Doha’s loss and the IOC-USOC agreement: only the “end of the beginning”
LOS ANGELES, May 23, 2012 – There is plenty to write about from the International Olympic Committee’s Executive Board meeting this week in Quebec, especially the selection of the Candidate Cities for the 2020 Olympic Games and resolution of the long-simmering lust for a larger share of American sponsorship and television money from Euro-centric sports federation executives. Each is worth comment, but both outcomes create new opportunities.
First, the comments:
• The selection of Tokyo, Madrid and Istanbul as Candidate Cities, leaving Baku and Doha behind, was no great surprise. Baku as a first-time bidder is learning the ropes the hard way, and will return in the future. Doha cannot be as irritated as it was when it was left out of the 2016 chase, after its technical file was actually graded ahead of cities which advanced. Qatar has the 2022 FIFA World Cup and the I.O.C.’s Executive Board covered its flank by advancing Istanbul, considered a safer bidder but also a majority-Muslim country.
Assuming that Turkey’s issues vis-a-vis the 2020 European football championships can be resolved (translation: it will ultimately defer to 2024), Istanbul has politics in its favor in the 16-month run-up to the I.O.C.’s selection of the 2020 host city in September, 2013. The I.O.C. membership knows that as regards Tokyo, it has been just four years since the Olympic Games were in Bejing, and the 2018 Winter Games will be in Pyeongchang, South Korea; regardless of its assurances to the contrary, Madrid’s financial situation continues to be precarious and if Greece is excused from the Euro-zone, it may be possible that Spain (along with others) could be next.
But the Turks must not stumble along the way.
• The reported deal between the I.O.C. and the United States Olympic Committee that will allow the U.S.O.C. to continue receiving essentially the same amount it does now (adjusted for inflation) and then a much lower amount of U.S. television rights and sponsorship sales for the Olympic Games, will help American bids in the future, but is no guarantee of success.
While some early reports have hailed the agreement as a turning point for U.S. cities trying to land the Games, it is far from that. All it means is that one – of many – road blocks to a U.S. host will be removed. Any American host city will have to put forward a highly compelling bid to overcome the long-standing anti-American lean inherent in the demographics of the International Olympic Committee. That will not be lost on the experienced and insightful senior staff of the U.S.O.C. in Colorado Springs.
With these developments in mind, what are the implications for the future? Both the Qataris and the U.S.O.C. have unseen opportunities in front of them, if they care to pursue them:
(1) Qatar is positioned to create its own destiny
In my view, while Doha will continue to bid for the Games for 2024 and 2028, it has no real chance of being an Olympic host until 2032, for which the selection will be made in 2025 . . . after the 2022 FIFA World Cup is completed. Qatar can prove its mettle by organizing a quality tournament and can then use that success to sell its Olympic-organizing credentials.
However, the Qataris need not despair, or even retreat. Although it may be a while before Doha receives the international validation of being an Olympic host – and that’s really what this is about – there are other options.
American president Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind, when he made a statement of American power by sending the 16-battleship “Great White Fleet” around the world from 1907-1909. The Qataris can do the same in the sporting world; consider:
• Given its available financial resources, Doha could be the site of a major international competition unlike any currently staged:
>> A 10-day program of sports and culture, perhaps named for Pierre de Coubertin (originator of the modern Olympic Movement), with a schedule of events including the most popular Olympic sports in a national-scoring format, similar to that used for the NCAA track & field championships (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 for eight places). A trophy would be awarded for the top-scoring country in the men’s, women’s and combined competitions.
>> In order to create the highest television interest worldwide, the sports competitions could be carefully selected and held during concentrated periods. A possible schedule could include:
Day 00 (Th.): Opening Ceremonies
Day 01 (Fr): Swimming, Volleyball
Day 02 (Sa): Swimming, Volleyball
Day 03 (Su): Swimming, Volleyball
Day 04 (Mo): Gymnastics, Cycling, Cultural
Day 05 (Tu): Gymnastics, Cycling, Cultural
Day 06 (We): Gymnastics, Cycling, Cultural
Day 07 (Th): Gymnastics, Cycling, Cultural
Day 08 (Fr): Track & Field, Volleyball
Day 09 (Sa): Track & Field, Volleyball
Day 10 (Su): Track & Field, Volleyball, Closing Ceremonies
The small number of sports comes directly from the self-ranking of the International Federations, which quadrennially splits up money provided by the I.O.C. based on their popularity and profile of each sport during the Olympic Games. For London, the federations split themselves into four groups at a meeting in 2010:
Tier 1 (1): Track & Field.
