Breaking: San Diego pulls out of hosting World Road Champs 4 days after qualifier !!

Between this and other events around the country, USATF is the common problem. They expect the locals to assume all risk and then want money for blessing the proceedings. I am old enough to remember the insular and corrupt TAC. Siegel and company have brought us back to those dark days of incompetence and grift.

FVCK YOU, USATF!!!

the article basically says the poster who said it was about sponsorships was right. they may or may not have had a big sponsor lined up, but they'd sorted $3m and that was apparently not enough. that was at least one big thing WA pulled this over.

it sounded to me like WA let SD handle this themselves for a while, checked in, and didn't like what they saw or they missed milestones or something.

SD in turn blames USATF except surely there was an agreed division of labor among WA/USATF/SD on who handles lining up sponsors. if SD is totally responsible for that, then it's lame handwaving to blame the others for not bailing you out.

you didn't communicate the situation well if some potential race sponsor thought there would be a Year 2 for a One Off. that's not USATF's fault.

now, that being said, if USATF is having repeated problems with siting based on cities feeling like they were losing money or having to use taxes, and not being able to get sponsors, then the "model" or "allocation" needs to be revisited. or you have to scale back to more like a HS track meet.

By the time the event was scheduled to take place you'd have another problem:

70% of the top 40 athletes will have their visa applications rejected.

it's possible that immigration is the issue, or trump is the issue, but you have contracts, and so there's an audit and the amount of sponsorship becomes the problem instead.

It could be Trump. I don't think it's about visa's because they have had championships in places that are hard to get into in the past (visa-wise):

Morocco 1975
South Africa 1996
Morocco 1998
Russian 2006
Jordan 2009
Qatar 2010
Moscow 2013
China 2015 x 2
Uganda 2017
Qatar 2019
China 2025
China 2027

This sounds like not enough kick back to WA. $3,000,000 is low for a title sponsor but is it worth moving it?

As soon as I saw Tracy Sundlun I had my answer. He is over the hill and shouldn’t have been entrusted with something this big. I’m just not surprised.

These events can be a nightmare to manage and I would agree the model is broke, at least from what I've seen first hand. From the anti-doping side alone, I can tell you there's a huge disconnect between World Athletics and USATF (they do NOT communicate with each other at all). WA has a ton of requirements that the LOC must follow that are not cheap (advertising, etc.) and they charge $50K+ to the LOC for their "Platinum" level races. World Athletics is just another money grabbing organization. They created the Athletes Integrity Unit (AIU) to make it look like they care about anti-doping, but it's all about creating profit at the expense of athletes.

They have LA marathon every year too, among others. Doesn't mean the roads are fit for purpose.

I live in Los Angeles. I experience it every day. Actually I experienced it for 90 minutes this morning. Westwood Blvd. near UCLA is currently a patchwork of holes and patches. As is Wilshire. And when patches are needed, they are done by people with buckets and hand tools, so the patches don't last.

And don't get started on the sidewalks which are, if anything, worse and more dangerous than the streets.

There used to be a nice grassy running path along San Vicente in Santa Monica and Brentwood. But it has been neglected and allowed to turn into a weed patch in recent years. I guess is isn't "that bad," if your standards are abysmally low and you like getting forced to pay people a lot of money to do a bad job.

Maybe it isn't dog walkers... maybe it is overtime for dozens of unionized city cops in case of "terrorism."

cash, ego, dysfunction

95% plus probability

cudos to those who selflessly help organize these events.

i always marveled why people would actually be there to put on the events, in the wind and cold, instead of being home doing family stuff.

very encouraging.

I almost planned my fall vacation around this event, but when registration opened, the registration fees were much higher than I expected, and it made me reconsider. I ended up planning a vacation somewhere else, and I'm very happy I did. Would love to see this event still end up in the US, but I feel that is unlikely.

Trump cut the usaid money...

To be fair, Salt Lake 2002 had a host of problems. They had to bring in Mitt Romney, at the time a top private equity investor who made a fortune fixing multi-billion dollar companies, to fix the fiasco. He did and the games wound up being quite successful.

But the Olympics are a whole different ball game than some road running championship. You aren't getting someone like Romney to go in there and take charge for an event like that.

2 people died, 111 injured.

But it wasn't a big deal because none of the sporting events were affected?.

Was Munich 1972 not a big deal because only a few events got postponed?

Was Hillsborough not a big deal because the match was just rescheduled?

Some seriously concerning priorities you've got here

If you look at the standard Championships Bid Application furnished by USATF you will find the following gems:

Successful Bidder may only contract with sponsors, suppliers, or vendors approved by USATF as it relates to the Championships.

USATF Sponsors shall be given first choice on prime locations in the exposition area, free-of-charge.

USATF reserves the right to name additional sponsors or suppliers and augment the list of protected categories at any time.

Bidder acknowledges that USATF owns all revenue sources, including all commercial rights to the Championships, including media, marketing and licensing rights. USATF may negotiate in good faith with Bidder to transfer certain mutually agreed upon rights to Bidder.

To the extent that USATF approves and Bidder is able to secure additional sponsor revenue, USATF shall be entitled to receive a percentage of the gross amount from said revenue.

Bidder shall provide a hospitality area, beverages, and amenities for the use, comfort and entertainment of .. . . USATF Sponsors.

Bidder understands that it does not have the right to contract with any sponsor, supplier, or vendor without the express written consent of USATF.

Basically the USATF gets the lion's share of sponsorship money. Nike, Toyota, Hershey, Gatorade and Comcast/Xfinity are all official sponsors so companies like New Balance, Ford, Red Bull etc. are vetoed. If you do manage to get, say, an airline to sponsor the event, well, USATF shall be entitled to receive a percentage of the gross amount from said revenue. Note gross amount, not net, so the cost of that free expo space, hospitality etc. comes out of your cut, not theirs.

Finally, you have to use sponsor equipment. So even if your city has a fleet of Ford vehicles you can't use them, lease some Toyota's instead.

It's no surprise that the big incentive dangled by the USATF (and Olympics, World Cup, Formula One) is $millions of tourist revenue. The event itself will loose money but imagine all those tourists throwing $100 bills around like confetti. The tax payers will love the city for investing their money in the event.

This is a bummer.

My understanding is not enough people had signed up for the races yet, but no one had any incentive to sign up yet. I think if we had put out a call to action in the running community, "This thing is getting cancelled unless we get X signups in a week." We'd get at least 10,000.

World Athletics if you're reading this, why not consider it. S

I was looking forward to this and had started to wonder, "Should I even run a race?"

San Diego in September could have been an annual or biannual thing.

Bummer. The community race was going to be part of our local road series.

Shocked it got cancelled with a $3 million title sponsor. Really think they should reconsider. But I'm assuming that ship has sold. Getting 25,000 people to San Diego could be an annual event.

From Times of San Diego article:
Paul Greer, president of the USA Track and Field association in San Diego, said via email that despite the San Diego organizing committee having secured a $3 million title sponsor, “it appears this alone was not enough to keep these World Championships here in San Diego.”