Alternate broadcasts have become incredibly popular across various sports, and the latest is The Athletes’ Lounge from FloSports.
The Athletes’ Lounge will feature famed Olympians Matthew Centrowitz Jr., Trey Hardee, English Gardner, and others, joined by FloTrack personalities Demitra Carter and Nia Gibson, for 10 Wanda Diamond League track and field broadcasts this year. The first one is Friday at 11:15 a.m. ET for the Doha Diamond League event from Qatar.
It’s part of FloTrack’s inaugural slate of Diamond League coverage following a deal they struck for rights last year. The debut show on Friday will be free to all on YouTube and FloTrack’s platforms.
‘You get this rush of adrenaline’
Hardee, a famed American decathlete who won silver at the 2012 London Olympics and has worked on NBC Sports’ track and field coverage, helped create this concept, The Athletes’ Lounge. He spoke to Awful Announcing about it this week and said he envisioned this as a way to bring the excitement of an in-person track meet to viewers.
“The challenge for this product, and I think people have a hard time separating the sport from the product, is that when it’s on TV, it’s a product and it’s consumed and it is a very difficult sport to convert into this TV audience.
“When you’re at a track meet, it is so much fun because there’s always something going on. Your eyes can go just jump from thing to thing to thing. And really about every four to five minutes, you get this rush of adrenaline because there’s like quiet for a race or an event or something of great consequence.”
For Hardee, that excitement doesn’t translate during more conventional track and field broadcasts.
“The most fun that I’ve had watching, whether it be programming on television or any kind of digital media, FloSports or wherever it is, is not even close to the experience that you have when you’re there. You are on-site, in-person, sitting next to your buddies, talking about ‘Oh, look at this, look at that, did you hear about this?’
“And you’re talking about the relevant stories to the athlete, and you’re not caught up in the ‘Oh, we’ll be back in three minutes after this commercial break’ kind of thing. There’s not a bunch of vignettes, and then not a bunch of ‘We’re going to force these stories down your throat so that you love this athlete.’”
‘Mystery Science Theater 3000 with a track meet’
The Athletes’ Lounge has been in the works for a long time. Hardee said he’d been toying with the idea for almost 10 years.
“This story goes back almost a decade. When I first started to work for NBC, [producer] Rob Hyland asked, ‘How could we be doing this differently?’ And that was kind of where I where I was coming from, but it didn’t have legs. It didn’t have a format or anything like that. And then a couple of years went by, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, okay.’
“I had retired, and was just thinking ‘It would be fantastic to do Mystery Science Theater 3000 with a track meet.’ You could have sports personalities and track and field stars.
“We know what’s going on, we’re watching it on TV, we’re watching the screen, we can see the race unfolding. But keep telling that story that we want to hear about from 2016 in Rio when the cab driver drove you down into the favela. Keep us in with that, and we can all just watch this track meet together.”
But this really fleshed out further for Hardee after he saw altcasts‘ popularity explode following the launch of ESPN and Omaha Productions’ Monday Night Football ManningCast in 2021.
“It wasn’t that long ago that the ManningCast premiered, and it was exactly this kind of long-form podcast,” Hardee said. “We’re all watching this football game, and whenever something cool happens, either Peyton or Eli just interrupts and just says, ‘Hey, you see what they did right there? I hate when they do that.’
“Or ‘That was beautiful. Nobody noticed it, but look at this: I remember my center used to do the same thing,’ or ‘I remember when Edgerrin James used to do this.’ That, to me, not only is it different, but for the athlete, that’s who I want to watch the game with.’ And so that’s where this idea came from.”
‘It’s invaluable to have those types of perspectives.’
What’s that going to look like? Hardee said the format provides opportunities for deeper dives, such as a recent preparatory one he did on star pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis.
“I think we can just afford to be pretty inventive. Just the other day I had a three- or four- minute breakdown of ‘What makes Mondo Duplantis so good?’ On no television show would you have that much time to do that.”
But beyond a feature like that, The Athletes’ Lounge will then feature athletes from different events discussing it and sharing their unique perspectives.
“Then I go and I sit back down and I’m still explaining that same thing to Matt Centrowitz, an Olympic gold medalist in the 1500m, and he’s still saying stuff that everybody’s thinking, stuff that I don’t really think about because I’m in it so much,” Hardee said. “I think they come with a unique ability to ask the right questions.
“It’s the same way I would be talking to a marathoner about their preparation: I think I kind of know how you would build it up, but I really have no idea. And so it’s invaluable to have those types of perspectives in the conversation and as a part of the show, because it kind of keeps us honest and keeps us from being too inside baseball.”
The ManningCast, in particular, is often notable for its guests, and Hardee said that’s another element The Athletes’ Lounge will focus on.
“What I’m really, really excited about is we have just full liberty to invite whoever we want on the show as a guest, whether it’s an American record holder in the women’s discus or the best shot putter who’s ever lived or the fastest man in the world last year or literally anybody. Anyone that wants to come on the show is going to come on the show.
“And we’re going to get to hear about what it was like when they were competing or breaking records, or what they see in the sport, or what they’re seeing in at the meet and so. We’ve got all of the Diamond League events at our disposal, and we’ve got a pretty blank slate in terms of a format to be able to pull people in and just talk to interesting people, talk to people that you want to know more about.”
‘I have at least enough information to be dangerous.’
Hardee said his background as a decathlete has given him at least a base level of knowledge of many events.
“I have at least enough information to be dangerous. I’m not quite at the top of the Dunning-Kruger bell curve. I don’t think I know everything, but I can at least have the conversation with the people who do know. I can understand what it means.”
He thinks that a wide background of knowledge has been key to his track broadcasting career to date.
“It definitely helps, it immensely helps. I think it’s the only reason I kind of got into this to begin with, and probably the only reason I’m still in it is just that baseline knowledge of multiple events.”
Friday’s debut of The Athletes Lounge marks the fruition of Hardee’s idea, which he first had a decade ago. He’s thrilled with how it’s turned out and optimistic about what it could mean as a different approach to track broadcasting.
“I think this is going to be the best show on FloSports, I really do. I think this is going to be the coolest, best, most interesting way to present our sport that is out there. It feels like we got a very rare opportunity to have both just media partners that can that are just handing all of the content, and then a company and platform that is willing to do this. It just feels like all the things are aligning here to do something really special.”