Tier 2 (7): Basketball, Cycling, Gymnastics, Soccer, Swimming, Tennis, Volleyball.
Tier 3 (4): Equestrian, Handball, Hockey, Rowing.
Tier 4 (14): Archery, Badminton, Boxing, Canoe & Kayak, Fencing, Judo, Modern Pentathlon, Sailing, Shooting, Table Tennis, Taekwondo, Triathlon, Weightlifting, Wrestling.
Additional sports can be added, of course, but only in line with Doha’s existing facilities and hotel and transit infrastructure. Among the Tier 2 sports not included were basketball, soccer and tennis, whose national and international seasons would conflict with the late Fall timing of such an event.
>> The attraction, of course, would be the de Coubertin Cup, or Nation’s Trophy, along with prize purses so large that they could not be ignored. Qatar has the money for this, so why not spend it to stage a magnificent competition that it creates, nurtures and uses as a television and travel showpiece . . . at a fraction of what an Olympic Games would cost, without the legacy issues.
>> Moreover, the organization of the event could be made in cooperation with the I.O.C., international sports federations and National Olympic Committees, not to mention the world’s leading broadcasters, to ensure wide participation and television coverage.
>> In addition to the sporting events, cultural competitions can be held, as was done through 1948 in the Olympic Games, in traditional categories such as literature, painting, poetry and sculpture, but also in newer fields of games, multi-media documentaries, video and others. Major stars – as was the case in the prior Olympic art competitions – would be invited as judges.
>> Academic programming and conferences on sports issues can also be held during this period, to further highlight areas of interest, such as doping, youth participation, sport in developing nations and so on.
>> Such an event could be held every four years, perhaps in the same year as the Olympic Winter Games – usually a “down” year for the summer Olympic sports, or perhaps every two years, in the “non-Olympic” (odd-numbered) years.
In either case, it would be a program that the Qataris control and can use to show off their emerging abilities as organizers of world-class events. Although Qatar won the 2022 World Cup race, it has now been turned away twice by the I.O.C. (for 2016 and 2020) and lost to London for the 2017 World Track & Field Championships. If you can’t get invited to the other guy’s party, why not host your own?
(2) The time is right for the U.S.O.C. to create its own showcase
In the same way, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s deal with the I.O.C. over revenue-sharing now opens the way for new thinking about ways to raise more money to support the American Olympic effort.
A renewed push for citizen donations is underway, but the public is going to need to be reminded about America’s Olympic athletes more frequently than every couple of years when a summer or winter Games comes along.
Enter a new program, perhaps held in the early summer, before the annual World Championships are held in various sports, which pits selected U.S. teams against other nations or continental all-star teams in a scoring competition, again for a new trophy (how about the Theodore Roosevelt Trophy, better known as the “T.R.”!).
Imagine, for example, an eight-team competition in track & field, swimming, gymnastics and five other sports on the rotating basis, again over 10 days. The teams could be the U.S., China, Russia and all-star squads from Central & South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
The format? Don’t be silly . . . work it out with U.S. and foreign television broadcasters and the U.S.O.C.’s sponsors so that the event can be paid for! But make sure it has a team-scoring format to it that allows for a definitive winner and can be comfortably televised live in the U.S. and European time zones.
The event can be moved around the country at will, and should remain small enough to be handled comfortably by any of the U.S.’s larger cities.
Will it work? Two examples in the past which have worked well, but have now receded were the U.S. Olympic Festival (1978-95), which died when there was no longer a need for U.S. athletes to have more summer competitions and the IAAF World Cup (using the same continental all-star format), which was a sensation when introduced in 1977, but became irrelevant when the World Championships were created in 1983. (Please do not mention the so-called “Titan Games,” a poorly-conceived and poorly-produced U.S.O.C. project of 2003-04; that one had no chance of success from the moment it was dreamed up.)
For both of these major announcements coming out of this week’s I.O.C. Executive Board meetings, today’s news should be the springboard for tomorrow’s new programs that will lift both the Qataris and the U.S.O.C. to new heights. Quoting Winston Churchill’s 1942 comment after the announcement of the British victory at El Alamein, “Now, this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
(You can stay current with Rich’s technology, sports and Olympic commentaries by following him at www.twitter.com/RichPerelman.)
