Update: Grand Slam Track LA Cancelled

Probably true. Michael Johnson himself has always had a very shady, dark side that most fans are not aware of.

I think GST may have done better if the series incorporated races at all levels: HS, College, Pro and Middle School for intros and intermissions.

At least we still have Emma Bates’ Boston Marathon recap.

Last I checked she was up to mile 17. 👍👍

Yeah, it would fill the gaps but would make it look like an amateur event.

In person attendance doesn't matter very much. It is all about TV NUMBERS.

So my hypothesis- the plan for long term was good TV numbers in year 1 to sell higher price advertisements in year 2.

It is likely grand slam was paying their TV partners for broadcast time (yes this happens) and hoping with good viewership they could recoup the cost selling advertisements. If it was ~250k that isn't great for making much.

After Phili, it really looks like the best place to hold a big meet in the US is at a university campus. You've got a smaller-scale infrastructure than a big city so people can get there on foot, bike, or public transport, less need for parking, and plenty of people looking for something to do. I live in Europe and have been to World XC champs in Belfast, Brussels, and Avenches, and professional track meets in Lausanne, Luzerne and Monaco. The only event that didn't have a packed stadium/spectator area was actually Monaco. Beautiful location, but the locals aren't interested and have better things to do like ride around on the yachts and gamble, and it's not a very attractive vacation destination due to how expensive it is and it's kinda complicated to get to. Brussels was a big city but so easy to get around by bus/tram.

I actually agree 100%. I don't know what Merber actually contributed to GST. Yes, they got some good athletes signed but I think that's primarily because of the massive prize money.

And most of the distance races were BORING and that falls on Merber as the Director of Racing. Merber told us it would be exciting but it was not! It wasn't exciting to watch Grant Fisher do the bare minimum needed to get 2nd in a race he could have won, so he could win the overall meet.

It wasn't exciting to see hurdlers running slow in flat races, or 400m specialists looking horrible in 200s. Most of the competitors were far from their peak fitness - Hocker and Nuguse looked awful.

Merber dropped the ball. His designed racing structure was boring and uninteresting.

Exactly. Their "success" is built upon signing the name athletes. If they're late (or not) paying prize money as has been mentioned, they'll have difficulty getting athletes to sign on next year.

I'd argue that cash was one of the major problems with GST. They made it all about the prize money. Great, winners get an oversized check for $100k, good for them. But in what other sport is the prize money the primary focus? It should be about competition and winning, the cash doesn't matter to fans but the GST outriders acted like it should.

The other issue was cutting out some of the sport's biggest stars. American World and Olympic champions like Tara Davis Wood hall, Val Allman, Ryan Crouser, and Chase Jackson were left on the sidelines. As was Mondo, possibly the best known athlete in all of track and field right now, and a guy who always brings his A game to meets. Really, Mondo alone would have brought in more fans than all of the short hurdles guys combined.

How about this as a possible scenario, post the Philadelphia meet.

"Michael, we are starting to get dangerously low on money here - we understood the prize money expenditure and the athlete salaries/appearance money, but it seems we totally underestimated how much the travel, accommodation and actual cost of operating even one day of a track meet is - and we have three, PER SLAM. On top of that we have next to no revenue coming in to offset any of these costs."

Johnson: "Did cutting these last two meets back to 2 days and saving 100k total across the "long distance" groups help?"

"Yes but it's not enough. Look if you run this final meet in LA with the way things are trending, you might totally exhaust any capital left and then this represents a problem with respect to the fixed contracts you have with athletes like Sydney and Josh who you still owe quite a lot of money to".

Johnson: "Oh, okay. So what now".

"Cancel the LA meet. With the stuff happening there right now, maybe some people will jump to a plausible conclusion that there is a good reason to do this and you won't even need to say anything. It will leave you with a little bit of capital and this will give you 10 months or so to find a sponsor, sign a media deal, get more funding. If you can, you relaunch the league next spring with a new format, but we suggest you actually get some track people in to help you, and for Gods sake this time Michael, just listen instead of thinking you know it all. If you can't, you take the money that is left, pay out the contracts you signed so you don't get sued, and you disappear".

Johnson: "Yep".

This is a sad day for the sport and the saddest part is that it was foreseeable. The worst part is that with respect to the sport in the US looking forwards, it is unlikely that it will ever be given such a chance again with respect to the money involved, and the one chance it was given was cratered by a guy who I always personally felt was more about justifying his ego (just look at the website and all the "Olympic Hero" BS) than he was "saving track" as was his claim. Johnson was a great athlete in this sport, but that doesn't by default mean you know everything about the sport including running a track league or anything to do with the commercial/business side of it - but then again it seems like this is the curse of the modern athlete that seems to need podcasts, youtube channels, their own leagues to remain relevant post career these days.

Prior to this starting I thought it would survive two seasons. After Miami I thought this would be it. I truly can't believe how dire this must be internally for it to only survive 3/4 of a season.

I don't think just being on a university campus is the key. It needs to be a stadium in a sizeable city with good connectivity to other parts of the city and nearby cities to pull people from. Franklin Field is basically tailor-made for this and is probably the best located track stadium in the country.

weird how Citius haven't commented on the biggest story in the sport at all

This ^^^^^^^ is the best post on here.

There was nothing really wrong with the product. Same is true of the Diamond League.

The problem was there was no business model.

People though I was a hater. While it's true I didn't like the LIV Golf vibes I was getting from it, my main thought all along was - how in the world is this ever going to make money?

The London DL sells like 50,000 tickets and somehow still loses money.

And I did kind of think last week when Rome was going on and some on this forum were saying the atmosphere sucked and it should be kicke doubt of the DL - "But that crowd in Rome is probably bigger than what they got in Philly." It's just that the Rome stadium seats like 60-70k.

NOOOOOOO. I want it to continue. The betting, the athletes getting PAID for once. They just have to fine tune it to a two-day meet. 3k first day, 5k next day. It's that simple.

I assumed the focus on prize money was to convince casual non-track fans that this event matters because it involves lots of money...

Well.... they were supposed to get PAID. We will see

Gault—-can you find out if prize money from the first three events has been dispersed?