desperado wrote:
Gentleman Savage wrote:
A big reason pro leagues pay so well? Player unions. Athletes in T&F remaining so splintered and selfish is exactly why the sport remains mostly amateurish.
And yet tennis, cited as an example later in this thread, is not unionized. (That's why Djokovic and Vasek Pospicil formed the Professional Tennis Players Association back in 2020, to try to establish something resembling a union.) It's tempting to imagine that if only track did X like tennis or Y like professional football or Z like soccer, we'd all be millionaires. But these sports exist in different realities.
In tennis, the organising bodies (ATP and WTA) grew out of dissatisfaction with the amateur system of the pre-open era when players were being exploited. The ATP and WTA have therefore grown where organizers and players work together, players have a lot of say in decision making, and top players buy into that including Nadal, Federer, and Murray. Djokovic's union has been largely unsuccessful because of that.
Such an organization benefits players and tournament organizers. Players get a bigger share of revenues, but also understand their responsibilities - those revenues only exist because the top players have to turn up to events. So the top guys are required to play all grand slams and all 9 Masters tournaments (the equivalent of the Diamond League). Plus they have to do a certain number of ATP500 events (regular tour tournaments, equivalent of the Intercontinental Tour) each year.
Would T&F athletes make a similar commitment if the rewards were greater? It would required a culture change. Athletes are used to rationing their appearances, often hiding away in training camps until they feel ready to peak. Tennis wouldn't allow that.
One solution could be to adopt the tennis system of using rankings for tournament entry and get rid of qualifying standards. Qualifying standards allow athletes to race sporadically as their ranking doesn't matter if they hit the standard. If they had to maintain a ranking to gain entry to the Olympics and WCs, and even national/area champs, then they'd have to race more often.