If football can do it, why not track: a plan for collegiate track playoffs!
LOS ANGELES, May 17, 2012 – With all the noise about a college football playoff system coming in 2015 or so, it’s not too early to examine another sport which picks its national champion in a peculiar way: track & field.
Since its start in 1921, the NCAA track & field champion has been selected by scoring each event and than crowning whichever team – among the hundreds that compete – ends up with the most points at the end of three or four days of competition.
This inevitably skews the team race toward the speed events, where a small cadre of sprinters can – in individual events and relays – can essentially win the team title by themselves. In an extreme example, USC won the 1943 team title with four entrants!
So why not create a true team championship – as gymnastics does – and then hold the traditional mass meet later to crown national event champions? It can happen, and quite easily:
• Make the conference championship meets meaningful by advancing winners of the top eight conferences into four quadrangular meets (two entries per event per team) to be held the following weekend. Despite the silly scholarship limits in track – 12.6 for men and 18.0 for women – you need a real team to win a major conference title.
Happily, even the selection of the conferences from which the winners will advance can be done without politics, by using the performance-based U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) rankings, which are compiled weekly.
• In most years, the conferences contributing “automatic qualifiers” to a 16-team playoff system in track will be the ACC, Big 10, Big East, Big XII, Pac-12 and SEC and a couple of others. The USTFCCCA rankings, which are compiled by comparing actual marks across the nation and ranking teams by their combined national standing – a much better method of comparison than the computer and human polls used in football – can then be used to select the eight highest-ranked teams as “at-large” entrants. Everyone gets to play and politics has little to do with it: you’re in or out because of your marks.
For 2012, the 16 teams advancing to the regionals would include:
Men: Conference champions Arkansas (SEC), Notre Dame (Big East), Oregon (Pac-12), Princeton (Heps), Texas-San Antonio (Southland), Texas A&M (Big XII), Virginia Tech (ACC) and Wisconsin (Big 10) plus at-large qualifiers Florida, Florida State, Indiana, LSU, Nebraska, Texas, Texas Tech and USC.
Women: Conference champs Central Florida (Conference USA), Clemson (ACC), Louisville (Big East), LSU (SEC), Ohio State (Big 10), Oregon (Pac-12), Texas (Big XII) and Wichita State (Missouri Valley) plus at-large qualifiers Arizona, Arizona State, Florida, Kansas, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.
There can be no doubt that the best “teams” in the country are among these schools.
• Four quadrangular meets for men and women would follow in one-day formats. If held at a single site on the weekend, with the men’s meet on one day and the women’s meet on the other, these meets can be held inside of three hours (excluding the hammer, sorry), making them easy to televise.
The winners of each of the four quadrangulars advance to the national team championship meet, to be held the next weekend: one day for women; one day for men, again in a 3+ hour format.
• This entire process can go on concurrently with a “preliminary round” format for qualification to what would be the “national event championships” if desired. Simply reserve four places in the NCAA event championships semifinals for the top finisher in each regional quadrangular and let additional team-championship competitors in based on their marks and placement in the descending-order lists (as shown on the TFRRS results ranking site now used.
Using this style of “playoff” system to determine the national team champion has several advantages that can help the sport in the long term:
(1) It emphasizes the team aspect of track & field, often derided as an individual sport. Anyone who has been on a high-quality collegiate team knows this is wrong, but there are very few opportunities to demonstrate this.
(2) If successful, a true team-championship playoff system will be a catalyst for increasing the scholarship limits for track to at least one per event: 21, instead of the current limits.
(3) If properly presented – a major issue in this sport – the team “regionals” and “finals” will create up to 30 additional hours of television programming. This could be helpful to the NCAA in view of its new, 10-year, $500-million non-basketball championships television agreement with ESPN.
Additionally, the major conference championship meets – as qualifiers – could also become better possibilities for television; most are currently ignored.
(4) Having the team championship decided in the format outlined does not detract in any way from honors – All-American or NCAA “finalist” – compiled by individual athletes, and just as importantly, for their coaches.
(5) Costs are modest for this program: the only “added” travel is for the national team championship meet, for just eight teams (four men + four women). For the teams in the “regionals,” travel there would replace travel to the current “preliminary round” competition.
(6) The team championship meets could be held at a rotated or constant site. Baseball and softball have profited from having their “College World Series” in permanent sites at Omaha and Oklahoma City, respectively. Perhaps this is the right kind of meet to be stationed in Des Moines or Eugene, or elsewhere, if a community wanted to step up to it. The reality is that one-day quadrangulars are not that difficult to organize and stage well; with some continuity from year to year and adequate hotel and air travel availability, the program could grow in stature with ESPN television support.
