Michael Johnson announces $30 Million raised for Winners Alliance pro track league starting 2025 Apr-Sep

$30 million is a great start. Well Done MJ and company.

Anything… when it comes to athlete centric professional T&F racing event alliance is better than the antiquated event/prize purse structure in the US.

The Europeans sure know how to put on a showcase when it comes to track and field. Cut and paste.

Surprisingly little discussion about this. Looks promising and it starts NEXT YEAR!

sportsbusinessjournal.com

Michael Johnson secures funds for new track league

Olympic champion Michael Johnson has secured more than $30M from investors and strategic partners for a track league he plans to launch next year.

Link:www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles...

Says the league name and more details are coming in June. $30 million is a nice bankroll (I'm impressed MJ & co raised that much) and should give them a lot of room to work with. Interested to see what they do with it.

Can someone articulate how this is different than the Diamond League. I am sure it is, or they wouldn't bother doing it. I just don't know the details...

This is all they said in the article (in terms of how it will be structured):

Better than that women only meet that Serena's husband has proposed. #InclusivityMatters #SayNoToDiscrimination

The key is revenue sharing. NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL, FIFA, etc. players receive 50%, TV/City/County/Owners 50%. TV/Owners open the books for inspection by Players/City/County.

This is what I want to know too, and I'm hoping this is explained soon. I mean, doesn't the Diamond League try to elevate the sport's stars and rivalries and cater to fan interests?

Sounds like the difference could be fewer events. Each DL meet is required to include a certain number of events, even unpopular ones. MJ's league has no such requirements. They may just say, hey, we're going to focus on the 100, 1500, long jump, and pole vault, and offer big appearance fees/prize money in those events. And if the $$$ is better than the DL, I could see some of the stars doing that instead of the DL.

Just don't sell the broadcast rights to Flotrack! Ugh.

No one has tried to start a For-Profit Track & Field League in the past.

It's always been charity leagues with non-profit meet organizations holding public interest marathons, meets, relays, all-comers, etc.

Characteristic droves of unpaid volunteers as track crews, trainers, TV producers, writers, announcers, drug escorts, TV cameramen, tecnicians, Big Rig drivers, etc.

Very little prize money, 5 digits max, and very small appearance fees.

I'm glad Michael will be the first to adopt the L.A. Television sports business model.

DL coverage is objectively boring as hell to a prospective fan. Far too much dull time and exciting commentary is rare because everything is in realtime. Often the commentators will miss everything going on.

I believe MJ's league won't be live and the focus will be on content creation and packaging the meets in ways that appeal to the youth. Let's face it, very few young people are going to tune into an entire DL meet without already being a fan, given that even diehard fans often mute the meet or get up to do something else in the dead moments/in the middle of a 5k etc.

Also yes you're right - they're not going to include a wide range of events.

No more stopping for false starts. The race goes on. Afterwards you are DQed.

No heats, finals only.

No human pacers. No pacing lights tricks. No rail cameras which serve as pacing devices. No drones as pacing devices.

Three Simultaneous multi-channels, split single-screen or use three screens or use three phones, or use three computers: Fields, Long Distances, Sprints. With offset finals.

College use AI to pick Football final 4. So why not T&F.

Talks about popular events then proceeds to mention 1500.....lol

One major issue MJ has to figure out is how to get the top US athletes to commit to the league and the actually show up as advertised and not pull out at the last minute.

Someone clever, with money, should find a way to monetize the huge pool of high school athletes the US has.

That’s the generation that speaks to YouTube and social media.

Hopefully the money will be a motivator. Besides that, the knowledge that if they still pull out then they have no grounds to ever complain about the sport ever again as they are actively ruining people's attempts to improve it.

That false start thing would just be confusing as hell, and there already aren't heats in DL meets (except for rarely there are 2 110mH heats before the TV window and then a final in the TV window), I agree about pacers and lights though, as well as split screens

No one has mentioned gambling yet. If you want any chance at the sport catching on and gaining traction with current “non fans,” you need to find a way to handicap these races and have gambling