Death of professional running imminent?

ecoli

Some major blows in recent weeks to the sport of athletics could just be the start of things to come.

First you have the RnR group dropping its North American elite fund;

http://www.runnerspace.com/news.php?news_id=172047

And now Australia's leading meets have taken a hit;

http://www.insideathletics.com.au/editorial/13782-sponsorship-loss-puts-athletics-in-perilous-position

Couple this with the fact that the diamond league (the sports premier circuit) has still to secure a replacement for Samsung as title sponsor. Despite this mass participation has reached unprecedented levels to the point where they are to be included in global championships (World Championship marathons soon to include mass participation element)

Is it possible that the sport could be relegated to a recreational pastime as oppose to a viable professional sport in the forseeable future?

RayCun

doom and gloom Friday

Count the number of people making a living from athletics (and endurance running) today, compared to 10 years ago, or 30 years ago. Is the number bigger or smaller?

ecoli

RayCun wrote: »

doom and gloom Friday

Count the number of people making a living from athletics (and endurance running) today, compared to 10 years ago, or 30 years ago. Is the number bigger or smaller?

You could apply that to all sports though with the emergence of professional sports people over the last 30 years. I would imagine this is up but it masks the major issues which look to be affecting the sport in the coming years

Clearlier

RayCun wrote: »

doom and gloom Friday

Count the number of people making a living from athletics (and endurance running) today, compared to 10 years ago, or 30 years ago. Is the number bigger or smaller?

If you mean living off running then my perception is that the pool is an awful lot smaller than it was. I believe that track meetings pay significantly less money that they used to hence the move towards marathons.

If you mean living off the industry then obviously it's much more but that's a product of the boom in mass participation and partly as a result of the reasons that ecoli outlines is becoming less and less relevant to the elite level.

I believe that the failure of the sport to really take on dopers (albeit not on the same level of craveness as some other sports) has cost it a lot of credibility. We should start by erasing all of the world records that I understand we have proof were achieved through doping in East Germany

drquirky

Yup-
Gotta agree w/ Ray here. I'm reading this book on Rodgers, Shorter and Salazar and literally they were running for free beer and ****ty trophies. That said perhaps the 70's and now are analogous as the 70's were the start of the running "boom" and we seem to be in a similar cycle here. I also think when the financial incentive stops being such a driving factor in sports, we will see the end of PED's being a problem.

ecoli

drquirky wrote: »

Yup-
Gotta agree w/ Ray here. I'm reading this book on Rodgers, Shorter and Salazar and literally they were running for free beer and ****ty trophies. That said perhaps the 70's and now are analogous as the 70's were the start of the running "boom" and we seem to be in a similar cycle here. I also think when the financial incentive stops being such a driving factor in sports, we will see the end of PED's being a problem.

I don't think PED's will stop with decreased financial incentive for a number of reasons;

1) competitive nature will always be a factor (see the 80 year old body builder who recently was done for PEDs in the US as an example)

2) As it becomes harder to make a living from the sport unless you are at the top of your event, the is more pressure to be at the top so people will look to every advantage possible.

Nike and Adidas sponsorship severely distort the figures also accounting for such a big percentage of pro contracts actually given out. If even one of these companies followed suit like the Competitor group and exclusively targeted the mass participation element it could potentially cripple the financial stability of the sport.