Having announced UCLA’s track & field meets during a revived era of dual-scoring events over the past two years, there’s no doubt that fan interest is heightened by an easy-to-follow scoring format. Why not crown a real team champion in track and create new interest in the sport?
If it can happen in college football – and it appears that it will – why not in the sport football players love (second) best?
(You can stay current with Rich’s technology, sports and Olympic commentaries by following him at www.twitter.com/RichPerelman.)
Lashinda Demus on the record: “we know that we’re competing in a dying sport”
LOS ANGELES, May 14, 2012 – There were plenty of headlines coming out of the U.S. Olympic Media Summit, held in Dallas over the weekend, but none more striking than Lashinda Demus, the reigning World Champion in the 400-meter hurdles, telling reporters that track & field is “a dying sport.”
Her comments came in the USA Track & Field segment of the two days of presentations of Olympic hopefuls and U.S. Olympic Committee officials to U.S. media. The hour-long program on track was split into two parts, the first a panel discussion lasting 34 minutes and featuring medal hopefuls Jillian Camarena-Williams (shot put), Demus, Allyson Felix (sprints), Hyleas Fountain (heptathlon), Trey Hardee (decathlon), Brittney Reese (long jump), Sanya Richards-Ross (sprints) and Wallace Spearmon (sprints). That session was taped and posted by LetsRun.com and was hosted by USATF Chief Communications Officer Jill Geer.
About two-thirds of the way through, Amy Shipley of the Washington Post asked the panelists about the state of the sport in the U.S., noting that it was the swimming finals which were moved for U.S. television in Bejing, and continuing:
There’s a feeling that there was this great era in track & field and maybe we’re not quite there. I was wondering if you all feel some sort of responsibility to bring back the name to U.S. track & field or is that a burden that nobody can take on, or am I exaggerating, or is that not even an issue?
The panelists looked at each and then Demus gave the sole answer:
I think we always want to bring attention to our sport, and , of course, if we can’t have that prime time slot, we want to take it. I think that every time we step on the track and perform, we know that we’re competing in a dying sport. We’re always trying to re-birth the sport. So, is it a burden . . . yes and no, because we can only do what we have been doing, which is our best. I think we are always for bringing our sport back to what it used to be. We’re the original sport.
Equally noteworthy was the follow-up comment by Geer, herself a former runner who competed at Arkansas in the early 1990s:
There’s something that also plays into that. First of all, with Jackie [Joyner-Kersee, referenced earlier in the panel discussion], you just have the talent, but also, a lot of times when these athletes are asked who their role models are, often times you name athletes who competed on U.S. soil.
So there’s definitely that element of, whether it was Jackie, or Michael Johnson, competing in the Olympics on U.S. soil seems to be what really puts the sport onto the next level, especially with the public at large. So, U.S.O.C., bring it back here.
The discussions continued, with individual athletes at different tables and Demus elaborated on her comments, as reported by Jim Caple of ESPN.com:
People are making $15,000 a year and calling themselves a professional athlete. To me that’s not a good job.
We don’t have anyone pulling in [viewers] on TV. Our races aren’t on TV like in other professional sports. It’s just less and less. They’re trying to do better than that – you can see that with the Diamond League meets – where you can see on who-knows-what-channel. We’re in the back somewhere.
Asked why, Demus added:
They say the drug thing hurts it and I think that does affect it, but you see people caught doing drugs in baseball and that doesn’t really hurt them that much.I honestly think our track meets aren’t shown, and one of the reasons they don’t show them is because they’re so long. If we can keep the meets down to a certain number of events to keep the viewership to stayed tuned for 35-40 minutes, it might be better.
. . .
That’s why we need a great marketing team. I don’t have the answers, but more media time would help, more sponsors would all help.
Caple’s report is the only one found with comments from Demus during the round-table discussions. If anyone has a tape or a transcript, don’t hesitate to forward it and we’ll run it in full.
(You can stay current with Rich’s technology, sports and Olympic commentaries by following him at www.twitter.com/RichPerelman.)
