I think one of the problems is that everything I see in the conversation about what's "good for the sport" is about is so fan focused: How can we make this more accessible? How can we get people to like us? How can we change the sport for the fans? That is some of the dumbest thinking possible. We don't need fans to understand what pace Jakob is running if they were to "head to their local track" or give them a mile time
+1,000,000. I keep saying this. People talk about trying to grow the sport and argue that if you have more events, more parkruns, more races people can participate in, ... that it will all shake out and we'll have tons of fans. To me this is like the NFL saying, "What if we hosted a series of flag football tournaments to get people into the sport?" See how dumb that sounds? Participation and technical competency/understanding have very little to do with spectator numbers at the top level. The armchair quarterback yelling at his TV probably doesn't go and read about how to best periodize his upper body training to throw a football the furthest, no, they don't care about that.
They wanna watch something fun with some consequences and stakes.
Actually, in Colorado we just added girls flag football as an official high school sport and it's largely been the Denver Broncos that have paid for it up to this point, what could possibly be their motivation for doing that? Football continues to be THE most participated high school sport in the US. A significant number of those armchair quarterbacks played in high school, many played in college. World-wide soccer is the most participated sport in the world. Certainly the popularity of playing these sports helps to drive viewership? There is no harm in getting more people to participate in the sport. All those prize purses at most road races are paid for by all the hobby joggers that pay full price to race, participation is literally paying the elites. All those shoes companies sponsoring runners do so because of all the runners (and non-runners) out there buying shoes.
I think most people would agree that the model for track and field to most realistically follow is what tennis did when moving to the majors. T&F needs to ween itself off of the Olympic cycle and develop non-olympic competitions that mean as much to athletes. The marathon has effectively done this and you can see it by how much bigger the coverage is for a major vs any other event outside the Olympics.
I think one of the problems is that everything I see in the conversation about what's "good for the sport" is about is so fan focused: How can we make this more accessible? How can we get people to like us? How can we change the sport for the fans? That is some of the dumbest thinking possible. We don't need fans to understand what pace Jakob is running if they were to "head to their local track" or give them a mile time. What no one involved with track and field seems to understand is that fans follow the athletes lead and will educate themselves, if they're interested. I didn't know a thing about English soccer prior to picking up my first FIFA game over 15 years ago but it was on me to educate myself and figure things out. What I could understand, even with no knowledge, was what was important to the players: Premier League game (even against relegation level clubs) are important and exciting, early round FA Cup tie against a Legaue 2 club isn't. Got it. Right now track has nothing really important outside of the Olympics and Worlds, and the trials leading to these.
I don't know if "more prize money" is the real answer but realistically you just need to get together a stacked field and have an emotionally charged race. That's it. Just get a bunch of good guys together and make the race mean something for them. Honestly you can even do this without the top talent, like take the best guys who don't make teams and run a B-level championship before the Olympics/Worlds (like how UEFA has Europa League/Conference League underneath the Champions League). Track and Field has a great roster and I actually think its niche status positions it uniquely as the major sports are becoming increasingly commercial and sanitized.
This is exactly what the Diamond league is, at least some of the meets. It used to mean something to win an event at the Weltklasse Zürich or the Herculis in Monaco and some of the other big historic meets, I think it still does.
I've been following this sport (track and field) for 30 years, and people have been talking about "saving" track and field in the US since long before this website existed. The most successful attempt I've seen so far to promote professional track and field in the US is the American Track League. The ATL has sponsors, has had meets aired on ESPN and has had some big name athletes like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Ryan Crouser participate. They've cut down the number of events to fit nicely into a 2 hour schedule. It's literally almost everything people have been talking about in this thread and it exists right now. If Michael Johnson cared about the sport he could throw his support behind the ATL instead of trying to start his own thing. It's going to take time to build anything new into something meaningful and profitable. Look at the success of the MLS in the US, it was a joke for a long time, now they are filling up stadiums and attracted big name international players, it only took them almost 30 years to get there.
If you want to support professional track and field in the US you could plunk down some money to go to an ATL event or go the Eugene Diamond League meet, or at the very least watch them when they air on TV or stream them online. These things exist right now and you can help support our professional athletes almost directly by going to them.