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Sprinter Gabby Thomas Says Diamond League FloSports Deal Is a Drag

Jason Clinkscales
·3 min read

One of the most prominent athletes on Team USA made it clear that a recent media deal may do more harm than good when it comes to growing the visibility of track and field.

Two-time Olympic medalist Gabby Thomas criticized a deal signed by the Wanda Diamond League which moves its competitions from Comcast-owned Peacock to the more expensive streaming service FloSports in 2025.

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“With the Diamond League, we were on NBC and Peacock for a little bit and I do feel like we were getting a little bit more visibility into the sport,” Thomas said at a 100 days from the Olympics countdown event in New York on Wednesday. “And it has recently gone off because it’ll exclusively be on FloTrack,” Thomas continued, referring to track-and-field’s specific channel on FloSports.

“It does eliminate visibility because there is a pretty big paywall behind watching our events now,” the Austin-based sprinter said. “And I think that’s difficult for people, it’s not accessible. Paying $30 a month to watch a track meet is not reasonable for a lot of people, and not to me, to be completely honest.”

The Diamond League, which launched in 2010, essentially serves as a professional league of elite track and field athletes with competitions around the globe between May and September. In April, the league signed an exclusive rights deal with FloSports, moving nearly all its competitions behind the FloSports paywall. (The Prefontaine Classic, which is held in Oregon, is the exception.)

The deal is reminiscent of Apple’s 2023 pact with Major League Soccer, which put the majority of that league’s matches behind the paywall of Apple TV+.

“This partnership represents our shared commitment to elevating the profile of track and field, providing fans with unparalleled access to our premier series of events,” Wanda Diamond League CEO Petr Stastny said in a statement announcing the deal.

FloSports offers several sports to watch, and a monthly subscription costs between $29.99 and $39.99, depending on which sport a consumer chooses.

That’s a significant leap in price compared to Peacock, Comcast’s streaming service for its NBCUniversal properties. Peacock offers a Premium stream for $5.99 per month and a Premium Plus stream for $11.99 per month. The service can also offer discounts through cable and satellite carriers.

Peacock will stream Diamond League competitions in 2024 as part of NBC’s build-up for the upcoming Paris Games.

“I have nothing against FloSports, I love their journalism, but that we don’t even know the logistics behind (the deal),” Thomas said afterwards in an interview. “We don’t know why they chose to do that. But what I do know is that track and field was getting a lot more visibility on the time that it was on Peacock. You could just tell people to turn on Peacock, especially people who already had that subscription. But to put our entire league behind a paywall at $30 a month does nothing to expand the sport.

“It doesn’t allow people to become invested. I mean, even if someone gets interested in an athlete and wants to follow their track career, well now they just lost it because of that deal.”

FloSports has come under controversy before with some of its operations. The United States Olympic Committee stripped the company of Olympic and Olympic trials media credentials in 2016 for using NBC’s exclusive footage during its own coverage of the Olympic trials ahead of the Rio Games. (NBC holds exclusive broadcast rights in the U.S. to the Olympic Games through 2032.) In 2019, Major League Soccer club DC United severed a four-year broadcast deal with the service less than a year into the contract due to widespread complaints from its fans over access.

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