Athlos NYC: What to Know About Alexis Ohanian’s New Professional Track Meet Featuring Rapper Megan Thee Stallion
Athlos will have four Olympic champions from Paris at its women's-only meet that will pay out $60,000 to each event winner
By Jonathan Gault
It is track & field’s Gordian knot: how do you take a sport that is fabulously popular at the Olympics and make it resonate with the masses more than once every four years?
A few determined individuals have attempted to answer that question and unlock the coveted US market. The TrackTown Summer Series folded after two seasons. The American Track League is still chugging along but has yet to achieve mainstream success. Track & field, like swimming and gymnastics, struggles for popularity in the United States unless it is preceded by the word “Olympic.”
Now, in the wake of one of the most exciting Olympics ever, three more would-be Alexanders are lined up with their swords to take a stab at track & field’s most intractable problem. Sprint legend Michael Johnson is launching Grand Slam Track in 2025, a four-meet series backed by a hefty investment by Winners Alliance, the for-profit arm of the Professional Tennis Players Association. Meanwhile Barry Kahn, a former Cornell distance runner, plans to hold the first Duael Track meet, a March Madness-style head-to-head event, in March 2025.
Before either of those comes Athlos, a women’s-only meet dreamed up by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian whose first edition will be held at New York’s Icahn Stadium on Thursday night.
Athlos is taking a quality over quantity approach. There are only 36 athletes in the entire meet: six races, six women per race. But the quality is high. Of the six events on offer — 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500, 100 hurdles — four of them feature the Olympic champion from Paris. The 100m hurdles pits the last two Olympic champs, Masai Russell and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, against reigning world champion Danielle Williams. The 400 includes Marileidy Paulino and Salwa Eid Naser, the gold and silver medalists from Paris. Gabby Thomas, the triple Olympic champion in the 200, 4×100, and 4×400, is the face of the meet and was there when Ohanian launched it back in April. She will face Diamond League champion Brittany Brown in the 200.
Athlos has attracted those fields in part by offering an enormous prize purse (by track & field’s modest standards), with $60,000 for the win in each event — double what the winners received at this year’s Diamond League final in Brussels (there’s also $25,000 for second, $10,000 for third down to $2,500 for 6th). Currently, the World Championships ($70,000) is the only meet to offer a larger first-place prize, though that will change when Grand Slam Track ($100,000 for first) begins next year. On top of that, 10% of all commercial revenue from Athlos will be evenly divided among every runner.
The generous prize money and focus on female athletes help explain why the likes of Faith Kipyegon, Gudaf Tsegay, and Mary Moraa were willing to extend their seasons and fly across the Atlantic for a late-September track meet.
Thomas won at the NYC Grand Prix in June en route to Olympic gold in Paris (Kevin Morris photo)
“Women and money,” says 400m runner Shamier Little when asked why she is competing at Athlos. “I love women, and I love making money.”
Attracting athletes is one thing. What about attracting fans? On its website, Athlos describes itself as “Coachella meets a track meet.” DJ D-Nice will be spinning sets between races. And at the end of the meet, rapper Megan Thee Stallion will perform on stage.
“It’s for the track fan for sure, but it might be for that more casual fan,” says Athlos chief marketing officer Kayla Green. “Or it might be for a Megan Thee Stallion fan who has never been to a track meet before and they leave and they say, ‘that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever been to and my goodness these women are exceptional, I need to follow them.’”
Considering a number of her biggest hits, such as “Savage” and “Hot Girl Summer,” deal with female empowerment, Megan Thee Stallion fits the theme of the meet perfectly. Some of the athletes are still struggling to process that one of the world’s most famous rappers is actually showing up.
“No track meet that I’ve ever been to – and I’ve been to many – have someone like that as a performer,” says 1500m runner Cory McGee. “It’s like the Super Bowl, having someone like her.”
Russell is a big Megan Thee Stallion fan. She has seen her perform before, at the Astroworld Festival in 2019, but not like this.
“The fact that she’s coming to a track meet just sounds pretty insane,” Russell says.
A fresh look at the sport
Athlos is not Ohanian’s first venture into sports. In 2020, he was one of the founding investors in Angel City FC, the Los Angeles-based National Women’s Soccer League team that is now valued at $250 million, making it the most valuable women’s sports team in the world. And while Ohanian, who is married to tennis legend Serena Williams, enjoys women’s sports, he had never been to a track meet until attending this year’s US Olympic Trials. He does not view Athlos as a charity case. He views it as a sound investment.
“None of this is about what feels good or feminism,” Ohanian told The Athletic in July. “This is just data.”
In April, Ohanian announced his plans for a professional track meet, the 776 Invitational, named after Ohanian’s venture capital firm that was financing the project. Since then, the name has changed to Athlos and the meet has brought on sponsors such as Toyota and Tiffany & Co., who designed bespoke crowns that will be awarded to each event winner.
