By Kyle Merber
February 9, 2022
How much is watching one night of top-tier track worth? That’s the big question that the Union Athletics Club and the good folks over at Tracklandia are trying to figure out. On Friday night, many fans and athletes will get their first glimpse of the new indoor facility in Spokane, Washington, that will host the USATF Indoor Championships later this month. This meet is unique in its approach to presenting the sport as it continues the experiment of utilizing the contributions from pay-per-view sign-ups to fund meet overhead and athlete prize money. To give The Lap Count readers a preview of the meet, I reached out to coach Pete Julian, who told us a bit more about his team’s decision to host the Lilac Grand Prix.
THE LAP COUNT: What’s the origin story of the Lilac Grand Prix and what was the motivation behind starting a new meet like this?
Pete Julian: It actually started during the pandemic races with The Big Friendly when there were no opportunities to race anywhere. I think when we did that in Portland with Jeff Merrill and Tracklandia, it may have been the very first world class type track meet to return. No one even wanted to put on an event at that time. They were knocking on doors looking for a track to host and when we put on an hour long meet and had a ton of fun, we realized that, ‘hey this little pop up thing could be the way to go!’ But we said it can’t be manicured time trials because that doesn’t do anything for the sport. People love running fast and seeking out the fastest tracks and shoes to do it, but it doesn’t change anything except now we have more guys breaking four minutes. We really feel that head-to-head competition is worth promoting to reignite things. Fans want to see good racing and even the knowledgeable ones don’t always understand the splits/times/records. But they love to see our best athletes racing for the pride of team or country. They get excited about it! That’s why the Olympic Trials and Games are so popular — you don’t even know the times of the winners because they’re racing and place is everything.
TLC: Why should fans care about a meet like this that doesn’t have a prestigious history behind it, especially if it’s all about winning?
Pete Julian: You can do both things where Donavan Brazier is going for the 600m world record, but he also has to beat Isaiah Harris in the process. Only one guy will get the record and that’s important for us because we don’t want to set up time trial races. And something like Engels vs. Kerr in an 800 is an easy story to tell.
It’s fun to say, ‘come because you’ll see stars competing, but a world record might even fall too.’ It’s not mutually exclusive. But what happens with the Diamond League is you look at the pace charts and they’re these ridiculous times — we aren’t even racing here! Even in the US meets you’ve got 3:33 1500m guys asking to come through in 1:51 – and it’s simply just ruining the race because meet directors are drinking the kool-aid of just wanting fast times but completely forgetting about the actual race and what makes it exciting. Maybe it’s cool to see once every now and then, but when it’s meet after meet, event after event, and all you see is one athlete out there chasing the clock and failing to meet the mark 99 times out of 100, you have to wonder if this is the way to go. Why even have anyone else out there? I have become passionate about it. I want to see racing against people who aren’t teammates. We want to see someone win vs. good competition and break the record. Place first. Time second.
I have some of the best athletes at Diamond League meets and I see women’s 5K paces set at 8:20 for 3K, but why? So one athlete is way out there and then they die and the race is completely ruined for everyone? You just killed the meet! I don’t think that’s what people want to see. And that’s why the stadiums are less full every year, so let’s rethink it. These gimmicks out there like pacing lights are like drinking through a poison chalice. That’s why we love cross country meets like NCAAs, because the time doesn’t matter.
TLC: It looks like the Union Athletic Club has really stepped up the content creation game this year. Was that a conscious decision?
Pete Julian: It’s no secret where I came from and the genesis of where our group started. With the Oregon Project, we weren’t transparent enough. With Union, we can do a better job with it.
Starting this team now, my athletes aren’t going to share their workouts on Strava. We have pride in what we do and that’s proprietary stuff. But we do want to show who we are, our personalities and that we are real people who have emotions. We cry and laugh and we aren’t just robots out there. I think that helps people care.
TLC: The team has a pretty young roster with a lot of fresh faces on it. How do you go about putting a group like this together?
Pete Julian: I am going after fast. The objective of the team is to be the best team in the world and there’s no bones about it. When we walk into the stadium we want people to know UAC is here and there will be fire. We aren’t there yet, but we hope to be. We are going after the best kids though there’s also the chemistry piece. I don’t want an athlete that’s only consumed by social. The packaging can’t be better than the candy bar. There needs to be substance to that athlete and their potential to win medals. At the same time we want to inspire other athletes, kids and fans. I wouldn’t want someone who is just super fast and then recluse. Is that really helping the sport or not?
TLC: If fans aren’t familiar with the concept, could you explain the pay-per-view model a bit and why you decided to stream the meet this way?
Pete Julian: The prize money is atrocious everywhere you go, even at the biggest meets. It’s embarrassing and comical. We gotta button it up! The biggest athletes get paid relatively well from their sponsors. And we need to reach out to the up and comers, but we have gotta get the prize purses up to scale. It’s never going to be golf, but it’ll help generate more fan interest and athlete involvement — all boats will rise with bigger prize purses. We have to fix that, but how do we do that?
It starts with us saying we aren’t taking anything. We’ll cover our bottom line and pay for filming it, timing and maybe pizza for the officials, but then every penny goes to the prize purse. When you pay $8 to watch it you should feel good knowing the majority of that is going right into the pocket of the athletes you like to watch.
Winning $800 at a Diamond League for 7th place – it’s like don’t even give the money – it’s embarrassing to list that on your website because you don’t value the athletes. We need the shoe companies to stop funding the whole sport and it can start with this. We don’t agree with Donavan going to run a race and not getting any part of that revenue. And it’s even worse that his mother is paying to watch the race — that’s ridiculous. Why should he even run it now? Why compete in any race where someone else is making money off of it because no other sport would do that. There needs to be some sort of revenue sharing and this is our way of saying the talent gets paid. As a former athlete I think this is an opportunity to change the model.
I know $8 is a lot of money for a high school kid filling up his car, but Hayward Magic is paying up to 4000 kids to watch it for free online. In-person it’s $15 to get in or $5 if you’re under 18. At that price, you can take the whole family to watch world-class track!
And it’s important to note that our team is doing this for free in the beginning because they believe in the model too. They’re investing in this themselves because they want to see it grow. And maybe in a year when we have 50 thousand people watching this thing then we can start doing real appearance fees.
How to watch the Lilac Grand Prix this weekend:
Date: Feb. 11
Location: The Podium in Spokane, Washington
Time: Races start at 8:50 p.m. Pacific Time
Schedule and entries: Click here for the athletes and event schedule.
Live stream: Visit the meet website to purchase a pay-per-view livestream for $7.99 | If you’re a high school coach, Hayward Magic wants to pick up the tab for your athletes to watch the meet. If you’d like to apply to receive a bundle of 10 tickets for your team, apply here.
Kyle Merber
After hanging up his spikes – but never his running shoes – Kyle pivoted to the media side of things, where he shares his enthusiasm, insights, and experiences with subscribers of The Lap Count newsletter, as well as viewers of CITIUS MAG live shows.