Baseball and Golf are way more boring than track so remind me again why track is not popular?

The London Marathon starts at 4:30am on the east coast and 1:30am out here in California.

"Is ran" is never, ever correct. If there's one word people on this website should know how to use properly, it's "run."

I'm not even going to get into "people who prefers."

"but everyone can participate even the fat kid who smells like day-old-sh*t." And now the

kids who made fun of skinky , have grown up into adult versions of young fat skinky , and are stinking up the treadmill area of every local gym.

We already do that dumb crap and separated the NCAA DI Outdoor Championships, which is the only meet conducted like that because ESPN thought it would appeal more to women and tell a team championship better. All it did was severely cut down on recovery time for the NCAA's best athletes who were doubling or tripling at the NCAA's. It hasn't increased viewership at all.

Track & Field's problem is that is isn't on TV enough or on a regular time and regular channel. For football, you know on Sunday at 1pm est the games are on for the NFL. Saturday noon ESPN, with other games at 3pm and a late/night game at 8pm. NBA....you know that TBS and TNT is where the games are. Finals on ABC. Baseball....FOX on Saturday afternoons.

Track & Field.....????? The internet or ESPN watch app, where the coverage and announcers are terrible. This is why track & field isn't popular. Hell, ESPN a decade ago showed more Poker and X Games BS then track.

The quality of the commentating for track doesn’t matter to the millions of people that aren’t watching. In the major team sports, some of the commentators are interesting and others irritating, but the commentating is not why I watch sports. I don’t need someone to tell me what I’m watching.

And that is why they did not even show it taped delayed? They did the year before. And that is also why even today in the USA you cannot watch the London marathon on the internet?

I really don't think that was the reason. The reason is because the FloJo people were allowed to buy exclusive rights to it.

ETH and Richardson both raced last weekend. One is in Rabat and the other in Florida. McLaughlin and Bol both competed. One in Tennessee and the other in Netherland.

This does not happen in tennis. Can you imagine Rafa and Novak playing in different tournaments in the same week, and one of them chooses to play in a lower tier tournament? You cannot, because they aren't even allowed to do that. And even if they were, they would still compete in the tournament that gives them the most ranking points because that would decide their seedings at the majors. They have built-in incentive to take regular tournaments seriously.

Track & field doesn't have this. Bednarek won the DL last year, but he still has to qualify for Eugene by racing in the trial because Lyles already has the only wild card entry. How is this as incentive to take DL meets seriously?

Are you still living in the 20th century? These days, if the race coverage starts at 4:30pm, people DVR and watch it when they wake up.

How many people in Japan have competed in distance running? Both marathon and ekiden are widely popular there. Do they know what a good 5km split in marathon is?

Non-marathons fans aren’t going to bother recording it and VCRs date back to the 80s. I still have a 8-track in my car so you’ve got me there.

If the network shows it on tape delay, it will butt heads with Sunday NFL games.

Non-marathons fans aren’t going to bother recording it and VCRs date back to the 80s. I still have a 8-track in my car so you’ve got me there.

If the network shows it on tape delay, it will butt heads with Sunday NFL games.

Have you seen the production value of golf tournaments? Golf may be boring to some , but networks know how to nail the visuals and intensity of the tournaments.
There are dozens of cameras, with amazing viewing angles to engage the viewer. And they know how to show the spectators being engaged in play as well.
I know golf isn’t for everyone, but it track was produced the same way as golf, it would really help.

NASCAR too. I don't follow it at all, but I went to a race once and can totally understand why other people are fans... listening to the mid-race chatter between driver and crew, great camera angles from the cars, etc. NASCAR hurt by all their forced woke nonsense recently, however. And many fans never forgave them for playing along with the Bubba Wallace noose hoax.

It’s an extremely different culture from the U.S. Do you thing Sumo wrestling would be popular here? They also have a HS national baseball tournament that draws a massive T.V. audience.

I lived in Tokyo for 6 years and loved it, but there is huge difference in what interests Japanese and Americans.

This kind of leads me to my next point and that is that track is NOT a team sport. Trying to get people to follow team scoring is a lost cause. If you're doubling and tripling, that should be because you want your INDIVIDUAL performances to be the best they can be, not to add team points.

In the end the average viewer understands how they cannot hit a 98mph fastball or play as well as a tour level golf pro.

Running, especially distance events, look slow to the viewer and they don’t understand how fast or hard it is. they all won ribbons in elementary school.

Worse, today running is nothing but a casual sport. I’d say it’s more participation than sport with the number of 5+ hour marathoners. You can finish a marathon in 16-20 weeks and they equate that with Kipchoge.

You seriously think baseball and golf would be as popular as they are if they were dominated by doped up East Africans?

Newsflash - most of the world is not as entranced by EPO powered East Africans running round in circles as the average LetsRun forum member is.

Annoying how so many drips on this website are self loathing about themselves and a sport they are suposedly interested in. It's depressingly defeatist. Interestingly, having seen almost all sessions at London 2017, I would hazard a guess that every single person there would return to watch another event of a similar calibre...and therein lies the issue. An exceptional Championship event occurs at best, once a year.

For the recent attendance doubters...

reuters.com

Athletics: London 2017 set to break world championships attendance records

Reuters Staff

The world athletics championships in London next month are expected to have the highest attendance figures in the event's history after organisers announced on Friday that more than 650,000 tickets have been sold.

Open link

Many comments have been made on the lack of regular appearances of the stars, the lack of head to heads outside of Championships and the fact that I couldn't tell you what day of the week the DL races happen on despite it being the "premier" event outside of Olys/WC.

There are many issues with athletics at the moment, but I would argue that the glaringly obvious one is - the main event for the sport, the Olympics - IS AMATEUR and does not pay athletes. This means that to compete, athletes are loyal to their sponsor and therefore are petrified to risk anything that would damage their marketability/brand, hence only waiting until championships, top form, or weak fields to compete. Schedules are so fickle and line ups confirmed so late, it's really hard to market and each athletics meeting is held as if it is its completely own entertainment event - which leads to events literally jousting with one another for talent and airtime.

The governing body are also incompetent, picking locations that actively damage the sport's reputation. Aarhus and Bathurst for WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS of the winter aspect of the sport, which occurs every two years... I mean, can you shoot yourself in the foot any more? Why not a main park in Copenhagen and Sydney? Parliament Hill in London would be a better option! Don't get me started on Doha and Oregon...

If the governing body had more than two braincells collectively, and racing had more of a contractual season where big names were forced to turn out, the sport would be in a completely different place. For example, as much of a joke as the sport is, Cross Fit's region based competitions are a brilliant format.

Narrative is what this sport needs and right now and we are as far away from it as possible. The ingredients of the sport are brilliant and if millions of meat heads can fathom sitting round watching golf or baseball you can bet that, if organised properly, the sport of athletics would be back where it belongs.

Success breeds success and right now we're just seeing own goals.

It must not be much of sport if people bailed out over politics.