No one knows how to fix track and field

Agree.

I wrote earlier that the sport doesn't need "fixing", which I agree with you here would at best create inorganic interest purely out of novelty and then ultimately ruin it for real fans, and I also wrote that I don't think it can be "fixed" due to where we are as a society, the types of sports that the average person wants to watch and why. But I've been around the sport for a while and seen the downturn and maybe the reverse of this gives some insight into how the sport could become more appealing again.

Someone said earlier that track and field isn't really a personally aspirational sport and they are right. People associate running in particular with discomfort - if you rounded up 100 random people on the street and gave them the option of 30min of pickup basketball, an few innings of baseball, play a short game of soccer etc vs go for a 30min run I would guess at least 90% of them pick one of the former. Where Track and Field found it's connection with the public was (oddly) by tapping into patriotism and national pride. My hypothesis is that people intrinsically know running is hard and their is valor in those who compete at the highest level in it - and people like to and do support that when it represents where they come from too (yes, no different to supporting the soccer, NFL, NBA team from where you grew up).

But outside of the Olympics and World Champs, the sport basically let this key hook dissolve. And it's not about athletes representing their countries at a DL meet etc, it's just about being there. Here is what I mean.

European track (the heartbeat of the sport, the epicenter and driver of sponsorship/money etc) has lost countless meets over the last 30 years. I could be here all day reeling them off - but meets in venues like Helsinki, Köln (Cologne), Koblenz, Athens, Rieti have all disappeared due to lost funding and it began with waning spectator interest. That interest waned because once when a fan could go along and see how the best of their fellow countrymen and women shaped up vs the best of other nations, that slowly dissolved as agents took over the sport and fields became filled with simply faster athletes. And you might say "but that's what you need - the fastest racing the fastest" and yes you do - but only to a degree, and so it flipped so extremely that many races became showcases of athletes that nobody in the crowd could relate to on any level and had no real incentive to truly support. And it began to snowball - without exposure to top racing your athletes from the nations where you want to hold these meets found it hard to take the next step and be the athletes that could be relevant in these races and bring fans through the gate. London is the one meet that does this really well - they aren't interested in just the best fields - they create diverse fields which are catered to creating great races with their home athletes and this by proxy helped organically foster their own talents who are now fully deserving of spots in these fields in their own rights.

I promise you it's real. I have sat in the Letizgrund stadium where it was almost like the entire stadium showed up to watch Andre Bucher run the 800m. When he came out onto the track just to finish off his pre-race prep the crowd chanted his name in a state of pure chaos for 10min. The race itself was pandemonium. Zurich is it's own thing - the fans will come no matter what is such an established institution but not every meet is Weltklasse. Look at the annual Finnkampen, Sweden v Finland meet which sells out big arenas in Helsinki, Gothenburg or Stockholm every year and they don't need 15 guys running sub 13 in a 5000m for it to be interesting to those fans.

Europe lost this as agents were able to dictate fields with little quid pro quo handshakes and to double down on it, the preferred television slots were for years awarded on a meet ranking system that simply prioritized the overall scores of the performances in the meet vs who was physically creating the performances. So meet directors were then incentivized (by money which guess what, a portion of comes back into their pockets to) to just be lazy and create fields off world-best lists vs think about what would create the most compelling product for the fans that need to come to the event and the sponsors which like seeing fans at the events.

So reversing this becomes difficult because winding this back clearly isn't a 1-2 year thing. Just as the erosion took a solid 10-15 years to slowly reach the point where money disappeared and so did many meets, it would take the same to repair. Regulating the behind the scenes "mafia-like" influence of agents and actually having a unified strategy to building fields in Europes top meets is needed but so tough as long as the incentives for meet directors aren't tied to that strategy and based purely on what they can manufacture for themselves. Not easy to change, but it is doable to a decent degree I am convinced of it.

It's been fixed. It's called cross country. And it rules.

Redo the 1978 Stevens Sports Act to mandate 85%-15% revenue spilt at the gate before expenses. 85% goes to the athletes, 15% to the amatuer federation. 15% is the sales commission that Amazon, eBay, etsy, etc charges.

Make it free and easy to watch if possible. I watch it, my kids and maybe grandkids watch it and the interest spreads. I don't like having to pay flotrack, runnerspace or whatever to see a few evens for the prices they are asking.

You can't have that if it's this.

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=13220652#post-3

Too much swearing in the video. Usually I quit as soon as I hear one bad word like that but you mostly waited until the end to let them fly.

The worst think is they almost total disregard for the field events which in many ways ARE the sport. But some things are just downright silly such as the 4 X 100 Mixed Relay. But we do have tRUMP as President so all of this makes sense in that vein.

Yep,

Signed by Jed Clampett

these are fine if you want running to become more mainstream but RUNNING BECOMING MAINSTREAM IS A TERRIBLE THING

we are literally posting on letsrun - we are part of a very very small niche. we need to understand our incentives are totally misaligned with people's who want this niche in the mainstream

having a small self-selecting group is really useful for higher concentration of interesting discussion and content

as just one example - if running gets too popular letsrun will get bought up fast as anything - we know the brojos would love to sell. this site would go down the corporate toilet faster than anything

I guess it depends on how you define the word “fix”. If you mean for it to compete for popularity with football, soccer, and basketball then that will never happen. But IT DOES NOT NEED TO HAPPEN. You could argue that track and field has been woven into the very fabric of humanity since the earliest times.

When was the first foot race? The Sed Festival at approximately 3000 BC where the Pharaoh had to compete in a foot race after ruling for 30 years to prove he is fit to rule. Much later this “new” thing called the Olympics started in 776BC.

Track and Field is the FIRST SPORT. It is a part of our cultural history and it cannot be compared to other sports. Should some apocalypse occur and all other sports turn to dust, it will again emerge as the first sport. It’s in our DNA.

This guy gets it. Popularity ruins almost everything it touches. Pro sports have been unwatchable for years, and now college sports are in the process of getting destroyed by their popularity. You want running and track to go down that same road?

Running is a niche sport. That's not only a good thing, it's the way any real runner should want it.

BIG FAT LIE