“I’ve been in talks between me, Michael and my agent. We’ve been in talks since the day I heard about it. Trying to get as much information. Trying to get as much of a feel for what’s going on. There’s a lot that I like that he’s doing. There’s a few things that I think could be a little better.

The thing that’s stopping me at the heart of it is I have yet to hear of a TV provider. Again, what good is it if we’re producing these great times, great shows, these great rivalries and we have nobody seeing it. Now we’re in the same problem we’re in with the Diamond Leagues and World Championships. I need to hear a TV provider and I need to know that it’s going to be seen consistently.”

Lyles recognizes the structural problems of track and field

When Sharpe brought up the fact that track and field lacks a professional league for professional runners to direct the casual fans gained from the Olympics, Lyles highlighted some of the issues with track and field’s current model.

Here’s what he said:

“SPRINT just came out. It is successful around the world. It is successful in the U.S. They’re about to come out with another season. It’s going to do great. The hard part is that we as a sport are not ready for the popularity that is going to come. Everybody is going to say, ‘I want to be a track and field fan!’ ‘I want to follow Fred!’ ‘I want to follow Noah!’ ‘I want to follow Erriyon!’ Guess what? We don’t even have a place to go and tell them to watch the track meet. Because in every other different country, it’s in a different place. You gotta get a VPN. You gotta find your own website. You have to find these back alley places to watch regular TV in a different language. We, ourselves, are not ready infrastructurally-wise to say, ‘Hey world! We’ve got something amazing for you.’ That’s the hard part.

The rights for the Diamond League just got dropped by NBC and moved to Flotrack. Now we’re putting it behind a paywall and making it even harder for fans to become new fans. It hurts because I knew this was going to happen.

I knew that SPRINT was going to be successful because we have great athletes and great stories. The second part, we are not ready for it yet. We need to get ready and we need to do it fast because it’s coming to LA.”

– Lyles is not the only athlete who has underscored the importance of visibility via broadcast deals. A slew of professional runners decried the Diamond League’s move to Flotrack. In April, 200m Olympic champion Gabby Thomas said, “Paying $30 a month to watch a track meet is not reasonable for a lot of people, and not to me, to be completely honest.” 110m hurdles Olympic champion Grant Holloway called the move from NBC to FloSports: “The stupidest thing ever. I guess people have to pay $35 a month to watch track and field…I have already said Flotrack is the reason some people shy away from the sport”