Top marks to Athlos for reimagining athletics and creating that elusive vibe
Generating atmosphere at live sport is no easy feat – and it might not be the one that everyone wants – but Athlos succeeded, writes Ed Warner.
Perri Shakes-Drayton was there for it. Luke Littler might stay away because of it. Millwall and West Ham fans create it organically. The average county cricket fan at this season’s end matches might be oblivious to it.
We’re talking about the vibe, or vibes. Without it or them, it seems, modern sport is nothing – at least for Gen Z and the marketers who have these young consumers’ digital wallets in their sights.
“Listen, I’m just excited for everything to kick off. And I’m just here for the vibes and the energy.”
Shakes-Drayton was part of the team fronting the broadcast stream for Athlos LDN26, the latest stop on what is billed as “a global track and field circuit where sport and culture collide”.
The 37-year-old former hurdler was the livest wire in her time on the GB athletics team and, while she might be a millennial herself, came over as the perfect vibe-curator for Athlos’s target Gen Z audience.
The crowd sat across from the huge stage opposite the single stand deployed at north London’s modest StoneX Stadium appeared to stretch into older generations.
However, Athlos’s target audience for its seven women-only athletics events and the 42 competitors on show weren’t those buying tickets, just as Strictly isn’t designed for those invited to form the studio backdrop for the BBC’s weekly light entertainment show.
There was nothing light about last Friday’s LDN26 event presentation. Loud, dazzling, excitable bordering on hysterical (in all senses of the word): roughly 10 minutes of track and long jump action was stretched to three hours of screen time for those watching live and not, like me, on catch-up with liberal deployment of the fast-forward button.
My verdict? Top marks for genuinely reimagining an athletics show. Where Michael Johnson’s failed Grand Slam Track talked a big reinvention game but fell well short on the innovation front (perhaps, with hindsight, for lack of cash), Athlos appears a ground-up design.
Not the way I’d choose to consume one of my favourite sports, but then – as a boomer – I’m not the target audience.
I spent years at UK Athletics fending off complaints from committed fans about our use of stadium music. I can only imagine what my irate correspondents were thinking if they found their way to YouTube, BBC iPlayer or X at the weekend to see what all the Athlos fuss was about. And if they stayed on long enough to see Keely Hodgkinson’s homage to Cathy Freeman’s race suit, well…
I expect few around the world watched a continuous three hours of Athlos coverage, but at moments its viewers on X topped 1m. Monetising these eyeballs will be key to whether the venture’s financial backers, led by Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit and husband of Serena Williams) make a return on their investment.
After all, it’s not just track and field that has seen vibe-focused challengers crash and burn. Think LIV, which boldly promised “golf, but louder”.
Shoot that poison arrow
Meanwhile, a sport that has found its own distinctive vibe over the past 25 years risks turning on its own stars.
“If the Dutch stay like this, then I’m not going to do any Euro tours over there. There’s just no point in me travelling, wasting my time while I’m getting booed. Just want to play my darts, obviously sign autographs.”
For a while, Luke Littler was darts, the teenager’s success expanding awareness of the sport a couple of decades post its hugely successful reboot engineered by Barry and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom.
It should be little surprise, though, that a sporting hero can swiftly become a villain in the minds of fans immersed in a raucous venue atmosphere.
For the crowds that now fill Alexandra Palace across the turn of every year – and doubtless those who irked Littler in Amsterdam last weekend too – the vibe at elite darts is much of its appeal.
Strip out the fans’ imposed pantomime villainy and you might lose much of the sport’s edge. Vibes, after all, come in more than one style.
They don’t care
The media went looking for organic rather than promoter-created vibes at the New Den last weekend. Indeed, it might be said that some were seeking to ginger up a particular vibe at the first meeting of arch-rivals Millwall and West Ham for 14 years.
From reports it seems they were disappointed that a lively atmosphere in and outside the ground stayed one side of a line they might have liked it to have crossed.
For all the Premier League clubs’ embracing of light shows, fireworks, official flag-wavers and ear-splitting music stings, football at all levels has enough deep-rooted history and fandom to create its own vibe without a corporate overlay.
This strength is the envy of other sports and its owners mess with that at their peril, however they might believe that new (more minted) audiences expect the vibe elements they see at other sports or entertainments.
Those hopes for an old Den experience – another type of fireworks, if you like – may have been dashed, but this derby, like so many across the land, demonstrated once again that vibes aren’t always capable of being bottled and sold. Good thing, too.
The sun goes down
The vibe at nine county grounds today will be very different to that at the StoneX, Ally Pally or the New Den. It will be something more muted but absolutely deep-rooted.
One of cricket’s assets is that it has formats to engage all generations, from alpha to boomer, not all requiring off-field pyrotechnics.
It’s a nonsense that the premier domestic cricket competition ends so deep into the school year. Thank the weather gods, then, for the expected dry days that will see a resolution of fiercely-contested title and promotion battles that are going down to the wire.
See you at Hove next April!
One for your diary
I’m often asked when it’s next possible to see elite wheelchair rugby action in the UK. Well, stick 2-7 May 2027 in your diary.
Some of the world’s best teams – including GB, of course – will be competing at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena as part of the Inclusive Sport and Culture Festival.
Register to be kept in touch with the Festival here.
Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com