UK Athletics has rejected the chance to be involved in Michael Johnson’s $30m (£23.5m) new Grand Slam Track competition because it fears it is too much of a financial risk. Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium and the London Stadium were rumoured to be among candidates to host one of the four events, which launches in Jamaica in April 2025. Los Angeles will be involved along with Miami, with the final venue to be announced this week.
Many elite athletes, including the four-times US Olympic gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Britain’s Olympic 1500m silver medallist Josh Kerr have signed up for the series, which is modelled on the four tennis grand slams and has a prize fund of $12.6m.
The UKA’s chief executive, Jack Buckner, said its difficult financial situation meant it would be focusing on making the Diamond League in London profitable, as well as a potential bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships. “We’re positive about Michael Johnson’s format,” he said. “But three days of just track athletics is a lot of tickets to sell in the London Stadium and the cost base comes pretty high there. They did approach us and we had a really good discussion with them. We would like to have a bigger, more comprehensive events portfolio, but we want that built on strong foundations that are sustainable.
“We are also conducting a feasibility study into a bid for the World Athletics Championships. We understand that the next one available is 2029 and then potentially 2031.”
In 2022, UKA lost £800,000 in one day when it hosted the Diamond League in Birmingham in 2022 and another £500,000 by staging the World Indoor tour in February 2023. Buckner said: “We don’t want to – gamble is too strong a word – but if you don’t get an event right and you don’t budget for it properly, it can lose a lot of money quickly, which is what happened historically.”
UKA will report on Wednesday that it lost £1.2m in the financial year up to March 2024. However, its chair, Ian Beattie, said it was an improvement on the £3.7m lost in the previous year and predicted the organisation would break even in 2026. “We find ourselves recovering a bit ahead of that projected curve, which is encouraging,” he said. “We know there’s still quite a lot of work to do, but the £1.6m loss I was projecting for this period last year is in fact just under £1.2m.”
