Keep it on the DL

Keep it on the DL

A thorough assessment of the Flotrack Diamond League deal.

Words: Jeff Merrill

Flosports now has the streaming rights for the world’s top professional track and field circuit to America and its territories. What does it mean for track and field?

This will be as thorough as we can get without knowing the specifics of the deal with regards to how much was paid for the rights, what, if anything was asked by the Diamond League of Flotrack, and Flotrack’s plans for storytelling and promotion to increase viewership in the United States.

What We Know

On Wednesday, news was made public that the US-based sports streaming company, Flosports had acquired the rights to stream all Diamond League meets with the exemption of the Pre Classic (14 meets) beginning in 2025. This deal ends one that the Diamond League had with Peacock, the NBC streaming platform that showed all DL meets in recent years. Peacock is accessed by a monthly subscription of $5.99 for which purchasers get access to other sports broadcasts, news and 900+ TV shows and movies including… The Office. As of 2023, the number of Peacock subscribers reached 31 million. Flotrack’s pricing is either $29.99 per month or $149.99 per year. A subscription gives the purchaser access to specific track and field content as well as livestreams of other sports including wrestling, cycling and softball. Flotrack does not make the number of their subscribers public.

What we have heard consistently from funders of track and field at the professional level is that we need more opportunities to introduce new fans to the sport. It is a driving focus for those in the innovative, promotional and structural realms, especially as we move toward a US-based Olympics in 2028. Track and Field lacks popularity in the United States relative to other major sports, but also compared to other parts of the world, namely Europe, where 10 of the 14 Diamond League meets are held.

The desire of benefactors and die-hard fans is to have the sport center stage, on major network channels, for free, with all the production quality and promotion of a NFL or NBA game. In the changing landscape of broadcasting, streaming and cable, having the Diamond League on Peacock, a streaming platform with incredible reach, clout, and affordability was acceptable, and given the nature of the circumstances, pretty great.

Why?

The deal, as previously stated is for the rights to stream to US audiences only. Other parts of the world will be able to access the stream for the Diamond League through various other media partners. Some audiences will even see the meets on network TV in their home countries. We don’t have all the facts and do not know what conversations were had behind closed doors in the Diamond League meetings, but we can speculate that…

The Diamond League is not as healthy as world track fandom perceives it to be.

The Diamond League, since its inception in 2010 has been a professional league, where athletes race for prize money (unlike the Olympics until recently) and can wear the uniforms of their sponsors and teams. The league, however, has always been subservient to the Olympics and World Championships, given special standing in qualification to Global Championships in attempts to attract top athletes, but remaining as a qualifier, and not the main show.

Diamond League level prize money is the most in the sport (until recently where World Champs and the Olympics now offer more) but it is a paltry sum in comparison to what would be its counterparts in other ‘Olympic sports’ like tennis’s Grand Slams and Golf’s PGA Tour. The winner of a grand slam receives ~$2.5m with the winner of a single match earning $100,000. The winner of a PGA Tour event can net up to $4.5m in prize money. The winner of a Diamond League event gets $10,000. Last year, the winner of the Portland Track Festival 1500m, a non-Diamond League event won $4,200, $700 more than they would get for placing third in the Diamond League.

The push to gain US audiences is not worth it to the Diamond League.

The fact that track and field ranks as low in popularity as it does in the US might be an issue that the DL believes is too big for the league to improve. It is possible that the DL chose to take the money that Flotrack was willing to give it for the rights to better cover production costs and keep quality high for fans around the world and leave the problem of growth of US fandom to someone else. Production costs for an NBC level broadcast (a level approached by most DL streams) is roughly $250,000, give or take. This is a significant line item when considering just how much is paid in prize money at these meets. That’s the equivalent of 10 Diamond League races, paying 1st through 8th place.

I believe there will not be a drop in production quality. It is likely that Flotrack will not be producing the meet programming for the Diamond League meets and have just bought the streaming rights. A production company hired by the Diamond League will continue to bring the quality we’re accustomed to, and Flotrack is helping foot the costs to keep production high.

