Grand Slam Track (GST), the new athletics league founded by American track legend Michael Johnson, will gain global exposure after securing a significant rights deal with media giant Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) ahead of its inaugural 2025 season.
The multi-year tie-up will see WBD, which has exclusivity across more than 40 territories, broadcast the competition across Europe and Asia via its Max and Discovery+ streaming services, while its TNT Sports network will showcase the league in the UK and Ireland.
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The deal was brokered by global sports marketing agency Two Circles, the lead media rights advisor for GST.
Johnson, chief executive and commissioner of GST, said: “Since our launch, we’ve had a huge amount of support from our great fans on these continents.
“We set out to ensure our broadcasts were easily accessible for fans around the world, and wanted to make sure our racers had a platform on which they could perform, entertain, and grow their fanbases.”
The inaugural Grand Slam Track meet will take place across April 4-6 in Kingston, Jamaica. There will be two US meets in Miami, (May 2 to 4), Philadelphia, (May 30 to June 1), before the season finale in Los Angeles (June 27 to 29).
The competition will offer each athlete the chance to win total prize money of $400,000 throughout a season. In total, the new league will have a prize fund of $12.6 million split over four events.
Scott Young, group senior vice president of production and business operations at WBD Sports Europe, has said: “Track remains the king of Olympics sports, consistently attracting the largest audiences through nail-biting races and intense athletic performances from some of the biggest personalities in sport.
“Our ambition to continue telling the inspiring stories of these athletes between Olympic cycles is matched by Michael Johnson and the Grand Slam Track competition. We can’t wait to work in partnership to scale coverage of this exciting new world-class athletics competition to fans all around the world through our premium channel and platform portfolio.”
WBD held European rights to last year’s Olympic Games in Paris, reaching more than 215 million fans in the region. The broadcaster said athletics was by far the most watched sport during the Games – contributing to around 18% of all linear viewing and 15 million hours of content streamed on its Max and Discovery+ platforms.
The deal comes after GST secured US coverage via national network The CW and US media giant NBCUniversal (NBCU) last month.
Under that deal, the competition will be shown on CW’s linear channel, while Peacock, the NBCU-owned OTT platform, holds streaming rights.
Across the four meets, the opening Friday events will be Peacock-exclusive, with the Saturday and Sunday races split between Peacock and The CW.
In the past Johnson said television coverage is a priority for his new league, adding that he had been in contact with “all the major broadcasters, with a heavy emphasis for us on the US.”
Ahead of the competition’s launch, GST has also named international sports and data technology provider Stats Perform as its exclusive global data and betting rights distributor and integrity partner.
The deal represents a rare foray into athletics for Stats Perform and a rare betting rights tie-up across the sport in general, and will see meets broadcast live on both linear and streaming channels, as well as via licensed betting sportsbooks.
