With the inaugural Grand Slam Track (GST) season just over a month away, the league made more headlines Tuesday going against the status quo in track and field. The league, founded by four-time Olympic champion Michael Johnson, announced it will partner with betting service Stats Perform to bring gambling to the forefront of competition to draw a wider audience.
In response to the announcement on X, Johnson said he’s excited to be changing the game to bring sports betting to athletics.
The number of times fans have tweeted at me saying @GrandSlamTrack should have betting, and I couldn’t respond! But today we announce! 📣 We are changing the game!!! https://t.co/TuqppcWo5g
— Michael Johnson (@MJGold) February 25, 2025
Athletics is relatively new to the betting world, and outside of fans being able to wager on winners of Abbott World Marathon Majors, the opportunity to bet isn’t available in many sportsbooks. Reasons for this include late submissions of starter lists (lineup cards for racers) and structural issues, such as the sport’s lack of TV presence.
Steve Gera, president of Grand Slam Track, said in an interview with Sportico that they saw the high-interest level in gambling at the Paris 2024 Olympics. “If you go and you look at everyone from DraftKings and FanDuel and beyond, even the sportsbooks in Vegas… a lot of them took bets on the Olympics, and it did well,” said Gera.
Compared to the typical track and field meet, where multiple disciplines take place simultaneously at the same venue, GST plans to operate one race at a time. Johnson believes this format provides an opportunity to amass the biggest audience possible for each race—both for fans and sports bettors.
“We look forward to setting a new standard for our sport with Stats Perform’s extensive network of trusted media and betting partners, eye-opening technology, and their true passion for the power of sport to unify and entertain,” said Johnson in a press release.
Stats Perform is a sports-AI company formed in 2019 by the merger of analysis company Stats LLC and sports-media firm Perform Content. The company currently has partnerships with the Premier League, La Liga, the WTA, plus FIBA Basketball. How it works is GST will license its data on racers’ performances to Stats Perform and its media partners. Stats Perform will handle the integrity of Grand Slam Track’s data and the betting product while selling the data to sportsbooks on Grand Slam Track’s behalf.
While embracing sports betting can bring concerns of competition manipulation and harassment of athletes, GST believes it will bring opportunities to athletics and benefit the exposure of the athletes. “This is what professional sports do,” Gera 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, GST announced a streaming media rights deal with Peacock and NBC Sports. The league will also broadcast weekend races on the CW Network. Each Slam will span three days, and Peacock will stream all days live, providing exclusive coverage of the first day of competition. In addition to Peacock, The CW Network will broadcast the Saturday and Sunday events live.
Grand Slam Track’s inaugural roster features 48 Racers, including top track athletes from around the globe, competing against 48 Challengers across four Slams in Kingston, Jamaica; Miami; Philadelphia and Los Angeles, starting April 4-6. The star-studded lineup includes 400m hurdles world-record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, triple Olympic gold medallist Gabby Thomas, British distance star Josh Kerr and Canadian Olympic medallist Marco Arop.
