Noah Lyles has highlighted how the Sprint docuseries brought revolution to the sport but disclosed one major mistake that has yet to be addressed and might cost the track & field world forever.
Noah Lyles has highlighted a major challenge facing track and field despite innovations to market the sport including the Sprint docuseries and Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track league.
In an interview on the Nightcap podcast with Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson, the three-time world 200m champion lauded the efforts of the great minds behind the docuseries but insisted that there needs to be a way for fans to interact with the sport beyond such avenues.
He explained that watching Diamond League Meetings and several other track meets is a toll order and fans are always forced to go the extra mile if they want to watch them compete.
11:00 - 20.08.2024
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“SPRINT just came out. It is successful around the world. It is successful in the U.S. They’re about to come out with another season. It’s going to do great. The hard part is that we as a sport are not ready for the popularity that is going to come,” Lyles said.
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“Everybody is going to say, ‘I want to be a track and field fan!’ ‘I want to follow Fred!’ ‘I want to follow Noah!’ ‘I want to follow Erriyon!’ Guess what? We don’t even have a place to go and tell them to watch the track meet. Because in every other different country, it’s in a different place,” he added.
The triple world champion added that changing the rights of the Diamond League Meeting from NBC to Flotrack was another way to kill track and field in America and the world at large.
Lyles noted that viewers need to get a VPN or get to corrupted websites to watch their favourite athletes compete, a huge setback in the sport.
“We, ourselves, are not ready infrastructurally-wise to say, ‘Hey world! We’ve got something amazing for you.’ That’s the hard part,” Lyle said.
“The rights for the Diamond League just got dropped by NBC and moved to Flotrack. Now we’re putting it behind a paywall and making it even harder for fans to become new fans. It hurts because I knew this was going to happen.”
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