Hard choices ahead for Allyson Felix
LOS ANGELES, May 11, 2012 – The headline from today’s Diamond League meet in Doha, Qatar was Justin Gatlin’s sensational 9.87-9.88 win over Jamaican star Asafa Powell in the men’s 100 meters. But among a whole series of other compelling results was this stunner in the women’s 100 meters:
1. Allyson Felix (USA), 10.92
2. Veronica Campbell-Brown (JAM), 10.94
3. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (JAM), 11.00
(wind legal: +0.7 meters/second)
So, with just 77 days before the Opening Ceremonies of the Games of the XXX Olympiad in London, the hard choices for Felix and her legendary coach, Bobby Kersee, are here:
(A) Run just the 200 meters?
(B) Run the 200 and 400, as in 2011?
(C) How about the 100 and 200 instead?
There will be multiple factors that will go into the decision, not the least of which will be Felix’s overall health and fitness at the time of the Trials. Some of the others:
• Olympic time schedule:
The decision between a 100/200 and 400/200 double isn’t made much easier by looking at the Olympic schedule. For a 100/200 double, Felix’s racing schedule would be:
100 m heats: 3 August – 7:05 p.m.
100 m semis: 4 August – 7:35 p.m.
100 m final: 4 August – 9:55 p.m.200 m heats: 6 August – 7:20 p.m.
200 m semis: 7 August – 8:25 p.m.
200 m final: 8 August – 9:00 p.m.
That really isn’t much different than the 400/200 double, which does include one more round, but no more than one race on any day:
400 m heats: 3 August – 12:00 p.m.
400 m semis: 4 August – 8:05 p.m.
400 m final: 5 August – 9:10 p.m.200 m heats: 6 August – 7:20 p.m.
200 m semis: 7 August – 8:25 p.m.
200 m final: 8 August – 9:00 p.m.
There is no rest day between the 400 m final and 200 m heats as there would be between the 100 m and the 200 m.
• Olympic Trials time schedule:
The Trials pose even less of a problem for Felix, as the mid-meet rest days offer her plenty of time off to prep for the 200:
22 June: 100 m heats/400 m heats
23 June: 100 m semis & final/400 m semis
24 June: 400 m final28 June: 200 m heats
29 June: 200 m semis
30 June: 200 m final
Felix would be favored to make the U.S. team in any events she chooses, and is the unquestioned favorite in the 200; she has plenty of competition in the 100 (starting with reigning world champion Carmelita Jeter) and the 400 (starting with former world champ Sanya Richards-Ross).
• Prospects:
Felix and Campbell-Brown have traded the top spot on the medal stand in the 200 meters and the Olympic Games and World Championships since 2004, with Campbell-Brown winning Olympic gold in 2008 and 2008 and at the 2011 Worlds. Felix won the world title in 2005, 2007 and 2009 and Olympic silvers in 2004 and 2008, but faded to a bronze in the 2011 Worlds after finishing second in the 400 m there.
They’re essentially co-favorites for London.
Campbell-Brown is almost sure to run the 100, where she was the 2007 World Champion and won silver in that event in 2011. Fraser-Pryce is the defending Olympic champion, and then there is the powerful Jeter, who stormed past everyone in 2011 and was a convincing winner in the World Championships.
Of further note is that Felix set her 100 m lifetime best today in Doha at 10.92, and while the season is still young, she is still well-back of the personal bests of Jeter (10.64 ‘09), Fraser-Pryce (10.73 ‘09) and Campbell-Brown (10.76 ‘11), not to mention Jamaican Kerron Stewart (10.75 ‘09) and Kelly-Ann Baptiste of Trinidad & Tobago, who has run 10.86 already this season behind Jeter (10.81) at the Jamaica Invitational. Just medaling in the 100 will be very, very tough.
The picture in the 400 is much more confused. Richards-Ross ran a superb 49.5 relay leg at Penn, and has a 50.11 run behind Jamaica’s Novlene Williams-Mills (49.99 world leader; PR of 49.63 in ‘06) at the Jamaica Invitational to her credit this season. Defending world champion Amantle Montsho of Botswana (50.52; PR of 49.56 ‘11) and defending Olympic champ Christine Ohuruogu (50.92; PR of 49.61 ‘07) haven’t shown much so far this season, but it’s early. No one knows what fast-on-the-clock, but light-on-medals Russians like Anastasiya Kapachinskaya (49.35 last year) might bring. So the field is fairly open; Felix ran a lifetime best of 49.59 last year, but it was only good for silver in Daegu and took way too much out of her for the 200s that followed.
• What’s the goal?
