Editor’s note: Author Barry Kahn is the founder and CEO of Duæl, a competitor in the track and field space.

As the third weekend of Grand Slam Track (GST) concludes in Philadelphia, within the track and field community there’s a rush to determine if Michael Johnson can make good on his promise to “save track.”

The obvious indicators are attendance and TV viewership. While it would be ambitious to imagine full stands or NFL-level TV ratings, Grand Slam has seen neither come close to matching the beleaguered Diamond League, which Johnson’s new league hopes to usurp as the top tier of professional track and field.

If we look more closely at the history of leagues, perhaps we should have expected this. While sports leagues might have once been about monetizing events, in today’s entertainment ecosystem, that’s a value proposition left to concert promoters and festival organizers. Sports leagues are media empires. In team sports, the teams themselves capture the majority of event-specific revenue, such as ticket sales and concessions. In some leagues, teams even cut their own regional TV deals. But this........

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