Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas is one of several stars who will be part of Michael Johnson’s new track league.
Grand Slam Track, the new global track circuit founded by Michael Johnson, has selected Stats Perform as its exclusive global data and betting stats partner. The league, which will debut in April, is leaning on gambling activity to help bring a wider audience to the sport.
Stats Perform is a sports AI company formed by the 2019 merger of analysis company Stats LLC and sports media firm Perform Content. It has existing partnerships with the Premier League, LaLiga, the WTA and FIBA.
Financial details and the length of the deal were not disclosed.
Track is relatively new to the betting world and isn’t usually available on many sportsbooks. Reasons for that include its late submissions of starter lists (lineup cards for racers) and structural issues such as the sport’s lack of a consistent television presence.
Steve Gera, president of Grand Slam Track, said it’s not due to the lack of interest in gambling on meets.
“If you go and you look at everyone from DraftKings and FanDuel and beyond, even the books in Vegas,” Gera said in a phone interview, “a lot of them actually took bets on the Olympics, and it does really well. But there’s no other real track meet at scale that actually gets booked on a regular basis.”
Grand Slam Track will license its data on racer performance to Stats Perform, its media partners and sportsbooks. Stats Perform will handle the integrity of Grand Slam Track’s data and the betting product while also selling the data on Grand Slam Track’s behalf. Stats Perform will also educate the athletes and company staff on gaming regulations.
The deal with Stats Perform came together in just three conversations, according to Gera. “We believe is going to be able to help bring casual fans into the sport at a much, much faster pace,” Gera said. “[Stats Perform] understood the power of track as a sport and racing as a discipline, and the simplicity of it really spoke to them.”
Compared to the typical track and field meet where multiple competitions take place simultaneously in the same venue, Grand Slam Track will run just a single race at a time during a competition weekend. This format, the league believes, provides an opportunity to amass the biggest audience possible for each race—both for fans at large and for bettors.
Regarding potential concerns about the negative effect of betting, Gera said the expansion of gambling opportunities in track will go a long way to benefit the exposure of the athletes.
“This is what professional sports do,” he said. “They take advantage of all the opportunities to build fan bases … and also to create a platform where the athletes will get paid more in the long term.”
At the beginning of February, Grand Slam Track announced a streaming media rights deal with Peacock. It will also broadcast weekend races on the CW.
Partnering with Grand Slam Track keeps track on Peacock after the streaming network chose not to renew its rights agreement with the Diamond League, the track and field global professional circuit. Nexstar-owned CW, meanwhile, adds another challenger property that’s in line with other sports media rights such as the NASCAR Xfinity Series and WWE’s third brand NXT.
In June, Grand Slam Track announced that it picked up more than $30 million in commitments from investors and sponsors. In November, the league named the host cities for its “slams”—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami and Kingston, Jamaica.
Grand Slam Track will offer significant purses for each competition, ranging from $100,000 for first place to $10,000 for eighth place. Some of the sport’s biggest names have signed up to compete in the first season, including Olympic gold medalists Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Gabby Thomas and Cole Hocker.
(This story has been corrected in the second paragraph to accurately reflect the leagues with which Stats Perform has a partnership.)
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