World Marathon Majors SLASHES series prize money by 69% effective immediately, costing Eliud Kipchoge 200k and we aren't happy

This is racism. They are taking money away from mostly black athletes. Come on social justice warriors, where are you at? This is your time to shine for once. Someone get ESPN on this ASAP. We can get this turned around quickly.

Ha, a little extreme and team sports don't equate to individual ones, but a lot of good examples/points. Might I add another example - the MLB/NBA/NFL taking a mid-season break to crown the champions, then continue on with the season.

What other (Olympic) sport has such disjointed associations/organizations at every level?

BLM was so 2021. I'm onto the next SJW fad now.

Maybe most amateur marathon runners do not care whether elites are in the race or not. But TV audiences clearly do. You can watch broadcasts of Boston, Chicago and New York. How about the Marine Corps Marathon? Is it even broadcast locally? (That is a real question, I do not live in the DC area.) Television brings in quite a bit of money for any race it covers. Without television, the three US majors would need to cut back somewhere. The pros likely more than pay for themselves via television rights and the increased sponsorships the race attracts due from the broadcast.

What an absolutely s*** take. People are going to be spending large amounts of money to run marathons, watch baseball, football, and basketball games, and buy merchandise. If that money is going to be spent regardless, the athletes should get a cut of it. They're the ones actually performing the activity, not the sponsors or owners.

I bet you think tax breaks on the wealthy generate jobs too

^^this. Unfortunately, drug doping has made them very boring. Who cares if the top 5 are doped up Africans..just no-one...they're not even all that identifiable (minus one or two exceptions) due to the sheer number and turnover of all these amazing dopers coming in from Africa. It's just a boring dope train at this point, and anyone with half a brain cell knows it. Who wants to sponsor that?

Much better to promote the festival atmosphere and grassroots running.

The WMM is just 6 races. If none of the other marathons worldwide that have well rewarded elite fields make any changes to 'mirror' WMM in any way would it really make any difference in the big picture to elite marathon performances? I doubt it - the elite pros, who clearly have a huge weighting from 2 countries in East Africa, would just shift their targets somewhat to the whole raft of races that I won't trouble to list here.
Others may be better informed but the 'buying power' of a $ in East Africa vs USA is maybe 15:1 so if everything got halved it's maybe 8:1 so not really going to deter anyone from trying to earn a life-changing living from the sport of they are good enough.

The point that only a very small % of the running community knows or cares about what goes on at the sharp end of WMMS applies equally to Valencia, A/dam, R/dam, Paris, etc. I don't know if the USA having 3of the 6 majors maybe makes them - to 'serious' runners at least - more prominent in USA either as a sport-wide brand or as an elite performance target. I'm not in USA and at performance level the WMMs as a series don't really feature in convo any more than the other big Euro races mentioned above

You hit the nail on the head and a Tually agreed with my take. People pay to race marathons but pay to watch the other sports you mentioned. That is why they can sell TV rights for millions or billions and can sell millions of tickets.

That isn't running. No one pays to watch it and even the few televised races get little viewership with the possible exception of Boston. I hate to break it to you but most of those people watching don't care if some random Kenyon wins in 2:05 or some local wins 8n 2:20. They just don't.

I still don't care about the pros running. I can about running them myself. Since spectator sports are different those I enjoy to watch instead of plan. I also value my brain so I'm not playing tackle football.

I'm so happy this website exists

Yep, I'm putting all my eggs in the ESG/sustainability basket.

Have you watched the US major marathons? They don’t really show the race. Most of the time it is about some good will random people are just the wheelchairs. Lol

This. Yes, you can take away prize and expense money from big races and still get huge fields and you will be the Marine Corps Marathon. There's nothing wrong with that but you're not going to get the media coverage you get now, you won't get the chatter at places like this in the lead in to the race, and you won't get onto ESPN. When I lived in DC the MCM was not televised. My son lived there for a couple years and I'm pretty sure it was not televised then.

Toni Reavis has a column out on the matter that I recommend you read.

tonireavis.com

WORLD MARATHON MAJORS SLASHES TOP PRIZE

Toni Reavis

Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we? The Abbott World Marathon Majors just gave up, right? By announcing they have slashed their top series prize from $250,000 to $50,000, effective immediately, …

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It's very interesting but I think he goes too far when he rips agents and runners from Africa for not helping out and promoting themselves and concludes that they are deserving of a ton of blame. He claims ESPN wanted him to focus on wheelchair racers as they got better ratings and did better interviews.

Yes, the fact that many of the African stars don't speak great English doesn't help but let's say they were all eloquent English speakers. What media is there to promote it? Newspapers are falling off and the tv networks like ESPn only focus on things they have rights for. Why doesn't he rip Galen Rupp for doing no PR? Jerry Schumacher, etc?

Toni is married to a black woman so please don't misunderstand me. It's not racist. I've just given up on the argument of "If only we promoted the sport better, eveyrone would love it."

Please name one sport you like to watch because you love the interviews the stars give.

To your last question, I HATE athlete interviews no matter the sport. They're almost always insipid. I blame the interviewers as much, maybe more, than the athletes because the questions are along the lines of "You've made your third Olympic team. How does it feel?" I thoroughly enjoy reading profiles of athletes because the information there is a lot deeper. I do not like seeing such profiles in the middle of a race.

I think the whole emphasis on interviews and human interest stories is essentially an admission by broadcasters that the races themselves aren't interesting enough to hold viewer's attention. But from what I can tell, which isn't overly extensive, broadcasters from other countries don't seem to think this. When I've watched events on BBC or CBC I cannot recall them showing anything during the races but the races themselves.

As far as the World Majors championship goes, I've thought from the start that it was problematic. The idea is to declare one person as the sort of marathon world champion for the current year. I don't see how anyone can find that meaningful or really all that interesting when there is no direct competition among some contenders. I'm not sure if it can be salvaged and certainly won't be by giving a bigger pile of money to wheelchair racers. On the other hand, it's one thing to say "Next year we're cutting back on prize money" which allows runners to decide how to set up their races. It's another thing to lure people into your "competition" by saying there's a quarter million dollar prize if you win and after someone wins saying the prize is only twenty per cent of that. I hope Kipchoge and others lawyer up and go after Abbott.

I literally spoke to her and this is what she said. I know other athletes ranked very highly in the world and they were not offered anything beyond a spot on the starting line. No travel assistance or hotel. So don't tell me to 'stop'

False advertising- he should sue.

New CEO should be fired - too many reasons to list.

Elite Athletes who built the brand have been used and discarded.

World Athletics should not outsource what they should be doing - that is creating, developing, and owning majors. Better for the sport, better for the athletes, better for WA to bundle and gain sponsorship.

This is the height of narcissism. Sorry to inform you that nobody cares about your sub 3 or 4 or 5 hour marathon except for you and perhaps your loved ones. That goes for everyone else and their 3 or 4 or 5 hour marathons. Your achievements are very nice and meaningful FOR YOU, but the world is enraptured and inspired by the height of human performance demonstrated by those such as Kipchoge. It is truly sad that you can't respect and enjoy the accomplishments of great athletes. Without them, running is no sport at all, and the events you participate in lose all prestige and become a joke, a way for people to satiate their narcissism and spend their money. How sad and frankly pathetic our sport would become, without the elite and competitive element.

That would probably be unsuccessful. Where would the lawsuit be filed ? Where is WMM domiciled, if anywhere ? Does it have an office ? Did individual athletes enter into contractual agreements with Abbott ?