Reuters runs piece today saying lack of "local interest" at 2022 Eugene Worlds was "baffling." Really?

Can we finally admit that the only people who call it “tracktown” are the marketers.

This has been said before but Eugene is an isolated small to medium city, in an isolated state that has limited capacity to host these events.

You have minimal options to fly in. The largest airport is 2-3 hrs away. To be decent housing you have to drive an hour plus north. They built a stadium too big in the valley.

Now what about oregionians? The football stadium fills for a game? Why not the track? Competing priorities, no one will drive in an hour+ per day to go to an event and do it for 4-7 days in a row.

Worlds should really be held by country qualifiers, regionally and then with a single two-three day meet to get everything in

The thing that hurt the event the most was that Eugene doesn’t have the infrastructure to support the event. Add that to ridiculous price gouging for everything from hotels to rental cars. I just drove back and forth from Portland to avoid all of that but for anyone from out of the area it was probably a nightmare

I was there, I enjoyed the event a lot along with my family. I would have purchased more tickets if they were cheaper. We traveled, loved Eugene and plan on going back again several more times in the future.

What is weird is if you held this event in literally any other location in the world it would have been more succesful. Struggling to fill a 12k stand is genuinely laughable. Ha ha.

Had they held it in LA, had tickets priced correctly, and marketed it better it would have had full stadiums most days. I would have priced tickets at $15 per session or $25 for a full day and had commercials during each and every one of the top 100 shows by viewership at least twice per hour.

I live in Oregon within reasonably driving interest of Eugene and, being a life long track nerd, was the PRIME target audience for this meet. I was preparing to go multiple days, but only ended up going to one. Why?

The ticket prices were prohibitively expensive. For one day, the cheapest I could find were $200 for the nose bleeds on the turn, which was insanity. If I wanted to take any of my family (again, for one day), I was looking at shelling out $400-$800 AT MINIMUM. I'm sorry, but this was ridiculous. Looking at the prices for Budapest, the most expensive daily ticket I'm seeing is $64 for morning/evening combined, which is way more reasonable. I understand the Birmingham Commonwealth Games tickets were going for like $25 and they had full stadiums.

Exactly this. We are local and have attended over 100 track events over the years. We weren't going to pay those prices, and the secondary market was non-existent. Rather than allowing the market to dictate price equilibrium they chose to have empty seats. The fan fest at the EWEB plaza was a great environment with the big screen and nice food/drink options, if only too hot in the open sun. Hundreds of fans there that would have rather been in the stadium.

I attended every session, had fantastic finish line seats, paid a fortune for them but wound up with an extra set that I sold on the secondary market for an average of 2.5x what I paid, which meant that the total cost of attending was <0.

Personally, I love going to Eugene and have since attending the 1972 OT and many, many meets thereafter. The naivete of many posters here who think there’s a a venue let alone a constituency to fill a stadium for a meet anywhere in the US is laughable. Have you seen the “crowds” at some of the cities that have hosted the NCAAs or US championships in the past few decades?

It was so pathetic.

"TrackTown" in a wealthy country with >300 million people, and there were empty seats all over.

I don't understand the LetsRun "really?" headline. Reuters is calling it like it is. Journalists not just fans.

Correct.

Greedy organizers grossly miscalculated regional willingness to pay on this. I say this as someone who could afford to buy home-stretch tickets on a number of nights, but also know that few people will pay $200 for nosebleeds at track worlds.

What game?

It's not as simplistic as this. Track at an Olympics is the centerpiece sport, and people in the US turn out in droves for an Olympics. The problem for track is that despite existing for decades, the World Championships doesn't have anywhere near the visibility that the Olympic brand has. Every non-track fan knows about the Olympics. Non-track fans have no clue what the World Championships is. For them, track is an Olympic sport -- that's all.

Also, I imagine it's not just track that has this problem. Gymnastics and swimming are also centerpiece Summer Olympics events and probably also don't draw very well in the US for a world championships in non-Olympic years.

Blame American capitalism. The American way is to make as much money as possible on everything. In Europe, very likely national/local governments had a large part in bidding for and running those championships. In a lot of non-American countries there are government-sponsored sports organizations who's purpose is to develop and grow the sport. In the US, there's no government support, just a shoe company in business to make money. Blame greed for the Eugene decision makers who placed their interests above the sport's.

To give you an idea of ticket prices in Budapest... I just bought their "Superheroes" ticket package. 9 days, 14 sessions, and the best/most expensive tickets available for $410.

T&F doesn;t need an invasion of millions of new NFL/NBA-trained fans who will damage the sport by demanding new forms of titillation and then rapidly flee to the next viral spectacle recommended to them by their corrupt influencers. This "boring" sport is the purest and classiest of human sporting events. Trying to compete with NFL and Wrestlemania for mindless, boozed-up, low-IQ fans would be degrading.

NFL has more than 24 hours of programming every day, promoting the sport on multiple different sports channels. This is all free advertising for the sport, allowing fans to learn every detail and rumor about every team. They have had this free advertising for decades. If the sports channels reported on track and field for just a few hours a day, the sports channels would gain viewers and the sport would grow with it.

Our $3.8 million SuperMax needs to get his ass over to ESPN and get them to cover track and field, instead of sending Drunk Uncle Anderson over to make fun of it. Then he might be worth the money.

It is all about promotion and marketing, but not just for one meet, it builds up over decades.

I'm considering that as well, I balked at Eugene based on cost. From the American midwest, it would be cheaper for me to do Budapest than Eugene.

They also need to make it a 5-day event. Having 2-3 finals a day is stupid and boring and makes it a lot more expensive to go. Then everyone who attends would be there at the same time. Also, put it at Drake Stadium or Penn stadium.