To help run the meet, Ohanian tabbed Green, who served as head of marketing at Angel City as well as CMO of the LA Golf Club, a team that Ohanian co-owns in Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy‘s upcoming TGL golf venture. Agent Mark Wetmore, whose Global Athletics & Marketing firm stages the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix and USATF NYC Grand Prix, will handle race operations. But a number of those involved with Athlos are new to the track world.
“What we do is we pull in the experts when we need them,” Green says. “…For those of us that don’t come deep, deep, deep from the track world, what we do is bring first principles and DNA from the specializations that we do have. And we think that that really helps.”
Russell is hoping Athlos will help create a few new track fans (Kevin Morris photo)
One of those “first principles” ideas that came directly from Ohanian regarded athlete introductions: Ohanian wanted to generate hype prior to every race, like boxers entering the ring before a prizefight. So Athlos asked each woman to choose a walk-out song and show a little of their personality. Russell is trying to play to the crowd by selecting a local artist, Pop Smoke.
“He’s from New York, his music is lit, and I know he’s going to get the New York crowd lit,” Russell says. “…I think it’s gonna be a super high electric vibe, the energy is going to be through the roof.”
One idea Green is particularly proud of: Athlos’ bibs, which are the first designed specifically for a female torso.
“We were talking with some of the athletes, and I was like, what’s the deal with these bibs?” Green says. “Do you guys like them?”
Hurdler Alaysha Johnson told Green that, no, she did not. Most of them were designed with men in mind and were too big for her. So Green asked Wetmore if they could create smaller bibs for Athlos.
There will also be a glamour photo shoot at the Empire State Building the day before the meet, with Serena Williams’ company, Wyn Beauty, providing makeup for the shoot as well as race-day touch ups.
Russell was qualified to run the Diamond League final in Brussels on September 14 but chose to skip it, citing mental and physical fatigue. She could have ended her season, but Russell viewed Athlos as a chance to have some fun — and make some good money.
“I wanted to be aligned with a brand that is for women’s empowerment, and the payday is amazing.” Russell says. “…I’m just hoping that Athlos is the standard that they’re now setting for us women in sports and track in general.”
Athlos chose a late-September date not to interfere with athletes’ preparation for the Olympics or Diamond League. McGee says that in some ways it is freeing that “there isn’t really anything on the line” at Athlos. The flip side of that? Having something on the line is one of the most compelling reasons to watch a sporting event.
“I’m not thinking about points, I’m not thinking about place,” McGee says. “I’m just out there racing. I’m really excited for that because that’s just a different style than what a lot of races are.”
“There is ambition for this to become something bigger”
Athlos has invested serious money for some serious star power, but in some ways, the meet is still quite small. There are no men, no field events, and no meets on the schedule beyond the first one on Thursday. What, I ask Green, is the long-term vision?
Kipyegon is one of four Olympic champions from Paris slated to compete at Athlos (Kevin Morris photo)
“What I can say is there is ambition for this to become something bigger,” Green says. “But today the focus is completely executing Athlos New York flawlessly…For us, this is really about making sure we nail the basics and that we earn our way into the sport, earn the trust and the respect of the track community. So we have to get it right.”
Green declined to comment when asked about whether she expects the meet to be profitable.
“What we’re hoping is that all of the criteria that we’ve laid out for this thing to be a success, that we exceed that,” Green says. “That we have a stadium that’s completely full of fans, that we have fans all around the world that tune in, and that we broaden the reach of this sport and the excitement of this sport to new fans.”
Athlos, which has an ad promoting the meet in Times Square, is still working on the first one. Icahn Stadium seats 5,000 people, and as of Monday night, upwards of 500 tickets remained unsold on the official website (it doesn’t help that, while located right next to Manhattan, Icahn’s location on Randalls Island is not easily accessible by subway).
Ohanian did tackle a frequent complaint of track fans by making the Athlos broadcast as accessible as possible: it will be streamed live, for free, on YouTube and X, as well as via subscription services DAZN and ESPN+ (with a re-air on ESPN2 on Sunday). A free stream lowers the barrier for entry, but casual fans still have to find the meet. The last major pro meet in New York, June’s NYC Grand Prix, drew 1.4 million TV viewers — a strong number because it was on a major network (NBC) at a key time of the track season (right before the Olympic Trials). Athlos will have neither of those advantages.
Track diehards should also like the fields, which, absent a couple of high-profile names (Sha’Carri Richardson and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone), are very strong. But Athlos will be judged on whether it can penetrate beyond the diehards.
Athlos is targeting two potential audiences. The first, Green says, is what she describes as “core to more” — getting someone who is already a track fan to bring a friend along with them. The second is the fan who only watches track during the Olympics but does not follow the sport outside of the Games.
Of course, those are the same audiences track has been chasing (unsuccessfully) for decades. Is Megan Thee Stallion, walk-out music, and a larger prize purse enough to pull them in? We’ll soon find out.
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