A First Look at the World Athletics Ultimate Championships (yes, that’s really what they’re calling it)
World Athletics just unveiled its four-year business plan, which they have called “Pioneering Change (2024 - 2027)”. The World Athletics Ultimate Championships – a new, biennial global competition set to launch in 2026 – lies at the heart of their strategy, and while the details are still being ironed out, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe provided an overview of the event earlier this week. Here’s what we know so far:
With a prize purse of US$10 million, the event will be the highest paying athletics meet in history
Gold medallists will receive US$150,000 each, and everyone who participates will be financially compensated in some way
Track events will feature 16 athletes, and field events will feature 8
The championship will take place over three evening sessions, each no longer than three hours
Selection will be based primarily on world rankings
Athletes will wear national uniforms, although it is expected that there will be no cap on how many athletes from a particular country can compete in any given event
The competition will be held roughly two weeks after the Diamond League final
The event will alternate with the World Athletics Championships to provide a showcase athletics event every calendar year
There will be a platform for athletes to promote their sponsors and create their own content, although what this platform looks like is unknown
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced the new event earlier this week
As with any new event, some love it, some hate it, and most sit somewhere in between. Right off the bat, it’s safe to say the name could do with some work – although by all accounts, this is the final product (It sounds like the work of two kids trying to one-up each other in the schoolyard: “You’re the World Athletics Champion? Well, I’m the World Athletics ULTIMATE Champion! Ha!”). But, naming aside, Coe has certainly earned the benefit of the doubt with this one: the man rose to the World Athletics presidency after his predecessor was convicted of organising institutionalised doping, money laundering, and bribery. In his almost nine-year term, Coe has quite literally turned the sport around, and this latest innovation is worthy of the attention it is receiving.
That’s not to say there aren’t any questions. Perhaps the most obvious one that surprisingly few are asking is why there was a need for a new event at all. The Diamond League currently brings the track and field season to a close, attracts athletes from all around the world, and runs all events as straight finals. World Athletics could have integrated whatever innovations they plan on bringing to the Ultimate Championships into this established event rather than create a new one that takes place two weeks after the Diamond League final, which can only serve to dilute both meets.
Alternatively, if they still wanted to be able to award athletes some variation of the “World Champion” moniker, why not simply run the World Athletics Championships every year rather than every second? A way to have your cake and eat it too would be to bunch all the finals into the same three-hour blocks that the Ultimate Championships would have, thereby effectively hosting the new event as they intend to, and then just run the qualifying rounds in the daytime. Diehard fans get more action, casual fans and new audiences are drawn to the spectacle of the evening sessions, and more athletes can attend due to a higher number of qualifying rounds.
Coe has claimed that the new format will be “compelling and attractive…it will be a must watch global sports event.” If his office has really unlocked the secrets to making this happen, why not bring it to an existing competition?
The 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest was the most successful edition of the competition to date, bringing together a record number of athletes, in-person spectators, and online viewers.
It’s also worth asking if World Athletics has actually identified the problem with track and field. Apart from bigger paydays for the athletes (which nobody will oppose), the selling point for the Ultimate Championships is shorter sessions. Are people not watching athletics because it takes too long or because what they’re watching isn’t engaging enough? World Athletics clearly thinks it’s the former, but one man who disagrees with them is four-time Olympic champion, eight-time world champion, and seven-time world record breaker, Michael Johnson.
Johnson has been a long-standing critic of the governing bodies that run the sport he once dominated and has decided to take matters into his own hands with a “fan-focused” league that will “unlock commercial value for the best track and field athletes in the world.” The former sprinter has partnered with the likes of Winners Alliance, which represents the for-profit arm of the Professional Tennis Players Association, and has raised more than US$30 million ahead of a 2025 launch.
Some of the innovations happening in triathlon could end up trickling down into Johnson’s new league, which is yet to be named. In September 2022, Johnson met with executives of the Professional Triathlon Organisation, who he believes are facing – and crucially, solving – some of the same issues plaguing athletics.
