Whether he’s loud, fashionable, or just there to make a heated statement, Noah Lyles is not an entity one can completely forget about. And perhaps that’s why fans of various sports have gradually been realizing his true purpose of putting on a show before every race. His goal to put track and field in the spotlight has been coming to fruition, but are broadcasters ready for it?
In a candid chat with Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson on the Nightcap podcast, Lyles talked about the problems of accessibility and how it all tied down to some upcoming projects. Ever since the success of his Netflix series, ‘Sprint’, more and more people around the world have been expressing their interest in track and field.
Lyles has always maintained how he loved to put on a show and be his fashionable best before races just so it brings an increase in viewership. But when track and field broadcasters do not make the sport accessible and put it behind a paywall or do not have a common place to showcase it, all the work becomes moot.
Interestingly, this has also been a hiccup that Lyles ran into for Michael Johnson’s upcoming venture – the Grand Slam Track. The meet has been garnering more and more popularity, especially after the Olympics and the immediate onboarding of track icon Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. And Lyles claimed that he has been in talks with Johnson and the organizers for a while now.
“There’s a lot that I like that he’s doing. There’s a few things that I think could be a little better.”
For Lyles, no matter what the race offered and brought with it, he firmly believed that viewership needed to be an important aspect the organizers had to consider. So far, it looks like the Grand Slam Track hasn’t specified a particular TV provider for the world to be able to watch and enjoy.
“Again, what good is it if we’re producing these great times, great shows, these great rivalries and we have nobody seeing it…I need to hear a TV provider and I need to know that it’s going to be seen consistently.”
In the case of the Netflix series, one of the reasons it became popular was the common platform from where people worldwide could access it. For Lyles, watching a race meet shouldn’t have to involve extra steps and ‘back alley’ methods.
With NBC also dropping away the rights to broadcast the Diamond League, things are already bleak for the track and field future. The sprinting icon hopes to bring some change to that aspect as well.