Ultimately, Felix will have to decide what her goals are for the London Games. Still just 26, she has at least one more Olympics to look forward to and if she wants to win the 200 m gold above all, she‘ll be best off running that alone, or in concert with the 100.
Realistically, running the 100 could set her up for four medals, in both sprints and both relays, but it’s hard to believe – today – that she would win the century.
If, however, she has her eye on two individual goals and just one relay, then the 400/200 double is still out there. She has been through it once and would go through it again in Eugene on a more relaxed schedule in late June. If she is in good-enough shape, she can win the 400 and have a shot at the Jamaicans in the 200 as well, then on to a likely 4×400 m relay win.
Can Kersee get her there? Felix is a thoughtful and disciplined competitor, so she is unlikely to reveal much until she chooses her events for the Trials: the entry deadline is June 18, with final declarations due on June 20. The racing starts two days later.
[Update: At the May 13 U.S. Olympic Media Summit in Dallas, Felix was asked about a double and after acknowledging she would like to run two events, but as to which, said "Bobby will make that decision when we're a little closer."]
(You can stay current with Rich’s technology, sports and Olympic commentaries by following him at www.twitter.com/RichPerelman.)
My plan for USATF: Track & field and TV need to get married
LOS ANGELES, May 2, 2012 – Back in 2001, columnist Nick Canepa of the San Diego Union-Tribune remembered his most electric moment in a lifetime of covering sports: Eamonn Coghlan’s 3:50.6 world-record indoor mile at the sold-out Jack in the Box Games from 1981.
He asked Coghlan about the decline in track’s popularity at that time and what the Irish star said then still rings true today:
“I had a marketing professor my first year at Villanova who said, ‘If you put a monkey on TV, you’ll make it famous,’ ” Coghlan recalls. “If one network here would take a chance with track, one night a week, it would help.”
It would do a lot more than help. In my mind, it’s the answer to what track & field athletes are asking USA Track & Field to do: create a structure that allows individual athletes to earn a reasonable living in their sport.
You can’t do that without money and even with sponsorship from Nike and Visa and significant grants from the U.S. Olympic Committee, it isn’t enough. The thirst for funding was at the center of the now-famous Athlete’s Advisory Committee meeting at the USATF National Convention in St. Louis last December.
So in my second round of interviews with the search firm conducting the CEO search for USATF last month, I outlined what I would bring to the position if selected. In truth, I had little hope of being selected, but my goal was to be able to bring this scenario to the Search Committee. I wasn’t able to do that, so I am sharing it here:
(1) This is the best time in history to be selling television rights to live sporting events. Recent national contracts signed with Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the Pac-12 Conference, and regional deals for baseball with the Texas Rangers, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and soon, the Los Angeles Dodgers, show the value of television which is watched live and much less recorded and time-shifted than “reality” or scripted programming.
Fox is working on launching a new national sports channel to compete with ESPN, Time Warner Cable is creating two regional sports networks (one each in English and Spanish) to air Los Angeles Lakers (NBA) and Los Angeles Galaxy (MLS) games and the Comcast regional sports network group is looking at expansion. They all need content.
(2) Track & field has significant possibilities in this area, given its stars who will make an impression on the public – in the U.S. and abroad – at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
(3) Track and television haven’t been married since the early 1970s, when the AAU and CBS put track & field on television weekly in the spring. That series led to what became the weekly CBS Sports Spectacular, which competed with ABC’s Wide World of Sports anthology program. It’s time for track to stop dating and get married again.
On this year’s “dating circuit,” NBC will show two meets prior to the Olympic Trials. The first will be 90 minutes of the Prefontaine Classic from Eugene on June 2, for which 30-second spots retail for $11,100 each. Keep that figure in mind.
(4) For a typical baseball game on a regional sports network, the air time – not including the pre-game and post-game shows – is three hours, with 50 commercial spots (30 seconds per) available for sale. Let’s round down the ad sales rate from the Pre Classic is $10,000 per spot and a three-hour track meet (imagine seeing a fast-paced, uninterrupted, four-round shot put!) would bring $500,000 to the broadcaster.
(5) With $500,000 ad-sales revenue possible per meet, a meet owner might be able to get $250,000 or a little more from a network, if it were interested to buy a series of meets to establish a standing feature such as Fox’s baseball “Saturday Game of the Week” or the standard NFL position of games on Sunday afternoons.
