World Athletics – The Next Frontier for Sports Marketers?

Usain Bolt is adored by billions at Beijing 2008

For two weeks every 4 years, they are the biggest and most celebrated names on the planet. Bolt, Gay, Powell, Wariner. Then, as quickly as they appeared as the lead story on our news services, they disappear from our radars altogether. For the next four years, you might just catch their names at the end of a sports bulletin, but probably only if they’ve managed to break a world record. In the current sports climate, where many different codes have become billion-dollar businesses in direct competition with each other, why should athletics be left behind? After all, basic athletic skills like running, jumping and throwing are the essentials for nearly every sport we play.

In the past five years, other sports like cricket have undergone major transformations with the introduction of the Twenty20 format, as a way of modernising the game, attracting new fans and generating more interest from existing cricket lovers. This has led to an explosion of money being brought into the game. The introduction of the Indian Premier League has seen a domestic city-based first-class competition go from the second tier of cricket-mad India, to the forefront of the international sports media for a month every year. Sponsors have poured money in and players from countries all over the world have rushed to sign highly lucrative contracts, sometimes at the expense of represting their country. This has seen a game with very few changes in its long history become the latest craze for sports fans, and has made major celebrities out of players who might have otherwised never been heard of outside their own countries.

In more recent times, tennis is the latest sport to be earmarked for a revamp, with the introduction of a world cup format being proposed. Both of these radical changes have been made or proposed to be made because sports marketers believed these particular sports could be better delivered to the consumer; that there was an opportunity to improve on the way it was currently being operated. The sport of athletics is in the same boat and, perhaps even more so than cricket and tennis, could simply be much, much bigger than it is right now.

Track and field events are not activities restricted to certain cultures, genders or geographic regions like many other sports. At the last IAAF (International Association of Athletics Foundations) World Championships – Germany 2009 – 202 nations competed with 24 female events and 24 for men. In Australia, athletic events like short and long distance running, long jump, high jump, discus and hurdles were among the first sports we competed in, at things like primary school sports carnivals. At such a young age, almost every one becomes involved to some degree, and although participation is manditory in a sense, the amateur nature of these events means that they are embraced by most. My point here is not that we all wanted to be professional track and field stars when we grew up, rather that athletics has a distinct advantage over almost all other sports because the majority of the world’s population have some understanding or level of previous involvement within athletics.

However, the way athletics is currently delivered gives us very little chance to follow and become passionate about elite athletics. Why shouldn’t athletics be as popular, if not more so, than other individual sports like tennis and golf? And how can team sports like cricket claim to be winning more fans due to the diversity of its three different formats, when track and field can comprise up to 48 different events (at the 2009 world championsips)? With the stars of the sport showcasing such raw skills that have been idolised for many centuries, why is athletics not among the world’s most marketable sports? What other sport can hark back to such a revered heritage, to events like the Ancient Olympic Games? Athletics is not a sport that has been left behind by its rival codes. Quite the opposite. Elite track and field athletes are among the most highly conditioned athletes on the planet. Who knows how fast Usain Bolt might be running 100m right now if he was challenged and performing in front of billions many times a year, rather than every 2 or 4 years?

The presentation of international athletics as it stands today does little to feed the desires of athletics lovers. The Olympic Games every four years are obviously the sport’s main attraction. The Commonwealth Games provide another opportunity for some competitors to again show their talents, but only if they were born in the right country, and even then they don’t always get to test themselves against the world’s best. However, the event the IAAF introduced as a way of gaining some independence from the Olympics, and therefore to promote athletics on its own, is the IAAF World Championships of Athletics, originally held every four years, and now biennially. Despite over 200 countries now competing though, the event has only ever been held in Europe and Asia, with Canada the only exception, in 2001. Hardly an event that has encapsulated all parts of the world. Plus, is a carnival every two years really going to bring athletics to the forefront of the sporting landscape?

Carl Lewis captivates the crowd in the Olympic Long Jump

Another organisation under the IAAF banner is the World Athletics Series, which in 2010 will be made up of 6 events, some indoor, some outdoor, one is for juniors only and the others are event-specific. Another is the IAAF’s World Challenge, and while these events are held in different continents around the world, they don’t include the world’s best athletes, and the schedule is far from consistent or balanced, with 5 events in May this year, but only one in July and September.

Lastly, is the IAAF’s latest venture, the Diamond League, which has replaced the Golden League from this year. Many of you are probably reading this and thinking the new Diamond League is the answer to what I have spoken about above. It is a slightly more organised schedule of 14 meetings to be held annually around the world, and has many of the sport’s greatest competitors such as Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay as ambassadors. However, apart from two events being held back-to-back in the US, the other 12 are still confined to Europe and Asia. And is a one day carnival really enough to gauge the public’s interest, and raise the profile of the sport of athletics, as former world champion Steve Cram believes it can do? If the IAAF’s Diamond League is said to be raising athletics’ profile through greater television and media exposure, why didn’t I know anything about the first two events ever held, which were both just in the past fortnight in Doha and Shanghai.

There is a massive opportunity for one streamlined annual calendar of athletics events. A touring brigade of the sport’s best competing against each other several times a year in a truly global league that visits Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas, as all of these continents have big athletes and even bigger fans. 10-15 week-long carnivals throughout the year consisting of up to the 48 world-sanctioned track and field events that athletes presently must wait at least two years to have another shot at claiming. This new international athletics league could follow the lead of the ATP and the FIA in attracting major sponsors in each of the cities it visits, and demand the attention of not just those in that particular city, but of passionate followers glued to their TVs and digital media devices worldwide. And how hard would it be to sign big sports companies as major partners, when brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma were built from originally selling track running shoes, and already spend millions on athletics campaigns, like this one from Nike. The Olympics and World Championships would remain an important part of an athlete’s schedule because of the team aspect of winning medals for your country. But this touring league would focus more on individual brilliance.

The many different competitions presently under the IAAF banner are testament to the amount of times athletics has been given a new opportunity to relaunch itself. But it’s clear these have not been effectively managed. I say this because Australians love talking in-depth about their sport, but Australians don’t talk about athletics to much degree at all – save for those two weeks every four years.

Athletics is ready for this total restructure. It needs it, too. It has the unique opportunity to reach everyone who has any level of interest in elite sport. With proper research, planning, financial support and promotion, athletics could become the new formula 1, the new tennis, the new cricket.