Michael Johnson has raised US$30 million to create a “fan-focused” league in athletics
Super League Triathlon is another innovator in the triathlon space that Johnson has publicly praised. The league has created teams for fans to follow, made the sport more accessible both in-person and on the broadcast, intentionally deviated from the rules and formats of traditional triathlon, and documented the lives of the athletes away from race day. Since the inaugural year of the Super League in 2017, participation in the sport has doubled around the world, with viewership for the competition surpassing 100 million in recent years.
Johnson hopes to replicate a similar effect in track and field and has put athlete-centred content creation at the centre of his strategy. He has employed the likes of Doubleday & Cartwright, a creative studio that has collaborated with Apple, Nike, and Red Bull, to define the league’s identity and work with individual athletes to develop their personal brands. On the marketing front, data-driven sports agency Two Circles will draw on its experience with the NFL, Premier League, and Formula 1 to optimise fan engagement and drive growth.
Meanwhile, the Ultimate Championships will see athletes “benefit from greater promotional rights allowing them to commercially activate and enhance their personal profiles,” according to Coe. This is great, but so far, we haven’t heard about any media or branding work on an institutional level similar to what Johnson is pursuing. Is World Athletics planning to just leave all the promotional stuff to the athletes?
A more focused content creation effort isn’t the only thing missing from this new event. While there’s nothing wrong with packing the action into a smaller time window to keep fans engaged, World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon saying the new format “embraces innovation and breaks away from traditional models” is a bit of a stretch.
All they need to do is take a step back, look at what other sports are doing and at what athletics has done in the past, and they’re sure to find plenty of inspiration, such as:
Split screen viewing options: Formula 1 lets you follow your favourite drivers while simultaneously watching the main feed, effectively allowing you to stream 21 different broadcasts as you please. On the other hand, athletics tries to balance the track and the field on one stream, even on the global stage. Is it too much to ask for a dedicated broadcast for field events, a separate one for track races, and then the main, commentated stream?
Better event analysis: A former Olympic champion himself, Coe admitted that he “knows there are elements of our sport that haven’t changed in 150 years. My competition career was decades ago, but it doesn’t look significantly different now, certainly in broadcast terms, than it did then.” Two people in a commentary box with a laptop and some pre-written notes doesn’t exactly scream innovation, and the technology of today lends itself to far more accessible and insightful live analysis. Just look at the endless tools cricket commentators use to break down the game for viewers!
Incentives beyond money: Track and field athletes are long overdue a pay rise, but that doesn’t mean the stakes have to stop at money. How much easier would it be to engage fans if a spot in a World Championship final or a place on a national Olympic team was also on the line?
Novelty events that have been shown to work: In the past, race directors have been known to play track and field mad libs in the name of innovation (why do some American high schools have a 4x100m relay for shot-putters?). While having throwers on the track definitely isn’t the solution, bringing in well-established novelty events like the distance medley relay is sure to garner additional interest.
Not everything needs to happen in a stadium: The 2021 Zurich Diamond League took place in a town square around which a makeshift track and field was erected. The annual Adidas Games uses a temporary track built on top of a street in Atlanta City. Athletics doesn’t always have to be restricted to a stadium.
Noah Lyles wins the men’s 150m at the 2023 Adidas Games
New events of this scale will always have teething problems, and we can’t expect this meet to suddenly be the exception. The World Athletics Ultimate Championships is a promising sign that the sport’s governing body – which is responsible for some tremendously positive changes in recent years – is not content with resting on its laurels. Coe and his office continue to try to curb the problems in this sport, and an additional global meet that promises to prioritise athlete compensation and audience engagement is yet another step in the right direction. Ultimately (see what I did there), this new event will bring more eyes and action to a sport that consistently complains about a lack of both, and that has to be a good thing.