Grand Slam Track Unpaid Payments

Had to have known what??

One day, somebody's going to figure out that if you want to mainstream this sport you need to market it to an American TV audience with a 3-5 minute nominal attention span, which can be enhanced by offering them content they can easily relate to...and also be able to pay the "cast".

This fiasco make it harder for that person to sell the concept when that day comes.

An interesting question is do these breakaway leagues ever actually work.

This is clearly a disaster, pretty much from the jump.

The Hammer series in procycling faired a bit better with a different format to normal road racing, but still folded after two (maybe three) seasons.

LIV golf continues, but would definitely fail if it wasn't funded by an endless amount of Saudi cash and, as I understand it, the PGA folding and letting LIV players compete in majors.

The funny thing is Athletics probably is ripe for a breakaway league because the main obstacle to a sport like golf, tennis or cycling having a breakaway league is that you cannot compete with the legacy and significance of events like Wimbeldon, The Masters or the Tour de France, but the Diamond league doesn't have this problem in comparison as far as I know.

From my opinion running a multiday event when Diamond league runs a super tight 3 hour schedule with non stop events in the evening made it immediately uninteresting.

Does anyone know of breakaway leagues that have actually work?

Startups are funded with hard cash, as well as equity. In Silicon Valley startups need to pay top dollar for top engineering talent, the stock options are only one part of a compensation package.

Reading through all these comments - on top of having read pretty much everything else over the last year or whatnot on GST, and talking to plenty of people about it - I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what GST was doing that was *actually* innovative, new, or in any way, potentially, a game-changer for T&F. What hadn't been done or tried before, either in standard meets or other attempted leagues / circuits?

Having athletes compete in two events per weekend? Is that it? Was that the innovation that no one had previously come up with that was going to revolutionize the sport?

Building story arcs for a handful of athletes over the course of several meets?

What was going to be sufficiently new and different that it would (a) drive people who otherwise wouldn't watch track to watch, and (b) compel those people to keep watching and keep coming back? What was going to get fans to say "OK, I've seen track meets and track races before, but damn, not like this."

Packaging and presentation was nominally different. But what was substantively different?

Yet to get a satisfying answer. Sometimes it seems like the main differentiator was in how much they pay the athletes, which does sweet nothing to attract, interest, and maintain fans. What was GST supposed to do *for the fans?*

To be fair to the organisers the pandemic did the league no favours.

The best example is probably the English (soccer) Premier League. Materially not that different than what it broke away from, it effectively gave more bargaining power to the clubs who broke away [from the Football League, which is run by the English Football Association]. Throw in some branding on top of that. But it has gone on to be by some way the most valuable and watched soccer league in the world.

The key point about the establishment of the Premier League in the early 1990s was that it was funded by the then new Sky satellite service which was offered exclusive rights and provided innovative and much more extensive coverage of matches than was previously available from terrestrial channels. However at a considerable cost to subscribers. But it satisfied a pent-up demand for viewing football (soccer) which is the leading sport in the UK.

Um, ever heard of the American Football League?

I didn't know that was a breakaway league, neither the Premier League, hence the question.

I suppose the key difference is that both of these instances, they become the main focus for a consistent set of teams, and a compelling narrative can be built around them.

With running, a breakaway league will never, or not for a while, be as significant as the world championships/Olympics and may never have a consistent cast of characters participating year in and year out, makes it more difficult to establish itself as the main/serious product.

22 football clubs broke away from the Football League in England at the end of the 1991/92 season to form the Premier League. This was supported by a 5 year £304m deal with Sky Sports.

A lot of pro meets don’t actually pay out all of their prize money as advertised

How much do they pay out compared to what is advertised? Is it for athletes across the board? What sort of meets?

Has he tried grovelling to Alex Ohanian?

By PGA, I assume you mean PGA Tour, which is in charge of the non-major events. (The PGA of America is a separate group, essentially for teaching pros, that puts on the PGA Championship.) The PGA Tour doesn't control any of the majors, so it's not up to them. The Masters is run by Augusta National Golf Club, the US Open is run by the USGA, and The (British) Open is run by the R&A (which is similar to the USGA).

But yes, if LIV Golf were run by normal people and not Saudis with oil money to burn, it would've shut down by now. They have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. And the TV ratings are minuscule compared to the PGA Tour.

As for Grand Slam Track, whoever said it was about TV money is spot on. There is basically no way to pay out $3 million in prize money for a single meet and make that up with ticket sales. Even if you can average $50 a ticket and sell 10,000 tickets a day for three days, that's only half of the prize money. And you have all sorts of expenses beyond the prize money (facilities, travel, employees, etc.). You have to have TV money to make it work, and I think the US-centric focus of GST ruined their chances to make any money from TV in Europe, since the time slots wouldn't be any good.

As far as I can tell, a lot of pro sports have been struggling with TV numbers. I follow beach and indoor volleyball, and despite women's college volleyball doing fairly well, the multiple startup indoor leagues have been struggling to get viewers. The AVP (for beach volleyball) has been around for decades, but had absolutely dismal numbers on Youtube a year or two ago when they couldn't even get a TV deal.

Won’t name specific meets, but I know of multiple Gold/Silver/Bronze meets that never paid out anything to certain athletes. Don’t think it was across the board and I’ve heard it mostly from smaller names. Way less money compared to GST though.

Point was more that this is somewhat par for the course in pro track, just a way bigger deal when it’s 100k vs. 1k.

GST was just like the diamond League without all the excitement

I don't think there's much chance of a 2026

Alexis will only fund minority women. It’s his complex.

This is the least surprising news ever. I genuinely respect the effort, because launching anything like this takes a ton of work. But let’s be honest.. MJ and Grand Slam Track were always fighting uphill. It was an extremely cash heavy startup providing little intrinsic value, in a space with limited mass appeal. These things rarely survive, let alone thrive.

They had some early traction, sure. But they got way ahead of their skis. “Funding” probably meant debt, not actual cash. If so, MJ likely lied to the athletes. Athlete salaries were too high to be sustainable. And let’s be real, nobody tunes in to watch Gabby Thomas win a money leaderboard. We just want to see her run fast.

MJ saw comedians building personal brands on YouTube and thought he could do the same with track. But that model doesn’t translate. A comedian needs a mic, a camera, and a small team. A track league needs massive infrastructure, marketing to casual fans, and a hook beyond “racing matters, too!” This didn’t pass the “who cares” test. And the only people who did care? Already track fans. Everybody else just wants to see a WR.

Grand Slam Track could’ve worked in a different world. But MJ didn’t have the money or the margin for error. He’s poor compared to those who could run this as charity. The only real lifeline is if PHIL KNIGHT’s trust was to grant funds that could burn $50M a year. That might save it. But that also means every meet would be held in E***** forever. That’s not growing the sport.

If you care about track, focus on what works. Abolish Max Siegel. Start a local youth club. Rebuild USATF from the bottom up, because they sure won’t do it for you. Be more like USA Swimming than USA Soccer. The interest is there. You just have to understand the cycles and seize the moment when they come.

Oh, and yeah.. MJ doped. Are you going to trust him after this?