Potentially NBC also does not see the growth of track and field fandom in the United States as their problem either. They have reportedly paid $7.75 billion for the rights to Olympic coverage through 2032. What we hear all the time is that no one really cares about track and field outside of the Olympics. NBC knows that. As a corporation in the business of making money, looking for the most viewed content on the planet to house on their platforms, why would they choose to give space to something who’s own fans lament “nobody cares about?” As it stands right now, it feels like everyone will watch the Olympics every four years, whether they watch track in the meantime or not. NBC doesn’t feel it’s necessary to try to boost track and field in the interim in order to… gain more viewers for the Olympics, and event that the entire world stops to watch.

Best Case Scenario

The best-case scenario to come from this deal for the sport of track and field, its athletes, fans purveyors and for Flotrack is that all existing US track fans (a number we estimate at ~50,000 for what we label as dedicated fans) purchase subscriptions to Flotrack. Because of this, all meets in the United States go to Flotrack and fans can watch every meet they wish to via the service. Wresting, cycling and softball fans all become track fans because of the access they get through Flosports. Advertising money is pumped into the sport and to Flotrack because of this phenomenon and Flotrack can up their production quality for every meet across the board as well as their off track storytelling content and analysis shows while athletes earn more from sponsors and increased prize purses at meets due to the increased visibility. Due to the commotion and excitement, people on the outside wonder what is going on behind that paywall and begin purchasing Flotrack subscriptions. The sport grows into a valuable commodity to the point that Flotrack is approached by major investors who offer to front the cost to either significantly lower subscription costs or get rid of them all together.

Worst Case Scenario

Fans who are not already Flotrack subscribers do not purchase a Flotrack subscription. The US track fanbase shrinks. Because of less eyes on the sport, less money goes into the sport. Due to many major footwear and apparel companies being based in the United States, executives at these companies find it difficult to justify the sponsorship of athletes in a sport that no one they know watches. Athlete sponsorship dollars plummet. With already extremely low levels of prize money in the sport, the ability for even the best athletes to make a living in the sport becomes nonexistent. Less young athletes choose track and field as their preferred sport.

The true scenario likely lies somewhere in the middle of these.

Who benefits from this deal?

In the short term, the Diamond League benefits from the money they receive in the deal. We will see how it plays out in the long term.

Influencers. With a smaller audience for track athletes in the highest level professional league in the sport, the justification by brands to sponsor athletes who may be the best in their discipline but have a smaller following becomes more difficult. Influencers who have a greater following and easy accessibility to content they create will receive more brand dollars.

Big Meets that choose to strike their own media deals. The Pre Classic is a great example here. I assume that the Pre Classic will continue to be shown on NBC, like the Olympics and World Championships. In doing so, they will elevate their status above the other Diamond League meets and be placed in the minds of American viewers as in the same realm as the Olympics and World Championships. The opportunities in advertising money and even athlete appearances will be greater for them, if the US market holds any sway.

Brands that sponsor meets will always want the meets to be seen by the greatest audience possible. Because of this, there could be a bump in brand sponsorship of meets that choose to have a free broadcast, whether on a streaming platform or YouTube. Because athlete payment in the sport is so tied to sponsorships, it likely will not matter what the prize money is at these meets (It already does not. What athletes value is the World Athletics tier level: Gold, Silver, Bronze, giving them a better shot at increasing their rankings and qualifying for global championships), what matters to paying sponsors is visibility for their athletes and the products they are wearing.

Individual Promotional outfits. These are your Citius Mag’s and the like. Tempo Journal, Trackstaa and such. If fans are not actually watching the meets, their engagement with these social media marketing entities will go up. They’ll scroll IG and Twitter to get highlights and news bits instead of watching the actual race.

Who is Potentially Hurt?

Could be the Diamond League in the long run, we’ll see how it plays out. If the US market turns out to be valuable to advertisers and there is a noticeable slip, the DL will feel it.

US Track Fans. Instead of paying $5.99 a month to watch the highest level of their sport as well as reruns of The Office, they are faced with a choice to pay or not pay $30 a month ($35.99 if they still want to watch reruns of The Office). In addition to this, if they would like to also pay for a Runnerspace subscription, that’s another $12.99 per month.

