Monaco We Have a Problem
The World Athletics Final rose from its mausoleum in Monaco to a surprising new lease of life in Stuttgart. Great weather, good presentation and magnificent crowds spurred tired athletes, led by the amazing Tyson Gay, to fine performances. It was, like the Gothenburg European Championships that preceded it, the epitome of international track and field: exciting, colourful, glamorous, televisual. The problem is that in providing such magnificent entertainment the IAAF and its promoters are sucking the rest of the sport dry.
The advantage that team sports, like football, rugby and cricket (that curious legacy of Anglo-empire) have over athletics is that their stars regularly appear in front of their fans. A keen Barcelona fan knows that, injuries permitting, he (or even she) is able, for nine months of the year, to marvel at Camp Nou at the magic of Ronaldhino and Valdes; at Old Trafford thousands, every fortnight, can relish the skills of Rooney and Ronaldo.
In athletics it is a different story and a Swedish or Portuguese fan will be very lucky indeed to catch a glimpse of Christian Olsson or Francis Obikwelu in the few weeks that comprise the international season. In 2004, the year before his horrendous injury, Olsson appeared just twice in his home country and Obikwelu, from this year’s rankings, left Portugal out of his schedule. No wonder then that Fast Track, the British promoter, invites fans to travel to its five televised meetings to see the stars ‘live’.
Championships apart, international athletics is fast becoming a sport for television, often moulded to the medium’s demands but, as we shall see, even that cosy premise might be in jeopardy. Is this to be short term financial expediency with longer term dire consequences?
He who pays the piper calls the tune. With its enormous financial clout the IAAF are the paymasters of the professional athletes. In order to maintain their lifestyle they have to run, jump or (less likely) throw where the money is. In Britain our declining numbers of stars very rarely appear in meetings below national championship level and I suspect it is the same across Europe. And the message from that continent is that the sport is very much on the decline.
The IAAF says that it needs its promotional activities (and top athletes) in order to fund its essential development programme, currently running at 5 million dollars per annum. Between 1991 and 2004 the federation spent 94 million dollars on development, including the Regional Development Centres. Without its promotions, the federation says, which bring in television and sponsors, none of this activity could take place.
But Europe is the only continent that does not require a RDC and the critics of the whole development system, including the World Athletics Plan, say that the expenditure far outweighs the benefit.
Because Europe is where the soul of the sport is 95% of the IAAF programme takes place there. The great one-day meetings at Zurich, Berlin, Brussels and London attract, along with enthusiastic crowds, the world’s best. But the irony is that the only continent that can provide the wherewithal to stage such meetings with the crucial television coverage is the one continent not to benefit.
The question is would European athletics benefit more if the EAA and individual European nations were free to mould their own competition structures using their star athletes?
Hansjörg Wirz, European (EAA) President and his colleagues are recognising this irony and are calling for “a meeting [with the IAAF] to review the division of responsibilities for the competition structure within Europe.”; it’s finally dawning on everyone that the EAA competitions programme is very much second tier.
Current trends in television coverage should also be of great concern. Only a few years ago you could watch the big Grand Prix meetings, the Weltklasse from Zurich, the Ivo Van Damme from Brussels, the DN Galan from Stockholm etc., on terrestrial television. When the programme planners decided that such events were losing their appeal, Sky took up the Golden League series and Eurosport covered other meetings across Europe. Now the Golden League coverage is confined to a pay-per-view channel, Setanta, with a consequent lessening of exposure for the sport.
Athletics is like a big city, glitzy and vibrant at the centre but run down and depressing in the shanty towns around the outskirts. Below international level, athletics in Europe is similarly run down. In Britain competition is an amorphous mess of mostly self-indulgent meetings and leagues bearing no obvious relation to each other and involving vast amounts of travel for athletes of all ages. Promoters have such little faith in their product that few charge for admission, perhaps realising that the general public wouldn’t understand what was going on in the up to six hours or more of indeterminate activity. Is it little wonder then that federations are reporting a sharp decline in participation levels, overall standards and public interest?
Eighteen months ago the IAAF staged a workshop in Monaco on the future of competition. It was very much the brainchild of the sadly missed István Gyulai. With his background in television he realised that radical changes would have to be made to the IAAF programme of events that was becoming more and more Byzantine. Speaker after speaker (of which I was fortunate to be one) urged a streamlining of the programme, a whittling down of the number of events, of making the whole system simpler to understand. This was especially urged by the television representatives present, including the BBC’s David Gordon. Unfortunately since István’s untimely death the proposals made are still hanging on the vine (though there is to be an appointment of a Competitions Director); indeed the confusion at the end of this season with the Golden League final, the World Athletics Final and the World Cup must surely be bewildering to those who are not aficionados of the sport.
What is urgently needed in Europe is some thinking outside the box. We need meaningful competition for both athletes and spectators; we need to create competition that taps, like the famous Finnkampen international, into our tribal natures (why not have a continent-wide inter-city cup with big prize money?); we need to urge federations to get a grip on their competition structures at a lower level to lure the public back. All the indications are that athletics is still overwhelmingly popular with the public but is a sport that is badly failing their expectations.
In recent days Luciano Barra, an Honorary Member of the EAA and a close associate of the former IAAF President, the late Primo Nebiolo, issued an Open Letter to the present president, Lamine Diack in which he was highly critical of the way the IAAF was leading the sport. He urged the President to consider his position and reminded Diack of the coup d’état that occurred in 1981 when the then President, Dutchman Adrian Paulen, was strongly persuaded to give way to Nebiolo and a whole new era of athletics began.
