The Athletic: Grand Slam Track asks vendors to accept 50% or bankruptcy looms

I never understood why they didn’t go an easier route. Like invest/buy the London diamond league. If you say to investors here’s a meet with 60,000 people that loses money each year I’m sure they could have made it profitable and then grow from there. I mean London marathon and great run took it over and made money the first year. Not saying it had to be London. Could have been a number of meets

The current value of GST is negative $15 million. MJ is still talking about running it next year and building the “franchise.” He keeps using the analogy that he bombed at his first Olympics and came back and crushed it four years later. Now’s he’s trying to offer to pay 50% of his debts or threatening to file bankruptcy. His business reputation is completely ruined. He’s delusional if he thinks any vendors or athletes will work with him in the future.

MJ should go on Shark Tank to get a good dose of reality on his future plans for GST. They will ask him about his profits in his first year. He’d respond negative $15 million and burned all his bridges with vendors and athletes. Immediate response from all four Sharks, “I’m out!”

Most definitely not. The moment the 2025 season was finished I said GST was finished. The rest has been nothing bu theatre. Go and listen to the podcast archives.

Fortunately for him when you lose the previous Olympics you don’t start the next one way behind everyone. In business you do if you lose money

Bingo. And everything changes when you are a parent.

This whole thing was obviously a scam from the beginning. I know people wanted to be optimistic about a new league, but the numbers were just too good to be true.

They were paying what were probably 6 figure appearance fees to athletes like Sydney, Kerr, and Hocker AND promising pay outs 4-5 times that of the well-established Diamond Leauge before a single ticket was even sold. There was also no indication that they were going to be able to get anywhere near the addenence of a European Diamond Leauge meet in Jamaica or Miami. Any first year business student could have seen that the accounting just doesn't work here. I don't know why some of these athlete's agents/coaches didn't caution them against entering this, I certainly would have.

Regardless, it's sad that this is what Johnson's legacy will be, but I hope these athletes and agents take him to the cleaners in court.

I truly believe MJ didn’t set out to scam anyone. He was actually doing to opposite. He was trying to be too generous with business class flights and five star accommodation for athletes and their “plus ones,” and overpaying appearance fees and prize money. It was an ego project! He wanted to be a big shot professional sport league owner. He wanted it to be like the NFL or NBA, and he wanted to be the owner. He had delusions of grandeur! He wanted to make the Diamond League envious of his success. His sins are pride and envy, not greed.

While I agree MJ didn’t start out trying to scam anyone and I don’t think he got rich off Grand Slam, after the first meet in Jamaica the next two certainly were scams. He knew at the time of those meets he didn’t have the money to pay the athletes or vendors but didn’t tell them that and held the meets anyways.

I don't believe it was a scam either. Because if it was a scam it's one of the worst scams ever - it failed before it even completed a season (in this case) and now it owes tens of millions of dollars to creditors.

What I have always struggled with is something you alluded to. Johnson always talked about this concept of "revolutionizing the sport" as if he was the ultimate altruist trying to give back to the sport that gave him so much. I've never been sure about that.

I agree with you it was an ego project (or as Coe said a vanity project) and unfortunately a lot of what went on backs that up. The "generosity" behind the insane salaries/prize money - first class flights, 5 star accommodation, free everything is the behavior of people that want to be liked - not people that want to be successful. He shunned the sports establishment (WA and the DL) wanting to show them up as cheap and uncreative but only so he could appear to be the Steve Jobs of track and field.

The cherry on the sundae for me is that he could never say sorry and own anything. I honestly believe that in that now somewhat (track world) infamous zoom call where he cancelled the season and told everyone what a roaring success it was and how they set out to achieve all they wanted to, if he had just said "man this was harder than I thought, I made a lot of mistakes which are on me and I need your help and support to save this" - a lot of fans of the sport, myself included, would have given him a pass because the reality is that it is incredibly hard to attempt what he did.

So I while I do think he wanted to improve track, I also think that this was always just a by-product of him wanting to be relevant again and gaining more fame, money and adulation for himself. None of his actions would suggest otherwise and it's funny how when you do things for the wrong reasons, these are invariably the outcomes.

As someone who has built, developed, and overseen major track championships from the ground floor up I said it would fail. Why?? Michael Johnson hired some of the most incompetent people in the world, and then hired his friends who had no clue about major professional sports. The disaster was from an operational and logistical standpoint. The GST was doomed from the onset. If you are going to be successful in what amounted to a start-up, you surround yourself with individuals who are knowledgeable and believe in the mission/goal. People that will work for little money to start, with the hope of making more when the operation is successful. Johnson is amazingly incompetent and just delusional. The way the track facility was set up in Kingston showed a complete lack of understanding, a basic one that many high school coaches understand. This was just a sad attempt to make something relevant.

Good observation. He had that Kingston stadium tarted up with huge signs, and then no one came to the meet. MJ set fire to money he never had. It’s a shame for the sport and his legacy. I hope he can turn it around, but it seems impossible. Who in their right mind would invest in a business that loses that much money?

I’ve said it before, the money in track is in its participation numbers. We need to embrace how it is different from spectator only sports, not try turn it into one.

Has Michael Johnson ever been psychologically evaluated? His mental health must be sh*t.

LOL

Taxes aren't an audit. Taxes are just some forms.

Yeah, I don't think it was his intention.

I think he had no idea what he was doing. No concept of money. And surrounded himself with a lot of other people in the same boat.

Ever since the Eugene 2022 WC it's been downhill for us all. Track Town USA keeps lying about attendance to be corrected by gas station, fast food, electric utility, sewage authorities, Walmart, fast food places, hotels, Air B N B figures. NY GP, LA GP, Bermuda Games, San Diego World Roads, Eug DL, GST failed after wards. The downward spiral hasnt ended and is only getting worser and worser.

Today is the deadline to accept the 50% offer. Let's see what happens.