A NEW TRACK SEASON is here. Our 78th World Rankings issue lies before you, and chronicles a thrilling 2025 now in the books — eye-popping contests and performances that won’t soon be forgotten.
Just before the end-of-year holiday period, World Athletics President Seb Coe sat down for video chats with media (I hopped on a call at 6:20am Pacific time) to reflect on the year just finished. He had much analysis he was happy to share. Portions of his commentary follow, edited for flow and clarity.
Coe: “I think I spoke with no little conviction at this time last year when I spoke about almost entering a golden age for our sport, and particularly the athletes. If we’d been on this call 10 years ago, we would probably be talking about one or possibly two big names.
“We’re not doing that any longer. We revere the contribution those names have made in the past, but we’re now talking about a bandwidth of talent — both track, indoors and outdoors, road, cross country, field obviously… “[We are] celebrating an extraordinary bandwidth, particularly of young talent, coming through.…”
[Edit: We’re no longer in the Bolt era, as thrilling as it was to experience. The Jamaican flash was a one-in-a-billion athlete and character. But ’25 Men’s AOY Mondo Duplantis is too and the show we’re watching now is an ensemble production with a deeper, more diverse bench. Voting for Women’s AOY, won by Beatrice Chebet, was perhaps the toughest ballot ever.]Back to Coe: “On any matrix of assessment, Tokyo was our most successful World Championships, both in global reach and commercial partnerships.…
“I think the raised profile of the athletes — and this is the gift that keeps giving, both on the track and off the track — made a huge difference, to the point where our own commercial revenues have increased over 25% in the last four years.”
Some stats Coe was happy to highlight:
•1.4 billion viewer hours across 234 territories for the ’25 World Indoor, World Relays and Tokyo.
•Over 600,000 tickets sold for Tokyo with sold-out sessions 7 out of 9 evenings
•World Athletics traditional media coverage was just under 400,000 articles with a reach of 38 billion — a potential reach of 198 billion. World Athletics social media followers grew by 3 million, from 14 million to 17 million.
•Attendance figures across all three ’25 World Athletic Series events reflected WA’s renewed focus on full stadia: the Nanjing WIC had a sellout crowd of 12,000. The World Relays drew just under 37,000 in-stadium fans.
•In Tokyo, full evening sessions and impressive morning sessions with total attendance of 619,288 (third highest behind ’15 and ’17).
•World Athletics’ economic impact across all three WAS events was over $586 million, with Tokyo contributing the lion’s share at over $522M, from preliminary results.
• WA’s average return on investment was 4 times, and in the case of Tokyo, 5 times its spend.
•Good news also across the premium leagues and tours. Over 21,000 athletes competed in the Diamond League and Continental Tour, with 10,184 athletes recording a PR and 222 National Records set. On the road, over 326 label events were staged with 5.5 million participants from 67 countries.
Coe: “For 84 countries to leave a World Championships with either a finalist or a top 8 finish is unprecedented. I will never tire of saying it. There is no sport that has that global reach at world championship level.…
“When you look back 30 years at the Tokyo Championships in ’91, that wasn’t 84 countries, that was 47. So we’ve sort of doubled the number of countries in 30 years powering their way into top 8 finishes, and that has to be a good thing.”
Now the gun is up for ’26. As I write, World Cross will go off in Tallahassee in three days time. The new Ultimate Championships will wind up the cavalcade in Budapest come September.
Of the Ultimate Championships, Coe said, “I like to think it’s a glimpse of the future. We still have World Championships. They’re sacrosanct. But this new format matters, and it’s not just because of the historic $10 million prize pot… We really do want something that reads all action and no filler here. It’s three hours a night over three nights.… It needs to be and will be a reimagined spectacle for our athletes, for our spectators.…
“It is really imperative that every year at the right broadcastable moment, we have a billion people watching our sport. We can’t go a year without that. It just can’t happen.”
Not in the frenetically networked world of the 21st century. ◻︎