(6) Consider the lack of focused programming available on Sunday afternoons for the 30 weeks between the end of the Super Bowl in the first week of February and the start of the college football season on Labor Day Weekend . . . against only regular-season baseball and golf, there is an opportunity for a weekly track series in this window, properly structured to feature the sport’s great stars, with a compelling narrative. Track has historically enjoyed pretty strong ratings for a sport which is only shown occasionally, and hard to find when it is aired.
A series of 20 meets, each three hours long, could bring a U.S.-only rights fee of $5 million, used to put on the meets and pay the athletes who place in the top eight, in the same way that golf and tennis play-for-placement. Additional rights fees for a weekly attraction held at the same time each week – like the NFL – would have rights fee possibilities for Canada, Great Britain, Japan and elsewhere in Europe that might equal the U.S. sales total (which would then be a $10 million total). Out of the rights fee pool, there is also an opportunity to pay athletes “salaries” during the latter half of the series, but more on this below.
(7) The series would be split into two parts: prior to the U.S. Championships and after. The meets from February to early June would focus on individual events, creating a points table (based on placement) for each event. The leader in each event would secure a place on the U.S. “Team” that would compete in dual or triangular meets against other national and all-star teams after the U.S. championships. The winner of the U.S. championship meet (or second-placer if the winner is also the points leader) would join as the second member of the American team in each event.
(8) The dual or triangular meets would finally showcase “the world’s no. 1 track team” in actual competition as a team. Opponents could be individual countries such as Great Britain, China, Russia, Cuba, or an area all-star team such as from Africa, South America, the Caribbean and so on. The end of the season would be, of course, the World Championships, or could be a U.S. vs. World All-Star team for a “world” trophy similar to the old (and badly marketed) IAAF World Cup.
Notably, the members of the U.S. team would be paid a salary for their time on the U.S. team, along with travel, board and training facilities. As most of the Diamond League and World Challenge meets are on weekdays, time for competition in these other meets is possible, and some promoters will be willing to pay to bring in the U.S. “team” as a whole.
(9) To make this work, a pitch to a network requires the enthusiastic backing of sponsors Nike and Visa to buy some of the time up front, but also creates a content platform to attract other sponsors, who would have a specified, well-defined “season” to work with as they do in other sports. Moreover, any presentation to a network will have to include not only the agreement to participate, but the actual presence of stars like Allyson Felix, Shalane Flanagan, Carmelita Jeter, Adam Nelson, David Oliver, Jenn Suhr and others – in the room and part of the presentation – to demonstrate athlete commitment.
(10) The calendar of meets, format, payment and facilities to be used are important details that would need to be worked out with the new television partner(s). Additional revenue beyond the $5-10 million in television rights fees would come from sponsors, ticket sales and merchandising. Coordination of schedules between the USATF series and the IAAF would be needed, but can be resolved.
Naysayers will point to the small number of meets which top athletes participate in today, and the heavy logistical requirements. From my standpoint, having been a meet director for the world-class, nationally-televised Home Depot Invitational meets in 2003-04, I see no impediment to this plan except the willingness of track & field athletes to become true professionals. Remember the length of seasons in baseball (162 games), football (16), NBA basketball (82), the NHL (82) and even 34 in MLS; if you want to make a living in track, it isn’t too much to ask you to perform once per week at the most, but more likely an average once every other week.
There will also be those who say that such a program of meets would hurt U.S. medal production in the World Championships and Olympic Games. Over the short term, possibly, and worth it in my view to create a truly professionalized track & field program in the U.S. Over time, however, the cry will be for from foreign athletes who want the same opportunities . . . as clearly demonstrated by the domination of Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners on the U.S. road circuit.
As outlined, this scenario speaks to the athletes, but the real goal is to re-format track & field as a spectator sport and create athlete funding by increasing its appeal to fans. It is not lost on the most recent sport to obtain large, national television contracts – NASCAR – that fans come first. They are, in the end, the source of all revenue.
These concepts are what I hoped to share with the USATF Search Committee, but never got the chance. Having spoken about this scenario with others, I have received plenty of encouragement, but just as many react like Luke Skywalker in “The Empire Strikes Back,” after Yoda raises his pupil’s X-wing fighter from the swamps of Dagobah:
Skywalker: I don’t believe it.
Yoda: That . . . is why you fail.
I’m with Yoda. May The Force be with you, Max Siegel.
(You can stay current with Rich’s technology, sports and Olympic commentaries by following him at www.twitter.com/RichPerelman.)
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