Grand Slam Track misses July 31 deadline to pay Kingston prize money

The fundamental business case for a US based track and field league is very strong:

1) Mass participation in running is booming. Golf is able to translate high participation into a weekly average of 3 million viewers on CBS and an annual high of 12.7 million for the Masters. Track maybe can’t do that well, but it can do much better than it does.

2) The viewers are there in Olympic years, with 5 million watching the Trials at peak last year. But just 1.1 million watched Millrose, the highest viewed event this season. Track can close that gap. The home Olympics in 3 years will boost attention even further.

3) The Diamond League is mostly in Europe and mostly at off peak hours in the US. A league that broadcasts in the US on weekend afternoons would draw more attention in the US.

All that said, GST is clearly not the vehicle. There is no reason to put money into a company that has already failed. What assets do they even have for next season?

you are way off on numbers 1 and 2 which means more than likely number 3 as well.

They’re simply isn’t enough interest in the sport to command even a fraction of what GST ’ committed’ to pay. This is not the NFL or NBA or even baseball. This is a fringe sport akin to curdling. Silly to pretend otherwise and while I’m sure the athletes wanted to believe they were going to be paid those big numbers, if something seems too good to be true it probably is…. And was.

I didn’t compare it to the NFL, NBA, or MLB, I compared it to golf. As far as the TV viewership I cited, I promise every number was sourced, for both track and golf.

No F’ing way. Golf is infinitely bigger than track and field will ever be. Tiny town I live in has two golf courses. zero tracks….lol

Yeah, I think the fact that golf (just for starters) has a "Grand Slam" of events with prize pools in the ballpark of 20 million US dollars for each event (I think the PGA is the lowest at 19?), gives a pretty accurate snapshot of the differences between golf and track. They also have a pro tour where the average purse is like 9 million, "elevated events" close to the majors and the Players - not even a major, is 25.

And I know money isn't the only metric as to how big a sport is, but in terms of professional sports it's not a bad metric. Because you only get that sort of money from sponsors if your product is in some way big enough to justify it (viewership, everyday popularity, corporate popularity/importance).

It’s a pretty bad metric. Golf is simply a lot more accessible and popular. Easy to sell golf to the public since they’re interested in it. Hard to sell running, essentially zero interest.

And one more thing - Becky and Steve, who run a couple 5K marathons a month have exactly 0 interest in competitive running. They don’t watch it, they don’t follow it in any way. They are just out there for fitness. That that’s the majority of ‘runners’.

The World Athletics Championships in Tokyo has total prize money of $8.5m for 49 events with $70k for gold medal winners, $35k for silver medal winners and $22k for bronze medal winners. Relay Winners ger $80k per team. Next to nothing compared to tennis and golf.

Sure, but Aidan with the 36 handicap who’s out there to slam a couple brews on the course does watch and follow the PGA Tour. There’s an opportunity out there to make casual runners more engaged with pro running.

Right, because you can drink and play golf. In fact, for many that’s part of the experience. This in addition to not needing to be particularly athletic, makes golf infinitely more accessible, and interesting to most. Running will simply never be that. ’runners’ , by-in-large, are not interested in competitive running and never will be.

to be fair, most runners love the excuse of "I just burned 300 calories in this 5K" to drink a few beers afterwards, so pretty similar to your support argument for golf. Agree that many are not interested, but JJ is correct that there *is* an opportunity, albeit a difficult one.

Don’t think so. Not sure what it would take to make the sport popular but nothing that’s happening right now that’s for sure. professional skateboarders have more street cred for God sake.

Yep!

As I've previously posted, MJ and gang saw a HUGE opportunity to cash in on track leading into L.A. 2028. Start with a 4 meet series highlighting the best track athletes in the world with the growth potential of adding additional meets as L.A. 2028 approached. How hard could it be, right? The concept is great, and viable, IF the right leadership is in place and solid dependable investors were onboard. When the "so-called" eight figure investor bailed out, GST had to pivot immediately and move to Plan B. Unfortunately, there was no Plan B, and now the sh^t is hitting the fan. If MJ and GST had just got out in front of this when the investor bailed out, and was transparent with what had happened he could've saved face, not lose the trust of the ENTIRE track world, and most likely would've received some kind of "grace period" from athletes and vendors to revamp a funding plan and to potentially save the venture.

You're missing the most important part. If Johnson had waited until he ACTUALLY HAD the money, then 100% of these problems would have been avoided.

He went ahead with a league that hadn't secured funding. He was gambling that the funding would eventually happen. But Johnson hid that fact from all the athletes and signed them to contracts with money he didn't have. Johnson is in big trouble now, and all that trouble could have easily been avoided if Johnson had acted like an intelligent businessman, which he obviously is not.

So why not add more DL meets in the US ? There's already Pre and if for example LA & NYC Grand Prix could get funding to grow into DL meets, you'd have 3 meets in the US, no problems getting athletes from around the globe and a brand name that everyone already knows for T&F.

There actually are a fair number of fitness runners whose own running gets them interested in professional running, but it's mostly road racing. The problem is that marathons or road racing is the only kind of professional running that looks like what casual runners do. And that's one of the reasons top marathoners can actually make decent money and get some public recognition, even if it's pretty niche.

To the average member of the public, track and field is a very different animal than road racing. A track meet is a 3-ring circus of events that almost no one does except pros or as part of a school team. Unlike golf, where golfers are playing more or less the same game as the pros, even something like the 5000 on the track run by pros looks very different from a road 5k Race for the Cure or some such.

It's just a tough proposition to cut through all of the possible things to watch or go to and get people interested in a sport that is pretty removed from most people's experience.

Michael, is that you? This seems to be about the level of sophisticated analysis that got him into trouble in the first place. Track and Field is an extremely difficult sport to broadcast successfully and to watch on television. There are too many events. Too many of the events are over in too short a time period. Too many of the longer events take too long, with too little action or variation during the vast majority of the event. You need to be a hardcore fan to get excited when the pace in a 10,000 goes from 67s to 64s and it is essentially imperceptible to anyone watching.

My father-in-law would watch Olympic paint drying or snow melting if it was broadcast by NBC during the games. Just point out which is the American team and watch him cheer. I don’t think I could get him to watch a track meet for anything.

We participate in and follow a niche sport. It will always be a niche sport. It will always be extremely difficult for all but the absolute superstars of the sport to get rich competing in track and field. There are many, many track and field athletes who probably work far harder than NFL or NBA or MLB or NHL players and many who are more gifted athletically and are objectively better athletes. And they may well struggle to pay their bills, because people don’t want to compensate them for participating a dozen times or even twenty times a year in an event that takes ~50 seconds or two minutes to complete. There are ~17 regular season NFL games plus playoffs. 84 regular season hockey games. ~160 baseball games (?!). You can learn top players’ names by exposure over and over and over again through broadcast that stretch a few hours and during which the same players compete continuously. So yes, I’m thrilled that the reigning Olympic hammer throw champs are both Canadians, but they’ll always be part of a niche sport. And that’s fine.

Is this fair? I don’t know. But I think it’s reality.