Flotrack signs multi-year deal to stream diamond league

The downside of all of the 'niche' sports going to subscription services is that there is no way to attract new viewers. As a kid, i remeber flipping though the dials and stumbling across track races. i don't think ironman would be as popular as it is now if it hadn't been for it being shown on something like abc wide world of sports when that woman crawled over the finish line. the only people who are going to subscribe to flotrack are current fans. eventually, those fans get old and die.

Massive loss for the sport. Why in the world would they agree to this? They clearly don't want to grow the sport and money in the sport.

So short sighted, someone needs to investigate this decision - reminds me of FIBA soccer.

Great point.

I appreciate that many of the prominent track and field athletes are expressing dismay.

Gabby Thomas offered the perfect summary via Instagram story, "This might be the worst news I've heard for the Diamond League since...ever."

Britton Wilson commented under the Citius Mag Instagram announcement with a simple, "Why?"

I didn't notice one runner who seems to be happy about it. Among the dozens of track and field athletes I follow on Instagram, Katelyn Tuohy is the only one who "liked" the announcement from Citius Mag.

LOL! LOL!! LOL!!!

This is it, surprised I'm not seeing more attention given to this. We all know that World Athletics a terribly-run org, but they have to know this is a big step down for the sport. No way they wanted this to happen.

The real story here is that NBC is divesting from track & field, and there were no other broadcasters/streamers interested in Diamond League. I don't know what the path forward here is, but if you want to grow the sport it has to be on a platform widely accessible to the public.

This guy sums it all up:

"T&F is so unbelievably short sighted in their thinking, trying to squeeze every last $ from a tiny customer base and shrinking it even further in the process"

We are going to go from the 37th sport in popularity to the 74th.

Seriously. The worst track news in some time frankly. Ughhhhhhhh

I have been very anti-Flotrack in the past, to the point of rooting for their collapse, but after watching NBC and ESPN put commercials on everything I am changing my tune. Running has been tried on national TV networks and it hasn't done well because of the way they treat each race. Cutting away to commercials during the Olympic Marathon Trials was the last straw for me.

The other part of it is I work with cyclist and they have no problem with UCI partnering with FloBikes for the next 4 years. They see $150 a year as cheap. What is it about runners that don't want to pay money for anything? Our sport is way behind because the small amount of runners who watch it want to treat it like the NBA and NFL. We should follow cycling's lead on this, have you ever watched a cycling broadcast? There are no commercials and very insightful commentators that get you excited about the race. They seem to have it figured out.

If the result of going to Flotrack is no more commercials, commentators who don't talk like no one has ever watched a race before, showing the runners who finish after the first place finisher, then I think this is actually a good thing.

Yeah it's kinda disappointing if there is no ESPN+ interest. I guess there's such an array of randomness there, what is really garnering new viewers? They probably can look at how college track meets do and make a determination from there. Perhaps, World Athletics should just cut out the middleman in the US and work with YouTube to livestream the global feed a la carte/season pass. If they're going to cut out the platform benefits, it'd be better to make it as easy as possible for fans.

This just tells you how worthless the Diamond League is to networks in the US. Do you think Flotrack OUTBID NBC? No chance. No one watches it short of a few thousand track fans. Track is and always will be a minor, low revenue sport in the US until the sport changes.

Accessibility to the sport is not the problem. Exposure is not the problem. Marketing is not the problem. The sport is the problem. It's structured, packaged, and presented poorly for the average sports fan. You can take a crappy product and make it accessible, exposed, and spend a billion dollars marketing it, and it's still a crappy product. It's not going to capture people and sell advertising.

F--- Floeverything

Pay to watch is a big mistake either way.

The idea that high quality, widespread broadcasting of T&F by knowledgable & entertaining commentators should be advertising-free, cost nothing to watch, and cover every event end to end is as divorced from reality as possible. Come join us in the real world, fever dreamers.

ESPN's been going through tough times the last few years because of cord-cutting. They've been cutting staff and trying to slim down to their core moneymakers. No chance they were ever interested in Diamond League, even if the price was dirt cheap. A lot of this is just bad timing— Netflix and Hulu would've been more interested 4 years ago when interest rates were still at zero. Today, those companies care about profitability.

I agree with you, a YouTube stream with minimal production/commentary is a better deal for WA in the long run than Flotrack. Once they realized none of the big providers wanted them, they should've pivoted to trying to make it as cheap and easy to watch meets as possible. I don't know what Flotrack's paying them, but it can't be enough to make up for the long-term damage of reduced visibility.

How do I watch this on my TV 8 stead of computer?

Instead. I like practice. I watch the EPL so have practice. No way I'm paying for just track and not having a nice app to watch it on. I refuse to watch TV on a computer.

Say No to Flo! Sign the petition against Flo Track’s monopoly!

chng.it

Sign the Petition

@change

Improve track and field media coverage - oppose prohibitive paywalls (FloTrack, e​.​g.)

Open link