Runnerspace. It would be interesting to see how many people pay for both a Runnerspace and Flotrack subscription. If there are fans out there that will only purchase one, this deal could move some from Runnerspace to Flotrack. It also further sours the taste from any subscription model.

PPV Meets. Fans may feel burnt out on all the charges in general. Even a lower one-time cost might be too much to pony up after being angered by the $30 charge. We always prefer to stream for free, and do that when we get the generous brand support. Maybe this deal will create more incentive for that.

When we first started running the pay-per-view model, we saw viewership drop by upwards of 4/5ths from the free streaming option. I would guess that even if Michigan football decided to charge $30 a month to view their games, they would likely drop 2/3rds of their viewers. Heck, there were a couple Michigan games on Peacock this last year and the uproar did not exactly rival what we’re seeing from track fans with the DL move to Flotrack, but there was vocal anger.

If I could snap my fingers and see a graph in front of me, I would like to see the audience depletion rate first from instituting any paywall model from a free broadcast, then to incremental price hikes. My hunch is that the initial action of paying any price at all would yield the biggest drop-off, and then it would be an exponential depletion rate as the price goes up. $30 is way up there…

Brands. Unless they are sponsored by the same brand that is seen on their national kit, most athletes do not compete in the apparel products of the brand that sponsors them at the Olympics and World Champs. The Diamond League provides a stage for brands whose athletes can actually wear the uniforms of the branded teams that pay them. With less audiences tuning in, brands will not get the visibility they pay for.

Athletes. It is difficult for a sports marketing manager to go to their bosses at a brand and say: “let’s invest in a team of athletes that will race consistently on a niche streaming service.” It was easier when it was: “let’s invest in a team of athletes that will race consistently on an NBC owned platform with 31 million subscribers.” It is already difficult for athletes who train at a high level to also be high level influencers. Like it or not, being an influencer is a full-time job (I hope I never hear these words out of my daughter’s mouth). A lack of opportunities to be seen by large audiences doing what you dedicate your life to will push athletes to have to budget their time between training and curating their online presence.

I’m not sure if the Olympics technically benefit from this deal, because the dedicated track audience is really too small to make a dent in overall Olympic viewership, but this deal does further solidify the Olympics as far and away, the most valuable track and field property in the world. Something that has long been hoped by athletes and anyone involved in the sport is that the Olympics will sweep up newcomer fans to track in the magic of it all and they’ll stick around for the in-between years. Now those potential fans will face a steeper price of entry, and we, within the sport must continue to pull apart the Olympics and figure out what magic can be borrowed from it. Is it the sport at all or is it something else entirely?

Going Forward

I didn’t include Flotrack in either the beneficiaries or the potentially hurt parties because it is unclear at the moment which one they will inhabit. Flotrack has a grand story. They started as a rag tag group of post collegiates who travelled the country in a van at the dawn of the streaming age. They filmed meets, practices and tours of college athletes’ houses and put the videos up on the internet for an audience who had never experienced that kind of content before in an age when the old media guard and meet organizers were still figuring out how to write contracts for these things. Now they have the rights to stream the world’s pinnacle professional track league.

Flotrack now bears a lot of responsibility for the future of track and field in the United States. They can choose to do any number of things to radically change the consumption of it. It is no secret that they have a staunch online resistance, having to routinely block comments on posts that are critical of their subscription model and coverage. What will they do to attempt to offer an olive branch to these fans? This is a risky endeavor for the streaming company. If this partnership backfires and the Diamond League makes a decision to go a different route in the near future, how will that affect Flotrack’s subscriber base? It seems that when the waters are calm, there is no reason to think about cancelling a subscription. Oftentimes, people don’t even know they’re subscribed to something. Given a reason to unsubscribe, it is possible they lose more than they gain. A deal of this magnitude and what may result of it calls attention.

Whenever there is change, there are opportunities to improve on the previous model. We have seen what the power of better storytelling, increased promotion and production quality can do to elevate a sport, most recently in collegiate women’s basketball. We’ve also seen it in F1 racing with Drive to Survive. How will Flotrack choose to steward US track viewership for the coming years? They’ve got the reigns, and they can do a lot of good. If they give us something compelling enough, we have the choice to see it.