American Track Club 3: Rough Draft Chain of Events

-Year 1-

In the fall, the league will set up the 16 cities to host teams. The agents of athletes will be contacted to request their athletes join the league. A draft of sorts will be held to select these athletes. The rest of the roster spots will be filled with local athletes.

Come spring, the athletes will come to the localities to train. The athletes will have travel, meals, lodging, paid for on the weekends of the meets. The teams will travel Saturday, and compete Sunday. This leaves time for unsigned athletes to work regular jobs. To the athlete and agent, this will be an improvement from having to foot the bill for getting into meets. The fans will get in free to the meets and the web casts will be free on FloTrack. By time the Championship rolls around, the buzz for the league will have pushed NBC Sports Network to broadcast that meet.

After the season, the athletes will have now gained much recognition. They will be invited to more meets with bigger purses. America will be able to host bigger meets because more fans will show up during the summer.

The league wide operating costs will be $3 Million.

-Year 2-3-

The athletes will now see their profiles rise. They will want pay and the sponsors and owners will see the cost benefit to honor this. The league implements a $4k season salary for each athlete. Top athletes would want more money and to feed this feeling, the meets would now offer cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, in individual events. The webcasts now are paid subscriptions. The meets now cost money to see. And a deal with NBC Sports Network has been signed for 1 meet a week for the season. Fan interest rises, more athletes are finding opportunities in track to compete in the US.

The league wide operating costs will be $10 Million.

-Year 4-6-

USATF and IAAF are now intrigued. They now promote this league and now international athletes begin to request admittance. The hard-working part time job athletes are beginning to get squeezed out. NCAA athletes are coming out of college expecting to be drafted into this league. Profits are now rising pretty well, the athletes can expect to make an average of 15k from the 5-7 week season. The individual clubs are now being bought out by bigger companies and sponsors. The groundwork is being laid for a better infrastructure of track in the USA. New stadiums, better research into the sport, better technology. Championship is now on NBC. 

The league wide operating costs will be $25 Million.

American Track Club 2: Rough Draft Reasoning

The American Track Club offers a story that the sport lacks. As of now, the meets are meaningless unless it is the Diamond League circuit, and even then the fans will only be watching one meet that doesn't have the same events from week to week, no cohesive conclusion to the meets. The fan will just watch a smattering of individuals with no real sense of understanding what their times and distances mean in the long run or short run. The reason the Olympics is such a great meet to watch is because you have a team to root for, no matter what event it is. Once the team brand is identified, the fan can then be interested in knowing the individual athlete.

The ATC offers the fan a team from their city to root for. They will begin to care about the individuals of the track world once they have done something for their city. Now you don't have to be the 5 people in the USATF that are the most popular to get your brand out there. The smaller time athletes will be able to network with the bigger athletes and showcase their talents for 5-6 weeks in the spring to coaches or sponsors. And since you are competing for a locality, smaller sponsors will want to but their brand on the athlete to market intra-city.

For the elite athlete, this league will not be a hindrance to their season, it will be a 6 week training camp. For example, Christian Taylor is selected by the Atlanta Track Club to compete in the Triple Jump and run the 4x400m. He will only have to do 4 jumps and 2 races, for 6 weeks in a row. The performances are less important, it is more about points, so only when he has stiff competition does he risk high octane performance from his body. He will train in Atlanta during this time and build networking and camaraderie amongst fellow athletes. Track already has a great reputation for this, it would only expand it. Taylor would also feel a sense of purpose during these meets instead of a very personal and unique purpose that comes with racing unattached as a pro.

Finally, the ATC is the profit model that track needs. Pure track and field is primal to man, anyone easily understands the premise of track. However, the pure track meet is quickly uninteresting because in non-championship meets, the motives behind the athletes are unclear to the spectator. There are countless heats and flights. One great performance is quickly forgotten and overall meaningless to the rest of the meet. The ATC provides the meaning, every jump, every race, every throw, is adding towards this final conclusion that the spectator can share in. Once the fans attention is grabbed, the sponsors will take notice and begin to market towards them through the athletes. Now an athlete that isn't an Olympian, but is a hometown hero can get a shoe commercial because the whole city knows who he is. Health and Fitness are huge industries and track athletes are the perfect models, but the recognition is lacking. And if the USATF plays their cards right, this league could raise the attention of track in general and lead to increased appreciation of USA Championships/Track and Field in the USA in general.

And once the attention gets to a national consciousness level, the sponsors and media networks will provide enough cash-flow for the athletes and the league. All of a sudden, elite athletes will expect to get in this league to augment their income, athletes from other countries are now trying to get their shot in the league. The talent level is now crawling with Olympians and the fans cannot get enough of it. The fans do not care about PR's, but WR's and NR's do get attention. They care about winning. Once they have winners, the marks will start to make sense. The league will get to the level of MLS and Track will be the 3rd or 4th sport in some cities. 

American Track Club 1: Rough Draft Synopsis

-The American Track Club is a track and field league comprised of 16 track clubs across the country
-Each club is Womens and Mens, but will compete separately during meets as far as points and season standings go
-Each team has a roster of 20 athletes competing in 13 events
-The 16 clubs compete in quad meets, 4 teams in each meet. At the end of the meet, the team with the most points will have a record of 3-0, then 2-1, 1-2, 0-3
-The 16 clubs are split up into 4 geographic divisions.
-The Club will has 22 meets over 7 weeks from March-April. This schedule does not interfere with Indoor Worlds, and the Diamond League if at all possible.
-The schedule is arranged as such by week:

1. Open Meet- compete against only other divisions
2. Compete with other divisional opponent plus another 2 from a different division
3. ''
4. ''
5. Division Championship - All teams in the division compete against each other, winner goes on to compete in the National Championship
6. National Championship
7. All-Star Meet - The top 8 marks in each event will be invited to compete in this meet, no team scoring just individual champions

-Big Change to traditional athletics is events in the meet and brevity of schedule, will consist of:

-Marathon (1 heat of 8 each, Marathon will have 1 competitor from each team, men and women running at the same time)

-Sprints: 100m, 400m, 4x400m, 110/100 hurdles (1 heat of 8 each, 4x4 will only have 4 teams)
-Distance: 1500m, 5000m, (1 heat of 8 each)
-Jumps: High Jump, Long Jump, Triple Jump, Pole Vault (3 attempts in prelims, 1 re-ordered final)(3 misses in PV and HJ, but a competitive starting height)
-Throws: Shot Put, Hammer Throw(Maybe Javelin instead)(3 attempts in prelims, 1 re-ordered final)

-Meet Expected to last alittle over 4 hrs, TV broadcast of 3 hours, Web to simulcast all events in separate cameras

• Fan gets used to standard schedule, attention span will be kept
• Less events, able to follow easily
• Phone/Tablet App, Clear Standard ATC boards in stadium, Involved announcer, Active website

Events Scored:
1st-10
2nd-8
3rd-6
4th-4
5th-3
6th-2
7th-1
8th-0

Marathon:
1st-6
2nd-4
3rd-2
4th-0

4x400m:
1st-10
2nd-6
3rd-3
4th-0

-Teams-