Whether we are at such a stage in the sport at this time will be a matter for rigorous debate as we head for Osaka and the all important Congress but it is now obvious to more and more people that radical action is needed if athletics, the major Olympic sport, does not decline into the status of so many others and become a minor player on the world scene, emerging once every four years into the public’s consciousness.
(Agree? Disagree? Have your say by clocking Comment)
The advantage that team sports, like football, rugby and cricket (that curious legacy of Anglo-empire) have over athletics is that their stars regularly appear in front of their fans. A keen Barcelona fan knows that, injuries permitting, he (or even she) is able, for nine months of the year, to marvel at Camp Nou at the magic of Ronaldhino and Valdes; at Old Trafford thousands, every fortnight, can relish the skills of Rooney and Ronaldo.
In athletics it is a different story and a Swedish or Portuguese fan will be very lucky indeed to catch a glimpse of Christian Olsson or Francis Obikwelu in the few weeks that comprise the international season. In 2004, the year before his horrendous injury, Olsson appeared just twice in his home country and Obikwelu, from this year’s rankings, left Portugal out of his schedule. No wonder then that Fast Track, the British promoter, invites fans to travel to its five televised meetings to see the stars ‘live’.
Championships apart, international athletics is fast becoming a sport for television, often moulded to the medium’s demands but, as we shall see, even that cosy premise might be in jeopardy. Is this to be short term financial expediency with longer term dire consequences?
He who pays the piper calls the tune. With its enormous financial clout the IAAF are the paymasters of the professional athletes. In order to maintain their lifestyle they have to run, jump or (less likely) throw where the money is. In Britain our declining numbers of stars very rarely appear in meetings below national championship level and I suspect it is the same across Europe. And the message from that continent is that the sport is very much on the decline.
The IAAF says that it needs its promotional activities (and top athletes) in order to fund its essential development programme, currently running at 5 million dollars per annum. Between 1991 and 2004 the federation spent 94 million dollars on development, including the Regional Development Centres. Without its promotions, the federation says, which bring in television and sponsors, none of this activity could take place.
But Europe is the only continent that does not require a RDC and the critics of the whole development system, including the World Athletics Plan, say that the expenditure far outweighs the benefit.
Because Europe is where the soul of the sport is 95% of the IAAF programme takes place there. The great one-day meetings at Zurich, Berlin, Brussels and London attract, along with enthusiastic crowds, the world’s best. But the irony is that the only continent that can provide the wherewithal to stage such meetings with the crucial television coverage is the one continent not to benefit.
The question is would European athletics benefit more if the EAA and individual European nations were free to mould their own competition structures using their star athletes?
Hansjörg Wirz, European (EAA) President and his colleagues are recognising this irony and are calling for “a meeting [with the IAAF] to review the division of responsibilities for the competition structure within Europe.”; it’s finally dawning on everyone that the EAA competitions programme is very much second tier.
Current trends in television coverage should also be of great concern. Only a few years ago you could watch the big Grand Prix meetings, the Weltklasse from Zurich, the Ivo Van Damme from Brussels, the DN Galan from Stockholm etc., on terrestrial television. When the programme planners decided that such events were losing their appeal, Sky took up the Golden League series and Eurosport covered other meetings across Europe. Now the Golden League coverage is confined to a pay-per-view channel, Setanta, with a consequent lessening of exposure for the sport.
Athletics is like a big city, glitzy and vibrant at the centre but run down and depressing in the shanty towns around the outskirts. Below international level, athletics in Europe is similarly run down. In Britain competition is an amorphous mess of mostly self-indulgent meetings and leagues bearing no obvious relation to each other and involving vast amounts of travel for athletes of all ages. Promoters have such little faith in their product that few charge for admission, perhaps realising that the general public wouldn’t understand what was going on in the up to six hours or more of indeterminate activity. Is it little wonder then that federations are reporting a sharp decline in participation levels, overall standards and public interest?
Eighteen months ago the IAAF staged a workshop in Monaco on the future of competition. It was very much the brainchild of the sadly missed István Gyulai. With his background in television he realised that radical changes would have to be made to the IAAF programme of events that was becoming more and more Byzantine. Speaker after speaker (of which I was fortunate to be one) urged a streamlining of the programme, a whittling down of the number of events, of making the whole system simpler to understand. This was especially urged by the television representatives present, including the BBC’s David Gordon. Unfortunately since István’s untimely death the proposals made are still hanging on the vine (though there is to be an appointment of a Competitions Director); indeed the confusion at the end of this season with the Golden League final, the World Athletics Final and the World Cup must surely be bewildering to those who are not aficionados of the sport.
What is urgently needed in Europe is some thinking outside the box. We need meaningful competition for both athletes and spectators; we need to create competition that taps, like the famous Finnkampen international, into our tribal natures (why not have a continent-wide inter-city cup with big prize money?); we need to urge federations to get a grip on their competition structures at a lower level to lure the public back. All the indications are that athletics is still overwhelmingly popular with the public but is a sport that is badly failing their expectations.
In recent days Luciano Barra, an Honorary Member of the EAA and a close associate of the former IAAF President, the late Primo Nebiolo, issued an Open Letter to the present president, Lamine Diack in which he was highly critical of the way the IAAF was leading the sport. He urged the President to consider his position and reminded Diack of the coup d’état that occurred in 1981 when the then President, Dutchman Adrian Paulen, was strongly persuaded to give way to Nebiolo and a whole new era of athletics began.
Whether we are at such a stage in the sport at this time will be a matter for rigorous debate as we head for Osaka and the all important Congress but it is now obvious to more and more people that radical action is needed if athletics, the major Olympic sport, does not decline into the status of so many others and become a minor player on the world scene, emerging once every four years into the public’s consciousness.
(Agree? Disagree? Have your say by clocking Comment)
posted by tonyward at 6:17 AM
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