. It sucks because with better planning they could have massively improved their product.

1. They needed a crowd in that stadium no matter what they had to do to get it. The emptiness projected a sad image of illegitimate flopness.

2. Without field events, they needed a good act to entertain people between events. The sad strumming of three warbling Jamaican dudes did not cut it.

3. We needed way more athlete bios to watch at home. The Dos Santos one was truly great, why not more of that instead of stupid nonsense like Jessica Hull nibbling on snacks? This series was supposed to 'save track'. How could it do that if people tuning in had no idea who any of these people are and why it matters who wins?

4. the tech failures were frequent and there's really no excuse for that

5. Waaaaay too much dead time! When you need to put a countdown timer on screen to the next event, you're failing to make a watchable event!

6. a lot of the announcing was incredibly cringe and awful. Centro was the only good panelist they had, as the guy who actually had raced Hocker and trained with Fisher. so why was he the one we saw only once and heard from the least?