Track and Field is popular all around the world, and can sell out a 25,000 seat stadium when the most popular athletes compete. Coincidentally almost all of those names happen to be members of USA track and field. Noah Lyles is at the top of that list as the fastest man in the world, and he’s already gone on record to say that track athletes are not paid attention to. Even if he never lost for an entire season with practically no weeks off, he could barely make $500,000. That’s not including any endorsements, but truthfully there is not even a sneaker available to buy with his name on it?

Pro track and field has a lot of problems but many of them can be solved. The reason why the world’s fastest man has to fly all around the world to make less than the minimum salary in the NFL, is only because America doesn’t have anything legitimate for him to compete for. America actually spends way more money on sports than any other nation, so the fact that track and field is an exception to this really makes getting paid difficult. Team USA wins more Olympic medals than anyone else in the world, by a wide margin, every single year since 2000. Which means that its athletes should be able to support a league that entertains fans. When any American sports league is truly successful, the pockets of all the athletes in that league get a whole lot fatter pretty quickly.

This is a proposal for what professional track and field in America should actually look like. A league where Noah Lyles, Sha’carri Richardson, and every other elite athlete that we have gets paid what they’re worth, while competing for a championship we can actually understand. Beyond that, the fans get what they deserve, a track and field product actually done right.

How do pro sports athletes make money?

Pro sports leagues that work are all set up the same way. Endorsements are all about social media following, more than anything else in this decade. But athlete salaries to play in the NFL or the NBA are not based off of your Instagram account. It comes down to your value as a member of the sports entertainment industry. Believe it or not the NBA isn’t in the basketball business, they are in the entertainment business. That means they pay the talent what it’s worth to keep the entertainment on television. This is actually why J.J. Redick and Cam Johnson both admitted that even with the best players, NBA guys are at a disadvantage in international basketball. The entertainment product they produce called NBA basketball is not how the rest of the world plays basketball. But they’re fine with it because they get paid a whole lot of money to entertain their fans, even if Germany is the 2023 world champion in basketball right now. Pro track will likely never be anything close to as big as the NBA. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be structured in a similar way. 

Kevin Durant gets paid the maximum contract he is allowed, under a salary capped system, that pays all the players on all the teams, 50% of the total revenue from the league. You don’t have to like how this all works, but the man deserves his money because his 48.6 million dollar salary for 2023 alone as a 2 time NBA champion, is what he is worth in that system. When you consider Noah Lyles is now a 3 time world champion in the 200 meter dash alone, he is clearly getting the max contract in the system I would propose. 

What would a pro track league look like? 

America could create an 8 team track and field league that competes indoors and outdoors on the way to crowning a league champion. It would have a television deal to match because that’s where the money comes from. The XFL and USFL actually used this same model with an 8 team league that competed for a league championship. So clearly this can work, because if spring football can create a tv product that makes sense, even with two leagues competing against each other, than the best track athletes in the world can do it for themselves. The goal is to create something that Americans and the world might pay at least the same amount of attention to as those legaues.

The teams will be filled with both 32 men and 32 women. There are 18 primary track events in NCAA track and field, but 32 is about the standard number of athletes to bring for a conference championship meet in college. And the meets will be 2 ½ to 3 hours maximum of running time, because every event will not be contested in each meet. This is entertainment, not the Olympics. The teams should be scored together both men and women, not like college, so mixed relays and other fun events can help to keep it all interesting. Who wouldn’t want to watch Grant Holloway run a 4x400 or even a 100 meter dash? 

What would be the maximum contract?

The athletes who get max contracts are simple to figure out. If you have won a medal at any of the last 3 world championships or the past Olympics individually, you probably are worth the maximum. So Gabby Thomas, Sha’carri Richardson, and Sydney McLaughlin all qualify on the women’s side, because that’s who the fans are paying to see. In the men’s sprints 7 American men have won medals in the 100 or 200 in that same time span. So all of them, from Fred Kerley, to Trayvon Bromell, to Erriyon Knighton, and of course Noah Lyles himself, are eligible for the max. But remember it’s an 8 team league, so in all likelihood each one of those men will end up on a different team!

How much money is that max contract supposed to be worth, is rather complicated. The XFL projected revenue of 100 million dollars for 2024 while televising 43 games nationally, so we can use that figure on the low end. If the league I’m describing will have 21 meets on the schedule between dual meets, quad meets, all league meets, and championship contests included, than assume that less than half of the XFL’s revenue is about what track can justify. That’s 40 million dollars of capital injected into the league if it’s done properly between television, official sponsors, tickets, and merchandising, and for argument sake 20 million is owed to all of the athletes on the 8 teams.

That may not sound like a lot, but remember many track athletes right now who are competing at the USA championships, are entirely unattached. Only a few of them in each event have legit sponsors like Sha’carri Richardson with Nike. That’s a salary cap of about 1.25 million per men’s or women’s team, and the standard maximum contract on either side is worth about 300K, which is more money than the WNBA max, and still less than what the NBA is doing by percentage. If we embrace this model, than Noah Lyles, Sha’carri Richardson and all the other big name stars  Richardson, lockdown over 300K of salary just for competing in the states before the weather gets warm. They still get to compete at the USA championships, win bonuses for the World Championships, and even get Diamond League payouts for meets run in late June all the way through to September. That makes it possible for all of our top athletes to make at least half a million dollars on the track if they have a good season.

How much money would other pro track athletes make? 

At least half of the NBA is competing on some version of a minimum contract, and that is what will happen in this American track league. If you consider that USL pro soccer has a minimum salary of only $2700 per month, and the pro season I’m describing would only run for no more than 4 months, than a minimum salary of $2,700 per month plus housing is reasonable. It’s far from ideal I admit, but if you are an unattached athlete getting nothing right now to compete, it’s a significant upgrade. That’s going to be more than half of the roster on any pro team. Keep in mind even those who get minimum contracts, go from likely being unattached to getting the opportunity to audition for sponsors against the world’s best on national television.

What matters most is that track fans get to watch something that finally makes sense. College track athletes have a place to go to officially test themselves as pros, beyond the broken system  of pro track in effect right now.

The Bottom Line

Currently Noah Lyles would basically have to go undefeated in Diamond League competition the World Championships and beyond to make any real money as a pro athlete. If America finally gave the fans a chance to watch him do what he does, he could still run those races later on if he wants! Going overseas to compete in your sport should be a choice, not a necessity for any American pro athlete, but specifically anyone who is one of the world’s best. They say track is not a spectator sport, and that it can’t make money. But the 100 million dollar television deal that BBC signed for the Diamond League is proof that is not true. People do want to watch track and field. But you have to deliver it to them in a package that they would actually want to see. The rest of the world already did that. It’s exactly what the Diamond League is attempting to do for its fans, and the American market was never a major concern for them when they set it up in the first place. That’s why it’s hard for American athletes to make much money from it.

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