The Diamond League has begun its 2025 season. The Diamond League has 14 meets and a championship event, celebrating the elite of the elite in the sport of track and field. The Diamond League has some competition this year, with Grand Slam Track and the ATHLOS meeting. Both of those events have required the Diamond League to reassess its plans and DL has added more prize money, among other changes. Here are my thoughts on the success of the first Diamond League Meeting:
The opening of the Diamond League, for the second year, begins in China. The first week of the DL season consists of both meets, in Xiamen (April 26) and then, Shanghai (May 3). The majority of the elite athletes stay in China for the week, meaning that both meets have to work together to manage training, food, accomodations and travel. The Logistics of the week are quite impressive, and the Diamond League has a winning opening this way!
Great crowd in the Xiamen Egret Stadium! A strong, boisterous crowd greeted many of the finest athletes in the world. The biggest roars were reserved for their local athletes, which is to be expected. What meet management has done (Global Athletics Communications) with these meets is to build a new audience for the sport in Asia. Watching this meet on television is one thing. I have been to Beijing twice, in 2008 for the Olympics and in 2015 for the World Champs, and the crowds were tremendous!
Television: to watch the Diamond League and Continental Tour events in North America (with exception of Pre, NYC GP, and USATF Indoor and USATF Outdoor), one has to have a subscription to FloTrack, or wait until they are replayed on You Tube. This writer has paid for the subscription, $12.50 a month or $158.50 for the year up front, and I found it to be a good deal. FloTrack has enough other content for the subscription to be valuable to a coach, or serious fan.
Coverage: Diamond League gives us each and every race. Diamond League commentating has high level commentators who get global track and field. The coverage features the races on the track and some throws and jumps are featured as well. Two hours of back to back races has kept fans around the world happy with the coverage. Many countries are relying on streaming coverage of the Diamond League. This writer believes that both World Athletics and Diamond League are being short-sighted. A social media platform that allows much of the broadcast to be seen for free would not affect the for profit streaming services that are currently been offered.
The Athletes. The Diamond League is all about the athletes. I was pleasantly surprised to see how high quality are the fields were in Xiamen, from Karsten Warholm, to Mondo Duplantis, to Faith KIpyegon. A series of strong fields made this a meeting of substance. Bravo to Diamond League for providing great short interviews, with strong questions from Cathal Dennehy, one of our sport’s finest journalists. Remote coverage is pretty frustrating, but World Athletics and Diamond League allows media to ask remote questions, provide photos, interviews and full results and flash quotes.
