Often, the leaders of Elite Track and Field (and other sports) stress the need to shorten event times to create greater interest in the sport. The long death of the sport of baseball, we are told continually, is due to its slow pace and long game times, which make it irrelevant to many younger viewers.… Continue reading Short Events vs. Sparse Seasons

ETF-Forward is working with a number of individuals in the sport that have an interest in the development of the professional sport’s business. This includes University groups that will participate with us within specific academic courses, as well as other graduate students that have co-mingled track and business interests. We are interested in developing a… Continue reading Please Join Our Study Efforts!

Over the past few weeks, work on the ETF-Forward ideas has led to a number of positive developments. These include: –Discussions with a number of leaders in the current ET&F sport about the issues and challenges facing the business today. There are many good ideas about growing the sport that these worldwide leaders are pursuing.… Continue reading ETF-Forward Update: Motion and Expansion

The IAAF Diamond League (DL) Finals wrapped up tonight in Brussels. This FINALS meet is where a large chunk of the prize money is won. The amounts are by place: FINALS – prize money structure for each of the 32 events 1st $50,000 2nd $20,000 3rd $10,000 4th $6000 5th $5000 6th $4000 7th $3000… Continue reading 244 Days Until Elite Track and Field Tour Resumes

Those carefully following the recent IAAF World Championships in London would be hard-pressed not to feel that something special was going on for the ten days of this large meeting. Crowds were consistently big (apparently filling the 50,000 seat venue on a daily basis), the stadium looked great, there were many good competitive performances, and… Continue reading Full-Format London Meeting: ET&F’s First Annual “Major”?

Having forked over the cash to watch NBC Gold’s ET&F coverage, I am generally pleased by the product: lots of unedited live feeds without the annoying NBC commentators! Most of what I watch is completely free of commentary. While this is less than optimum in the ideal case (Chris Fowler and Chris Evert doing an… Continue reading NBC Gold at IAAF World Championships: Good but Fractional Product

Nationalism can inject necessary energy into challenging pursuits. The Apollo days harnessed Cold War nationalism to generate remarkable technical achievements. However, as no astronauts have left low-Earth orbit for 40+ years, it is clear that the shelf-life of this stimulus is limited. I believe that the same goes for nationalism in sports, particularly Elite Track… Continue reading Nationalism: Limited Value to Successful Sports Businesses and ET&F

Very favorable news has been released about the scale of the upcoming IAAF World Championships in London. According to published reports ( link  ), 660,000 tickets have been sold for the 10-day meeting. Apparently, this indicates that London 2017 will break the existing record for the IAAF WC by almost 60%. This presents very good… Continue reading IAAF World Championships: ET&F’s “Major”

As reported on LetsRun.com ( link ) , 96.7 The Ticket (Dallas) had some fairly mocking contents regarding the recent Tracktown Summer Series (TTSS). Like much of sports talk radio, there was some good humor mixed in with a significant level of ignorance. Check out the above link. As I have said repeatedly on this site,… Continue reading Sports Radio Dumps On the Summer Series