>> While we're at it, end all appearance fees. This disgusting practice is a >hold over from >> the under-the-table days when T&F athletes had to fake being amateur. >Make them perform >> to get paid, similar to what happens in the road races that actually have >prize money. >> Their only putting 6-10 in any race/event anyway. Make a purse for each >event where >> winning then actually means something. When they finish the TV people can >put the >> performance and purse earned in a graphic just like golf, bowling and >horse racing. Then >> people will have some idea that people are pros, not shamateurs. > >There are substantial appearance fees at many pro golf events and it doesn't >hurt the sport. Even the scratching of a few stars doesn't kill an event. >We'd do well to study how they manage this.
Actually, EVERY progressional team sport has a negotiated 'base salary' for each athlete, although some of them also have lesser performance incentive clauses. The athlete labor unions would have it no other way. Also, keep in mind that the cash flow in our sport, like other sports, is based on ticket sales (and projected broadcasting rights fees). Just like other sports, those tickets are sold BEFORE the performances (just like Broadway shows and rock concerts, by the way). People buy tickets based on a PERCEPTION of what they are going to see. They don't enter free, and then have to pay in order to exit the stadium to go home, with the fee based on the quality of the performances they've just observed (although that idea sounds keen, doesn't it!) Same thing for broadcasting rights fees- they're always negotiated BEFORE the event. We often forget that the business of professional sports is not really about the sport itself. It's about entertainment. That's why a professional team can have a losing record but make big money, or win the league championship but still LOSE money. Yes, win-loss results CONTRIBUTE to ticket sales and TV ratings (actually to FUTURE ticket sales), but it's only ONE of the contributing factors. All forms of entertainment that I'm aware of operate on a pay-on-speculation basis (customer to promoter), with a risk of disappointment inherent in the deal. Under your proposal, Meet promoter Tom up in Oregon might sell $1.5 million worth of tickets and sponsorships, then come meet day it rains and all the performances suck. If he pays strictly by results, the athletes get a dollar-ninety-eight, and Tom pockets the $1.4 million difference. As you can see, it doesn't work. The athletes would boycott very quickly. Professional athletes are also not ABOUT to let themselves be moved to the bottom of the food chain (paid last after everybody else gets paid). The only exception to the model outlined above is para-mutual wagering sports (horse-racing, greyhound racing, jai-ali frontons, etc), where management would pretty much let people in free as long as they gamble. The only thing they have to pay the performers is a bag of oats, a bowl of Ken-L-Ration, and a deferred payment of either the stud farm or the glue factory! So far, the way I understand it, the government is loathe to expand wagering legal franchises to human athletic contests because of the high probability of bribery and cheating. And I'd just as soon keep track & field athletics away from the greyhound racing model. I say if you want professional track & field to succeed, forget team sports models. Look to professional tennis and golf. Still basically an entertainment ticket sales & TV rights model, but earnings based on star power, supplemented by results winnings. In the case of professional tennis, I understand that the "tour" is owned by the athletes themselves, who then contract out local promotion services, and I suppose they have some kind of profit-sharing plan to distribute tour earnings to tour athletes based on some sort of formula. There is a significant thing that hurts our sport, though. With tennis and golf you might compete through several rounds over a week or two, but you basically end up with a single champion. (although with tennis you might get one man, one woman, a woman's doubles, a men's doubles, and a mixed doubles). At least all the primary focus is on singles. Our sport dilutes focus by having a zillion separate events. Here's an idea- (you distance runners will probably hate it): How about something beginning with a decathlon/hep model, where you end up with a single winner? that might be better promotion-wise. But modify the format, thinking TV promotion. A decathlon. Ten events over two or three days. (make one of the events a steeplechase, if you must). But order of events is not determined until a random draw 10 minutes before start time. Start with 20 competitors. After each event, eliminate the bottom two finishers. And forget cumulative scores. In fact totally ditch point scores. Each event is a clean slate- as long as you're not one of the last two finishers, you move on. The final 10th event just has two competitors duking it out. What do you think? Make it even better, the 'draw' before event 1 only determines what event 1 will be. You don't know what event 2 will be until another draw shortly before event 2, and so on. The only control is that the ten events are known, and an event can't be repeated. Of course, once the random draw for event #9 is done, you then know what event #10 is going to be, because everything else has already been eliminated. Kind of like "Survivor". In a way sort of like pro golf where the final rounds always puts the top two in the last pairing, and come to think of it a lot like the PBA tour- with the "TV finals" on the last day taking the top handful and working them down to just the two finalists. Yes, this change in focus to head-to-head competition would probably eliminate the statistical emphasis on national and world records for single events. But it might open up a whole NEW set of statistics. For example, somebody might have a "streak" going- 27 consecutive weeks having made it all the way to event #10. Maybe the "record" would be 32 consecutive weeks. Think the TV ratings might go up on week #32, if promoted accordingly? RT
