Early Friday morning, unsponsored American sprinter Alaysha Johnson qualified for the 100-meter hurdle finals at the 2024 Olympic Games. She then took to X with a plea: “If anybody wants to buy me 8 tickets so my family can watch me run then I’d love yall … but know they going for $500 a piece,” she wrote. Within an hour, her ask was answered: Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and husband of Serena Williams, had come to the rescue.
Ohanian may seem likely an unlikely benefactor for women’s track and field—a “fairy godparent,” as Alison Wade from Fast Women called him—but but, as the principal owner of LA-based professional women’s soccer team Angel City FC and recipient of the Women’s Sports Foundation 2022 Champion For Equality Award, the venture capitalist is a long-time champion of women’s sports. In April, he announced that his Seven Seven Six firm would sponsor a new women-only track event called Athlos on September 26, 2024.
“At 776, we believe in the power of sports to drive positive change and inspire future generations,” Ohanian said in a statement. “By investing in women’s track, we aim to build a best-in-class event that elevates the profile of top women athletes and creates a more equitable sporting landscape.”
Ohanian’s partner in this venture is 200-meter Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas, who added, “We hope to not only provide athletes with the resources and visibility they need to have enduring careers but also to inspire fans worldwide with a reinvented format to experience the best of our sport.”
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The first-of-its-kind event will feature top-tier female runners—including Thomas, Olympic 5,000-meter silver medalist Faith Kipyegon, 400-meter U.S. national indoor champion Alexis Holmes, Australian 100-meter record holder Torrie Lewis, and more—racing distances from 100 to 1,500 meters. They’ll be vying for a share of $500,000, the largest purse ever offered at a women’s track event; gold medalists will take home $60,000 each (that’s double what the Diamond League finals only award winners).
To up the ante even further, Ohanian promised the 36 female Olympians running his event that he’d personally pay them $60,000 if they win a gold medal in Paris. Thomas was the first to cash in with her Olympic win.
But Ohanian isn’t just ponying up for the big names. When discus thrower and first-time Olympian Veronica Fraley posted that she couldn’t pay her rent, despite competing in the Olympics, Ohanian almost immediately sent her enough money to cover rent for the rest of the year. Fraley didn’t make it to the finals in Paris, but the attention she got led to $23,000 in donations on GoFundMe, which she’ll use to keep training for World Championships and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
To capitalize on what’s been an amazing Olympic track and field competition, with Team USA earning 29 medals as of publication, Ohanian has been on the ground in Paris inviting literally everyone to Athlos: Team USA gymnastics, rugby star Ilona Maher, Flavor Flav (who’s the sponsor and biggest hype man for Team USA’s women’s water polo team). To keep the attention of new fans, you need star power and a sexy setting that requires reimagining the traditional track meet. (Case in point: The dramatic pre-race music and a light show at the Stade de France in Paris.)
Athlos will feature DJs and individual entrance music for the athletes, and Megan Thee Stallion will be the inaugural headliner. “Only the best for the best,” Ohanian wrote on TikTok. (You know who else has tapped Megan Thee Stallion’s star power recently? Kamala Harris.) At the Business of Women’s Sports Summit in April, Thomas said Ohanian was inspired by the spirit of Formula 1 events, which have seen an unprecedented rise in popularity following the debut of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series in 2019.
While track and field might not be having its F1 moment (yet), this is the kind of mainstream popularity the sport has rarely seen, and it’s not only thanks to Ohanian. In February, Duæl Track—a head-to-head, bracket-style racing competition made for TV—promised a $1 million prize pool at their September event.
At almost the same time as Ohanian’s announcement, legendary Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson launched Grand Slam Track, a new league debuting next year that will showcase big names like Olympic 400-meter hurdles gold medalist and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Olympic 1500-meter silver medalist Josh Kerr, and 36 other athletes.
In July, Netflix released Sprint, a documentary series that followed elite track and field athletes as they prepared for the World Championships; the show attracted 2.4 million views in its first week of being released and season two is already being filmed. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime has a docuseries in the works about the Ingebrigtsen brothers, including world record holder for the indoor 1500 metres Jakob Ingebrigtsen, as they prepare for the 2024 Olympic Games, according to the Norwegian newspaper VG.
Athletes are also driving interest on their own via social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. They’re leaning into distinct personalities (see: Sha’carri Richardson, who just won the Olympic silver medal in the 100-meter sprint, and 100-meter gold medalist Noah Lyles has 1.4 million followers) rivalries (see: Jakob Ingebrigtson versus Josh Kerr, or Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone versus Norwegian Femke Bol), and relationships (see: power couple Tara Davis-Woodhall, who won the Olympic gold medal in the long jump, and her husband, Paralympian Hunter Woodhall) to help them stand out on a global stage.
Still, it never hurts to have a fairy godparent, and a savvy entrepreneur like Ohanian knows how important it is to maintain this Olympic momentum so track and field doesn’t lose that once-every-four-years spotlight—and the revenue opportunities it brings for both individual athletes and the sport as a whole—after the Closing Ceremony.
“None of this came from a charitable POV. It’s not because I have daughters or because I’m married to a world-class athlete,” Ohanian wrote on LinkedIn about his investment in women’s soccer—but the overall sentiment applies to all women’s sports, including women’s track and field. “It’s because these women were objectively great, and they were being objectively undervalued. It’s just good business.”
