When The Stars Are Out

Photo by Tim Healy

When The Stars Are Out

A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy. -Gay Talese Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Words Jeff Merrill

Last week, it was announced on the Allianz Memorial Van Damme Instagram account that Olympic gold medalist and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin Levrone would race not one, but two events in the meeting playing host to the Diamond League Final. This news was met with excitement by many a track fan, who spent most of the season bemoaning the fact that one of the sport’s biggest stars does not race too often, in fact, she had not raced in a Diamond League meeting all year. The announcement stated that the 400m hurdle world record holder would race the 200m and 400m in Brussels in ‘her first (and only) appearance after the Paris Olympics.’. The double appeared to be a dress rehearsal for Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track league for which she was the first athlete to sign on to compete in 4 meets per year, 2 races per meet.

The issue here, immediately called out by other fans, is that lanes of races in the Diamond League Final are reserved for athletes who have earned those spots through accruing points competing in the Diamond League all year long. McLaughlin Levrone had not competed in a single DL meeting. There are loopholes though. The host organization of the Diamond League Final is allowed to place a local athlete that has not qualified on points into the competition. But Mclaughlin Levrone is not Belgian. The second loophole- the DL Final host is also allowed to give a ‘Global Wildcard’ spot to a competitor of their choosing who has raced at least 1 Diamond League event in the calendar year. This rule granted Jakob Ingebrigtsen a spot on the starting line in the 3000m last year in Eugene. Again, Mclaughlin Levrone has not raced a single Diamond League race this year.

The Allianz Memorial Van Damme (Brussels DL) took to Instagram once again early Thursday morning to clear things up, stating that races had been created in the pre Diamond League program portion of the meet, and this is where Sydney would compete. The details are not public (as they never are), but it is possible that she is receiving an appearance fee from the meet to compete in exhibition races leading into the Championship event of the top pro league in the sport. It is not clear whether the meet ever intended to have Sydney race in the Diamond League program, or if she wanted to.

Following this post, Grand Slam Track, which has blanketed social media and airwaves since their announced arrival took the opportunity to steal some limelight by trolling the Diamond League with a post stating:

Dear Syd,

We’ll let you run…

Four times a year.

But… the Brussels meet is letting her run… in fact, it appears that they’re bending over backwards to make accommodations for her. Any meet would. They’re just not breaking their readily available and searchable rules. Rules that exist to incentivize athletes to race more throughout the season.

We beat the drum constantly, that one of the main issues with track is that there aren’t enough meets with meaning. Most are largely viewed as exhibitions with little bearing on a season-long outcome or significance when it comes to being able to walk into a bar at 65 years old and exclaiming: “I was the 2024 Silesia Diamond League triple jump champion!” Bending and breaking preset rules for competitions further erodes any meaning events have.

This, however, does not solve the issue of athletes selecting themselves out of competing.

It is difficult to suss out the impact that Sydney has on TV ratings of any given meet she either competes in or doesn’t. Her limited schedule does not offer many similar meets to compare outside of global championships. This year, she won the 200m at the USATF LA Grand Prix, which 846,000 people watched her run per Nielson ratings. Last year, the meet was viewed by 777,000. She was slated to race in last year’s event but withdrew the Tuesday before the Saturday event. The decision to do so was made by her coach, Bobby Kersee. Later in the year, Sydney missed the World Championships in Budapest, the most important meet of the year, due to a knee injury.

By all accounts, meet directors believe having Sydney on the line to be a major boost, which is why they are likely to pay her top dollar to compete in their meets, and find a way to accommodate her even if she does not meet the qualifying criteria of the standard program. They can show the higher ratings and increased online mentions to potential sponsors and float another year. The other athletes who compete in the meet benefit from Sydney’s presence, through visibility to a greater audience for their own personal brands and sponsors that support them, and potential revenue trickle-down into their own appearance money. It is a star-driven sport, and the existence and participation of stars raises all boats. Not having stars in a meet puts the meet in financial jeopardy.

If the potential sponsors being pitched to by meet organizations are sharp, they’ll ask if athletes like Sydney are booked to race next year.

This is why Grand Slam Track is rolling out the format they’ve put together.

GST is being formed with a mission to, in Michael Johnson’s words: “bring track back to the forefront.” It aims to do that by getting the best athletes together to compete against each other on a consistent basis, giving fans a dependable schedule of watching their favorite athletes. They are doing this by having athletes sign contracts to compete in 4 events (8 races) throughout the year. The contracts the athletes are signing are essentially for appearance fees. If they don’t race, they don’t get them. It is not clear whether amounts of these contracts will ever be made public as salaries are in other professional sports, but each one is negotiated on an individual basis, as appearance fees are in other meets like the ones that make up the Diamond League. These contracts, however, will allow GST to go into negotiations with potential sponsors and TV networks with a roster of athletes who say they will compete.

The question is, will they?

The main source of income for track and field athletes at the top comes from their individual deals with brand sponsors. The power that athletes have in these contracts varies depending on how valuable they are to the brand. Some contracts have clauses in them stating that athletes must compete in a certain amount of meets. There are bonus structures for achievements like medals and records. Some also have dreaded reduction clauses, allowing the brand to reduce the amount an athlete earns if they do not meet the contract’s criteria. The bonuses within these contracts have historically been focused on qualifying for the Olympics and World Championships and placing highly there. The gravitational pull of these two events within the sport is undeniable.

Currently, the kind of athlete that can drive up TV ratings can live comfortably off their brand sponsorship deal by doing the minimum required to make it to the global championships. In fairness, doing any more than what is required is a risk to doing their maximum at the championships. An athlete’s health is their meal ticket. Stressing their body increases the chances of injury.

Top athletes commit all the time to meets, big and small, whether they are offered appearance fees or not. Meet directors know that the lineup for any given meet never looks better than a week and a half from when the meet is to take place. Then the attrition starts. It is what makes promoting competitions so difficult. Announce the early lineups and stomach the withdrawals and subsequent fan disappointment, or wait until the last minute to show the most accurate fields and miss out on valuable marketing.

Given the difficulty of getting athletes to compete at any given meet outside of the Olympics and World Championships, the proposition of getting the world’s top athletes at the same meet is a tall task for the upstart league and one they will likely find difficulty enforcing. So far, out of 48 roster spots, they have 6 athletes contracted to compete in 2025. 2 of those athletes, Josh Kerr and McLaughlin Levrone have competed a total of 4 and 6 times in 2024 outside of national or international championships.

That being said, I believe Grand Slam Track is taking the right approach with regard to this particular conundrum, even if their social media post was throwing a stone.

They’re making sure the public knows that the money they are offering both in terms of contractual amount and prize money (10x the amount of a Diamond League race for 1st place) is significant, and then promoting the athletes that have committed to competing as early and as often as possible. The great experiment is testing whether that amount of money is too good to pass up and can outweigh the comforts of a brand sponsorship coupled with the fear of injury, loss of training, or a cold prior to the World Championships. If contracted athletes do not end up racing one or more GST events, how will that be viewed by the public? How will the announcements be handled by GST?

In the short lifespan of professional track and field, this amount of money has never been invested directly into the competition structure of the sport. The investors no doubt expect a return. With committed stars racing a dependable season, we’ll see if the sport can draw the kind of viewership that can bring track back to the forefront. If the league can make it past the first couple of years and establish itself as an institution with equivalent standing to the global championships, maybe it can sway the brands to build wins in GST meets into the bonus structure of contracts. Then it will be Grand Slam Track they’re training for and the vibrations will strengthen the sport’s economy. Fly me to the moon.