As summer season started in 2024, former Olympic gold-medal sprinter Michael Johnson stood in a downtown Los Angeles restaurant that had been rented out for a giant announcement. Johnson stated he had secured $30 million in funding for a brand new monitor league, promising funds by no means earlier than seen in monitor and discipline.
In a sport the place even prime stars earn modest livings by the requirements {of professional} athletes, Grand Slam Monitor represented an enormous windfall. A couple of-third of that promised funding can be earmarked for prize cash alone, a pool of greater than $3 million per meet. And the most important winners at every of its 4 meets would pocket $100,000 per meet — 5 instances as a lot as first place earned on monitor’s different international circuit.
Moreover, 48 opponents who signed contracts with the circuit might earn an annual base compensation, plus a minimize of income from group licensing.
But simply 14 months after Johnson’s grand announcement, and 4 months after the group held its first meet in Jamaica, Grand Slam Monitor has but to pay lots of its athletes and distributors, and Johnson acknowledged Friday that the money crunch — what one supply stated was round $13 million in unpaid cash to athletes alone — poses an existential menace to the destiny of the circuit returning for a second season.
“The cruelest paradox in all of that is we promised that athletes can be pretty and shortly compensated. But, right here we’re fighting our skill to compensate them,” stated an announcement signed by Johnson that was posted on social media Friday.
Johnson additionally maintained that he’s “assured about the way forward for Grand Slam Monitor.”
NBC Information spoke with 4 brokers who signify a number of athletes nonetheless owed cash by Grand Slam Monitor, who spoke on situation of anonymity to retain relationships with organizers. Three expressed severe doubts the circuit would be capable of drum up sufficient funding from traders and confidence from athletes to return for a second season, in 2026. A fourth stated he was prepared to offer the advantage of the doubt, for now.
“My message to our athletes is, look, it’s not good,” that agent stated. “However then again, their intent is to pay and we’re going to attend for them to pay us. In any other case, they received’t have a future.”
Brokers, coaches and meet organizers in monitor and discipline stated their considerations about Grand Slam’s bother go far past receiving the cash owed from the three meets it hosted this spring in Jamaica, Florida and Philadelphia. If Grand Slam Monitor have been finally profitable in drawing robust rankings and crowds, there was a hope that such demand might entice extra exterior traders with deep pockets to pour cash right into a sport that usually operates on shoestring budgets in comparison with different skilled leagues.
“It feels prefer to lots of people that this will likely be a large deterrent to future endeavors,” stated Paul Doyle, a outstanding athlete agent who based and has additionally operated a professional monitor circuit, the American Monitor League, since 2014. “It wasn’t all unfavourable. I really feel for them in that sense that they’re in a troublesome spot.”
On the day Johnson introduced Grand Slam Monitor in 2024, he was bullish but in addition admitted the enterprise would take time to generate cash.
“If I had an investor who stated, ‘Effectively, I would like it to be worthwhile in 12 months 2,’ I’d not take their cash as a result of that’s unattainable,” Johnson stated in 2024. “It’s simply not going to occur. Our traders have come on and stated, ‘Hey, we imagine within the long-term viability of this.’”
That viability has been beneath scrutiny ever since Grand Slam Monitor canceled its fourth and ultimate meet, scheduled for June. It emailed athlete representatives in July notifying them that earnings from their first meet, held in Jamaica in April, can be paid by that month’s finish. On Aug. 4, a spokesperson for Grand Slam Monitor stated that it was “anticipating investor funds to hit our account imminently, and the athletes are our prime precedence.”
As of Friday’s announcement, nonetheless, Grand Slam had solely paid athletes for the looks charges they have been owed in Jamaica, however not any prize cash.
Johnson, in his assertion, recommended that the funding shortfall was attributable to a change in circumstances “in methods past our management.” Johnson beforehand informed Entrance Workplace Sports activities that an investor had pulled funds.
“On account of our robust want to make this proper as shortly as attainable, we provided dated fee timelines and have been unable to satisfy them,” Johnson stated in Friday’s assertion. “Understandably, this has led to frustration, disappointment, and inconvenience to our athletes, brokers, and distributors. I do know this damages belief. I do know this makes some marvel if our imaginative and prescient can survive. That’s the reason we’re not simply addressing the rapid drawback; we’re placing methods and partnerships in place to verify it by no means occurs once more.”
“Whereas I’m no stranger to setbacks and overcoming obstacles, as an athlete, professionally, and personally, this present state of affairs of not with the ability to pay our athletes and companions has been one of the tough challenges I’ve ever skilled,” the assertion added.
Prize cash funds that take weeks to reach will not be uncommon in monitor and discipline; if something, they’re the rule. In excessive circumstances, athletes have stated that prize cash funds have taken greater than a calendar yr to hit their accounts. Prize cash from March’s world indoor championships in China nonetheless has but to reach, one agent stated. Delays largely stem from drug testing, as a result of meets usually wait to pay till figuring out an athlete was clear. Outcomes usually take 10-30 days to return. In contracts with its “racers,” Grand Slam Monitor acknowledged that drug testing can be accomplished inside 21 days of every meet, and that an athlete’s promotional price and earned prize cash can be paid inside 10 days of studying the doping outcomes, in line with a supply.
Delays are commonplace. However what made Grand Slam Monitor totally different, one agent stated, was that there was a perception it already had its introduced $30 million in funding ready in escrow, able to pay as obligated.
As an alternative, they now anticipate emailed updates from Grand Slam organizers.
“You’re not getting something straight answered,” one agent stated. “‘Our aim is to pay.’ Effectively you’ll be able to pay, however when? That doesn’t sit nicely with anybody.”
