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At his first track meet, Alexis Ohanian found himself in another world. The tension and excitement was building again, as he had sat so close he could feel the tension as he watched Serena Williams play tennis. Instead of a box seat at Wimbledon, this time he was at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus for last month’s U.S. Olympic Trials. Instead of risking his life on his wife’s serves and groundstrokes, he was agonizing over every turn Gabby Thomas made down the final stretch.
He’d never been to an NWSL game before buying and building Angel City Football Club, so he didn’t need to experience track and field to be motivated to invest in it. But sitting next to Thomas’ boyfriend, Spencer McMains, he felt it again: the nail-biting drama. the intensity of the competition. the sense of excellence brewing.
“When I actually watched it, it was like Grand Slam PTSD,” Ohanian said. “Those trials were a fountain of stories, a fountain of story, a fountain of drama. So it was my first experience and I was definitely spoiled. But it opened my eyes… and reinforced the idea that this is a big opportunity.”
If Reddit founder Ohanian knows anything at this point, it’s betting on women’s sports. There’s a huge, largely untapped field in the industry, and with the creation of Angel City FC, he’s proven his instincts and the data about untapped potential right.
To that end comes Athlos, a track-focused festival designed to shine a spotlight on the sport’s hidden treasures – a confirmation of an already proven hypothesis.
Athros (Greek for athletics), once known as the “776 Invitational” and originating from a venture capital fund founded by Ohanian, announced Thursday that its inaugural tournament will kick off at Icahn Stadium in New York City on Sept. 26 — one last chance to capture some of the magic before the Olympic frenzy fades.
Well, wrong. The potential is undeniable. Many of the biggest names in athletics are women: Shakyari Richardson. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce. A-Sing Mu. And social media star and German middle-distance runner Alica Schmidt.
Gaby Thomas and Alexis Ohanian speak at the Athros launch in April. On Thursday, Athros announced that it would hold its first event in New York on September 26. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Thomas is the first athlete Athlos tattooed, and she’ll be a household name by the time Athlos NYC launches. She’s the epitome of what Athlos is betting on: once you see her run, once you get to know her (Harvard grad, with the charm of an elegant breakfast platter, changing people’s lives in healthcare and wearing a prized medal around her neck), it’s nearly impossible not to want more.
Athlos NYC is a beta test of whether female track and field athletes can capture the attention of American sports fans, purely through the talent and appeal of their athletes and their competitions, without any stakes in Olympic glory.
That’s the difficulty of track and field. It’s a hard sport to follow. America’s great athletes are like comets that periodically cross this atmosphere: fascinating, majestic, ephemeral.
Athletics is nothing less than a spectacular carnival of sports. For hours, tricks are performed simultaneously in many different disciplines. It requires a certain level of expertise to know where to look, to understand the context and drama, but it’s all presented in the most fascinating way. That’s why the Olympics are so easy to watch. Everyone already understands the stakes: to qualify for the Olympics or to win a medal. These goals are concrete and intrinsic.
The trick is to find the appeal without the golden carrot and lean into the personalities, rivalries, history and competition. There aren’t many things as purely competitive as athletics.
The belief is that with investment and care, and by applying modern structures and operating methods, the seed of trucking can be firmly established in America.
“A lot of people are saying the same thing about women’s soccer right now,” Ohanian said, “A lot of people are saying the same thing about women’s basketball right now. I truly believe that in three or four years, we’ll be saying the same thing about track and field, and that’s why I’m making such a large investment today.”
Going deeper
Gabby Thomas, a leading Olympic contender in the 200m, is turning heads and she’s ready to go.
The Athlos plan is threefold. First, simplify. Not only will it be limited to women, but the number of events will be reduced to six, all track events: 100m, 200m, 400m, 100m hurdles, 800m and 1,500m. In addition to American 200m champion Thomas, Alexis Holmes (400m) and Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon (1,500m) will be on the 36-man field.
Kipyegon is one of the great talents in female athletics. She broke her own world record in the 1500m at the Diamond League in Paris this week and is the number one ranked woman in athletics at age 30. The two-time Olympic gold medalist is arguably Kenya’s greatest athlete of all time.
The second part of the Athlos plan is prize money: winning the Athlos event will pay out $60,000. Let’s put this in perspective.
The Diamond League, track and field’s top league, offers winners $10,000 in 14 events, rising to $30,000 at the league finals. World Athletics, track and field’s governing body, announced in April that it would pay Olympic gold medalists $50,000 in 48 events. World Athletics also recently announced an Ultimate Championship, a biennial event starting in 2026 that will pay the winner $150,000. Additionally, World Athletics will pay a $100,000 bonus to athletes who break world records.
So $60,000 for one event is a lot of money, especially for a woman.
Second place will receive $25,000. Third place will receive $10,000, fourth place $8,000, fifth place $5,000, and sixth place $2,500. 10% of event revenues will be pooled and shared among all participating athletes. To participate means to get paid – a remarkable paradigm shift in a sport where athletes often foot the bill.
For venture capitalists, the money is the easiest part.
“All it takes is the will and the money,” he said. “If that’s the top prize, think about all the other athletes who can’t play this sport professionally. So how many people are we missing in terms of talent diversity? How many people would we have if we professionalized this a little bit more? It just makes it more attractive. And no one is going to be satisfied with a $60,000 top prize. This is just a starting point, and from now we’ll work on building the infrastructure.”
The third part of the Athlos plan is to make track and field a big event, highlighting the appeal of track and field pure and simple. Athlos NYC will feature entertainment headliners, DJs and spectacular broadcast presentations.
Ohanian isn’t the only one who believes in track and field’s potential. Netflix just released “Sprint,” a documentary featuring Noah Lyles, Richardson and other sprinting stars. Amazon has a docuseries on Lyles and a documentary series on Norwegian middle-distance runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen coming soon. American sprinting legend Michael Johnson has announced the launch of Grand Slam Track, a new league focused on sprinters and long-distance runners.
At a macro level, there is a trend to mine gold in lesser-discovered sports. The WNBA, NWSL, F1, and Tour de France are all benefiting in some way from the industry’s current quest. Perhaps this is because the investment required is much less onerous than the saturated markets of powerful men’s professional sports such as American football and basketball. “Minor” sports are more attractive because the entry fees and necessary access are cheap enough.
What Ohanian is trying to prove again is that women’s sports can be profitable.
“It’s been going well so far,” he said. “This isn’t about feel-good or feminism. This is just data. To this day, more Americans watch the women’s U.S. Open final than the men, and at the very least, that means they’re equally valuable.”
(Top photo: Gabby Thomas celebrates her victory at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Photographed by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
