Back in June, I appeared as a guest on the CBC Sports online series “Roadside” to discuss the ramifications of canceling the season finale at the Grand Slam Track. The challenge: put on your sports business reporter hat and help hosts and viewers uncover the GST corporate message regarding the premature end of the league's rookie season.
The rental deal is, the transportation costs are…
It seemed to me that they simply ran out of money, and I said so. If the second year was approaching, any athlete signing up needed a briefcase full of cash just to know that GST meant what they said about paying out money to quit.
Six months later, I'm here to apologize.
I said GST had run out of money, but I was wrong.
A constant stream of news leaks, public statements and a bankruptcy filing in mid-December made it clear that they never had it in the first place.
At least not enough to cover the six-figure winners' checks meant to change the pay scales of professional athletes.
Not enough to highlight the content and marketing deal they made with Citius Mag, an American track-focused media company.
And nowhere near enough to pay for the professional quality broadcasts that were broadcast on CBCSports.ca in Canada and aired on the CW network south of the border.
TRACKSIDE | Morgan Campbell discusses what happened to the Grand Slam tournament:
According to an August report from The Athletic, the chain's primary sponsor, asset management company Eldridge, saw the anemic crowd at the launch event in Kingston, Jamaica, and decided not to pursue its investment. laid down in a non-binding term sheet.
Thus, the GST, as is now clear, has forced some of the sport's top athletes to produce world-leading performances for significantly less than the big paydays promised. I would call it an IOU, but if the terms of the agreement were optional, then Eldridge technically didn't have to pay anything to GST.
With the first season completed and the second season buffering, we might question the decisions made by the GST management led by Olympic legend Michael Johnson, but that's too easy. If the question is, “What should they have done differently?” answer: “almost everything.”
This way of looking at the situation does not help us understand the situation, how we got here and what might change if the Grand Slam tournament goes into a second season.
Instead, we can evaluate GST outside the specific context of elite athletics, alongside other prominent North American sports startups, and look for end-to-end pathways.
Successful newcomers either have large cash reserves or tell a compelling story that attracts new fans. The Grand Slam was lacking both and it is unclear how he will get them back if he hopes to return in 2026.
The prospect of a second season remains a concern as GST has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows a business to continue operating while it restructures its debts. And GST creditors, as stated in the list included in the filing, are numerous and are waiting for significant amounts.
- The manufacturing company Momentum-CHP owes more than $3 million.
- Girraphic, a London-based graphics firm, is expecting more than $690,000.
- Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who is owed $356,250, heads a long list of athletes who have yet to pay back six-figure sums.
So far, GST's public statements have claimed that the league plans to return for a second year – but how? Can they make these debts disappear? How will they attract new talent? Find new subscribers and please avid fans of the track?
Storytelling
They might not be faced with these questions now if they had answered a more fundamental one before the league launched:
What is the history of the Grand Slam Track tournament?
Think, for example, of the XFL, the professional football league that WWE chief Vince McMahon created out of thin air back in 2001 on the shaky premise that football fans were hungry for more sex and violence than the NFL was already providing them. Raunchy, risqué and wild are adjectives that can be strung together to describe the league's attitude and half-formed identity. But they couldn't craft a coherent story or make up for the fact that the XFL was McMahon's solution to a problem that didn't exist.
The XFL failed after one season.
Compare that to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which used the first season of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter to set the stage for its first televised event and introduce new fans to the promotion's current and new stars. The UFC brain trust didn't envision these fighters as brawlers coming out of the alley. They were portrayed as high-level athletes who channeled their abilities into an entirely new sport called mixed martial arts.
This story.
And the promotion's slogan – “As real as it gets” – matches the action that was broadcast on television. It was fast and brutal, tinged with old taboos from the sport's underground freak show past, but it was also organized, standardized and sanctioned, and the media helped carve out a niche for the UFC in the sports mainstream.
On that spectrum, the Grand Slam is on par with the XFL. A new league in a recognizable sport that lacked a cohesive story to let fans know it offered a worthy update to what they were already watching.
Like the UFC, the Grand Slam tournament had a memorable slogan: “Only the fastest.”
But a slogan is like a logo. It does not in itself define your brand. To paraphrase the title of this A must read marketing booka brand is what people think of you. And what people think comes down to the story you can sell them.
Jake Paul's boxing career is a prime example of this.
Why is he covering major events on Netflix when his skills are better suited to local cable? Because some nights he successfully positions himself as a late starter who wins against all odds (see: his victory over 58-year-old Mike Tyson). And on other nights, he presents himself as a fast-improving contender ready to destroy heavyweights and heavyweights.
This second approach has severe limitations, such as Paul's small toolkit and his (in)ability to take punches from a powerful heavyweight like Anthony Joshua. But this strategy has numbers. An estimated 33 million people watched Joshua break Paul's jaw, not because Paul was enough of a boxer to threaten the former champion, but because the former YouTuber invested people in the story.
What is the history of the Grand Slam Track so far?
People stare. Best GST results on ESPN website they all involve cancellations, missed payments, and bankruptcy. But internet idiots won't be able to rebuild your brand, especially if all they know about your company are promises it hasn't kept.
And without a wealthy investor to make the first season's debt disappear, I'm not sure how GST can create a new story for the second year.
