I don't know, all of these ideas are better than what we have. I was thinking about them all, and wanted to summarize and add a few.
1 - Money - A couple things here. We need athletes to be able to have MORE sponsors... A Nike kit, with a swoosh... great. But if it was a Nike swoosh, with a few patches from other companies, feel like more sponsors means more pressure to get their names out there. Contracts with requirements for racing. Something. I also like the idea of paid contracts... but I just don' t know if that catches traction.
2 - Meet experience- Need alcohol at meets, not b/c we want alcoholics, it just promotes a social feeling. Think horseracing and some of the parties on the infield. Some of the most fun meets are ones that let people on the track to cheer folks on. Could be dangerous, but enhancing of the TV. Think about cycling and them going up the hills, just surrounded by a wall of sound. Make a meet an experience. Get people to think it's more fun... it really is, but how boring to sit in stands with nothing to drink and dealing with time between races. Gotta give the people SOMETHING to do. You could incorporate gambling... I'm not a big gambler, but seems like a bunch of people are around the world. Could be a good way to waste some time in between races (again like horse racing which can be incredibly dull).
3 - Points - I love the idea of a FedEx Cup for Track. BUT, it's hard. You have all the specialists... it's hard to compare a 100m runner and his/her points and a 10,000m runner and his/her points. What's their competition like? Is it really apples to apples? How do you adjust for that? You can't give $15mm to each even winner. You'd have to come up with a pretty advanced system. Maybe it's calculated by time won. Something like, place and time you beat your competitors by divided by the distance... so you're .0005 faster/m than your nearest competitors... the faster you are, the more points you get. Oh, I love this idea. Let's play it out further...
From Paris DL:
Noah Lyles beat Guliyev by .36 seconds over 200m - that's .0018/m faster
McBride beat Vazquez by .05 seconds over 800m - .0000625/m faster
Warholm beat Vaillant by 1.04 in the 400h - .0026/m faster
So, multiply by like... I don't know, 10000, and you get 26 points for Warholm, 18 points for Lyles, .625 points for McBride. They are all winners, just some more dominant than others. Could be a way to compare them. In addition, this could alter the tactics of races (especially the "boring" distance races some people complain about) to try and dominate them to get more points. I think it's a great idea.
As for the field events... who cares. Just kidding (kind of). You could have a field winner and a track winner I suppose. Maybe something with distance/height... I'm not diving into that one.
4 - Make it local - Isn't everything becoming local? We need more boots on the ground to get meets on the local level, make it more attractive to still compete after college. All comers meets used to be a thing. I did them when I was a kid (note, I'm 36YO). My dad ran with a group of dudes and they did 24 hour relays... sounds like a darn blast. They ran 262 miles over 24 hours... 12 man team that average That's average what... like a 5:30/mile. Pretty cool. I don't even think things like that exist anymore.
Anyway, there you go, my ideas. FWIW
tl;dr - More sponsors putting pressure on showing up, better more fun meet experience, an advance points system that rewards athletic domination in your specialty, local engagement