Early Friday morning, unsponsored American sprinter Alaysha Johnson certified for the 100-meter hurdle finals on the 2024 Olympic Video games. She then took to X with a plea: “If anyone needs to purchase me 8 tickets so my household can watch me run then I’d love yall … however know they going for $500 a bit,” she wrote. Inside an hour, her ask was answered: Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and husband of Serena Williams, had come to the rescue.
Ohanian could appear seemingly an unlikely benefactor for ladies’s observe and area—a “fairy godparent,” as Alison Wade from Quick Girls known as him—however however, because the principal proprietor of LA-based skilled girls’s soccer staff Angel Metropolis FC and recipient of the Girls’s Sports activities Basis 2022 Champion For Equality Award, the enterprise capitalist is a long-time champion of girls’s sports activities. In April, he introduced that his Seven Seven Six agency would sponsor a brand new women-only observe occasion known as Athlos on September 26, 2024.
“At 776, we imagine within the energy of sports activities to drive constructive change and encourage future generations,” Ohanian mentioned in an announcement. “By investing in girls’s observe, we intention to construct a best-in-class occasion that elevates the profile of high girls athletes and creates a extra equitable sporting panorama.”
Ohanian’s accomplice on this enterprise is 200-meter Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas, who added, “We hope to not solely present athletes with the assets and visibility they should have enduring careers but in addition to encourage followers worldwide with a reinvented format to expertise one of the best of our sport.”
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The primary-of-its-kind occasion will function top-tier feminine runners—together with Thomas, Olympic 5,000-meter silver medalist Religion Kipyegon, 400-meter U.S. nationwide indoor champion Alexis Holmes, Australian 100-meter file holder Torrie Lewis, and extra—racing distances from 100 to 1,500 meters. They’ll be vying for a share of $500,000, the biggest purse ever provided at a girls’s observe occasion; gold medalists will take house $60,000 every (that’s double what the Diamond League finals solely award winners).
To up the ante even additional, Ohanian promised the 36 feminine Olympians working his occasion that he’d personally pay them $60,000 in the event that they win a gold medal in Paris. Thomas was the primary to money in together with her Olympic win.
However Ohanian isn’t simply ponying up for the massive names. When discus thrower and first-time Olympian Veronica Fraley posted that she could not pay her hire, regardless of competing within the Olympics, Ohanian virtually instantly despatched her sufficient cash to cowl hire for the remainder of the 12 months. Fraley didn’t make it to the finals in Paris, however the consideration she obtained led to $23,000 in donations on GoFundMe, which she’ll use to maintain coaching for World Championships and the 2028 Summer season Olympics in Los Angeles.
To capitalize on what’s been a tremendous Olympic observe and area competitors, with Group USA incomes 29 medals as of publication, Ohanian has been on the bottom in Paris inviting actually everybody to Athlos: Group USA gymnastics, rugby star Ilona Maher, Taste Flav (who’s the sponsor and largest hype man for Group USA’s girls’s water polo staff). To maintain the eye of latest followers, you want star energy and an attractive setting that requires reimagining the normal observe meet. (Living proof: The dramatic pre-race music and a lightweight present on the Stade de France in Paris.)
Athlos will function DJs and particular person entrance music for the athletes, and Megan Thee Stallion would be the inaugural headliner. “Solely one of the best for one of the best,” Ohanian wrote on TikTok. (You realize who else has tapped Megan Thee Stallion’s star energy just lately? Kamala Harris.) On the Enterprise of Girls’s Sports activities Summit in April, Thomas mentioned Ohanian was impressed by the spirit of Components 1 occasions, which have seen an unprecedented rise in recognition following the debut of Netflix’s Drive to Survive collection in 2019.
Whereas observe and area may not be having its F1 second (but), that is the sort of mainstream recognition the game has not often seen, and it’s not solely because of Ohanian. In February, Duæl Monitor—a head-to-head, bracket-style racing competitors made for TV—promised a $1 million prize pool at their September occasion.
At virtually the identical time as Ohanian’s announcement, legendary Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson launched Grand Slam Monitor, a brand new league debuting subsequent 12 months that can showcase large names like Olympic 400-meter hurdles gold medalist and world file holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Olympic 1500-meter silver medalist Josh Kerr, and 36 different athletes.
In July, Netflix launched Dash, a documentary collection that adopted elite observe and area athletes as they ready for the World Championships; the present attracted 2.4 million views in its first week of being launched and season two is already being filmed. In the meantime, Amazon Prime has a docuseries within the works in regards to the Ingebrigtsen brothers, together with world file holder for the indoor 1500 metres Jakob Ingebrigtsen, as they put together for the 2024 Olympic Video games, in line with the Norwegian newspaper VG.
Athletes are additionally driving curiosity on their very own by way of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. They’re leaning into distinct personalities (see: Sha’carri Richardson, who simply received the Olympic silver medal within the 100-meter dash, and 100-meter gold medalist Noah Lyles has 1.4 million followers) rivalries (see: Jakob Ingebrigtson versus Josh Kerr, or Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone versus Norwegian Femke Bol), and relationships (see: energy couple Tara Davis-Woodhall, who received the Olympic gold medal within the lengthy leap, and her husband, Paralympian Hunter Woodhall) to assist them stand out on a world stage.
Nonetheless, it by no means hurts to have a fairy godparent, and a savvy entrepreneur like Ohanian is aware of how necessary it’s to keep up this Olympic momentum so observe and area doesn’t lose that once-every-four-years highlight—and the income alternatives it brings for each particular person athletes and the game as an entire—after the Closing Ceremony.
“None of this got here from a charitable POV. It is not as a result of I’ve daughters or as a result of I am married to a world-class athlete,” Ohanian wrote on LinkedIn about his funding in girls’s soccer—however the total sentiment applies to all girls’s sports activities, together with girls’s observe and area. “It’s as a result of these girls had been objectively nice, they usually had been being objectively undervalued. It is simply good enterprise.”
