First let’s spare a thought for the losers in Grand Slam Track’s decision to squeeze this weekend’s Philadelphia event, originally slated to take place over three days, into two afternoons.
You have to feel for everybody who already bought tickets for day one, eager to watch some high-stakes races under Franklin Field’s Friday Night Lights, as well as the homebodies who had planned a weekend evening around a Grand Slam Track broadcast. If you’re in Philly, maybe take the opportunity to hike to a cheesesteak spot the locals trust, or run the Rocky Stairs like a true tourist. I’ll probably use those hours to get a belated start on my summer vegetable garden.
I also empathize with the hardcore track nerds who had budgeted nine hours for watching professional track this weekend. They can use that unexpected time surplus to connect with friends and family, or focus on the NCAA regionals, which are also underway this weekend. Choose wisely, track fans.
The decision, as we’ll discuss later, will save your favourite distance runners some physical wear and tear, while their bank accounts will also suffer some damage. But it’s also a sensible compromise, and we can categorize the slimmed-down event as one of the growing pains a brand new league will inevitably suffer.
For all the early-season hiccups, the first two GST events have also delivered some unambiguous victories. High-stakes pro races in the spring used to be rare in track and field; now we can plug them into our calendars. Grand Slam Track has prompted the elusive Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to race consistently, and allowed young stars like Melissa Jefferson-Wooden to grab the early season spotlight.
TRACKSIDE | How will McLaughlin-Levrone fare in short hurdles at GST Philadelphia:
Hosts Perdita Felicien and Aaron Brown react to the news that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will be dropping down the flat 100m, and 100m hurdles for Grand Slam Track’s 3rd meet in Philadelphia.
If you’re invested in the sport, its long-term success, and its ability to attract a broader audience, all those facts matter.
Still, asking casual sports fans, who rarely watch track and field outside the Olympics, and who might struggle to name five track stars even if you spotted them Noah Lyles and Usain Bolt, to watch track for three hours a day for three straight days, is overly ambitious. A streamlined Philadelphia event figures to serve up a faster-paced broadcast product, better suited to drive-by fans, and young people with short attention spans.
Will it work? None of us are sure.
But it has a chance, which is more than most first-year leagues are guaranteed in a crowded sports broadcast market.
But the basic premise – world class athletes going head-to-head on a regular schedule – remains. Lose that proposition, and you really risk alienating current and potential viewers.
As for the timing of these changes?
As close to ideal as possible.
WATCH | De Grasse finishes 4th in 200m of Grand Slam Track debut in Miami:
Kenny Bednarek of the United States wins the men’s 200-metre race to become the Grand Slam Track Miami short sprints champion. Fellow Canadians Andre De Grasse and Jerome Blake finish 4th, 6th respectively.
Midway through season one you’ve had a chance to see what works (high-level races between motivated competitors) and what doesn’t (broadcasts with banks of empty seats in the background). You’re trying to build interest and fan loyalty that can roll over into season two, but the audience isn’t so committed to the format that they can’t handle some adjustments.
The challenge, as always is to attract new fans without turning off the originals, and it’s a difficult balance to strike for a first-year league in a niche sport with mainstream dreams.
But if a new pro sports outfit is looking for a foothold in North America generally, and the U.S. specifically, they have to account for audiences with a limited appetite for long, slow-paced broadcasts.
We make an annual exception for the Super Bowl (average broadcast time: 3 hours, 37 minutes), which is a concert, wrapped in commercials, strapped to a football game. And on a weekly basis, U.S. college football (average broadcast length: 3 hours, 24 minutes) succeeds on TV despite the bloat built into the viewing experience. But every other sport is more like Major League Baseball, which has introduced a series of rule changes aimed at juicing the pace of the game, and fitting each contest into a tighter broadcast window.
WATCH | Track’s new pro league, the Grand Slam of Track, explained:
Four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson is the man behind the new professional track league.
The condensed version of Grand Slam Track on tap this weekend figures to check the same boxes.
For people following the event, it means fewer trips to the website to remind themselves which two of the three days each athlete is competing. They’re all running once on Saturday and again on Sunday.
Long distance group pays the price
Except the long distance group. The women run the 3,000 metres on Saturday, with the men on Sunday. No more 5,000. It didn’t fit within the two-day format.
Does the new schedule short-change distance runners?
Financially, it doesn’t help. As a freelancer who gets paid by the story, I’m beyond familiar with the headache of recalculating your finances when an assignment vanishes from the calendar. It’s not fun.
It’s easy for league-level decision-makers to demand more output from athletes, regardless of optimal, or even feasible, turnaround times. The NFL just lengthened its regular season to 17 games, and the league would love an 18th. Thursday nights, Christmas afternoon, Black Friday – all in the schedule now, even though short rest periods work against player safety and the quality of the product.
Grand Slam Track actually made the tougher decision. Instead of mandating half-hearted races on back-to-back days, the compressed schedule lets distance runners concentrate on running their best race, one time.
These athletes might seem superhuman, but they’re still human.
Schedule change means compromise. Organizers had the chance to cut corners on quality but opted not to. Doesn’t guarantee the moves will succeed long-term, but they gave themselves a chance.
