Duael Track Believes It Can Transform The Sport

Professional track and field is currently in its glow-up phase, with million-dollar ideas following new-venture leagues by the name of Athlos NYC, Grand Slam Track and Duael.

In September, the debut of Athlos, the all-women’s track league created by Reddit founder Alex Ohanian, bounded past the gates in New York City for an impressive debut, featuring Olympic athletes such as Gabby Thomas, Masai Russell and Brittany Brown as they blitzed down the straightaways of Icahn Stadium and ushered in the first installment of a series that offered over $600,000 in total prize money and a closing act of Megan Thee Stallion.

Now two more leagues are scheduled for arrival in 2025, including the headline-grabbing Grand Slam Track, a multi-million dollar expansion focusing exclusively on track events, set to be hosted in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami and Kingston, Jamaica, over the course of 2025.

With over $30 million dollars of seed money funding Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson’s new vision, which includes over $250,000 in prize-winnings per discipline and over $3 million handed out per Slam, the league is already generating a healthy buzz, with 2024 Olympic medalists such as Fred Kerley, Josh Kerr and Cole Hocker all guaranteed to partake.

Still, those two leagues remain slightly modified versions of track and field.

Duael, on the other hand, is a complete reimagining of the sport, with a 1-on-1 model that will feature head-on races between elite athletes – with a total purse of $500,000 according to Front Office Sports – to go along with dynamic broadcast operations that could offer a change in traditional storytelling.

And to make matters a little more incentivized, Duael is likely to connect with a betting partner, elevating its competition beyond television sets.

The vision, however, needs to be fully aligned, founder Barry Kahn told Forbes recently from Austin, Texas, which is one reason why the league will likely be the last on this list to debut in 2025. The 43-year-old Kahn, who founded the specialized ticketing software company Qcue, said the company’s timeline for its first meet is still under construction.

“We’re trying to have the right product with the right partners and do this properly,” said Kahn, “so that means the right broadcast partners, the right athlete partners, the right betting partners, the right brands involved. This needs to be done in a way that changes how people view the sport of track and field, not just an alternative to what’s out there.”

The Origins Of Duael Track

Kahn is a former NCAA Division I runner, having competed for Cornell University in the early 2000s before earning a master’s and PhD in economics from Texas. After building Qcue and selling it to a division of Endeavor in 2021 – where he went from being a self-professed “short haired, clean shaven kid … to a long-haired, bearded executive” – Kahn stayed with the company before deciding to leave in May for Duael.

He teamed up with co-founder Ben Schragger, a former collegiate pitcher for Rice University, after being connected through Rice’s Sports Management program and learning about Schragger’s work with CBS’s podcast division and another tech company in Austin, where Kahn lives.

Then Kahn hired former Notre Dame quarterback Brandon Wimbush, who founded an NIL platform connecting businesses to college athletes, in August to lead the company’s strategic partnerships.

Kahn said this idea of 1-on-1 racing has been percolating in his head for 10 years.

“It’s this concept of, ‘How do you get the casual track fan engaged in the sport of track and field?’” Kahn said. “It’s always been the sport that every four years of the Olympics, it’s the most popular sport in the world, but nobody cares the rest of the time.”

How Duael Track Will Work

Duael’s headline attraction will be its 1-on-1 racing, which will feature different disciplines of traditional track and field events. The league originally planned for a fall 2024 debut for its first 100 meter challenge, but has since pushed that date back. The league also intends to follow with a Duael Mile and potentially more disciplines in the future, Kahn said.

Traditionally, only three U.S. men’s and women’s athletes qualify for the World Championships or Olympics per event within a 2- or 4-year cycle – though World Athletics recently unveiled its “Ultimate Championships,” which will take place between those cycles – with two or three more often added for use in relays. There is also the Diamond League, the longstanding professional track and field circuit which often features the world’s top athletes in competitions across the world.

But in Kahn’s world, one in which he foresees a 40-person 1-on-1 bracket, his league will open the door for more 100 meter and mile specialists from the United States and other countries. Each event discipline, he said, would only compete once a year for a top prize, which would allow for athletes to compete in other ventures over the given year.

The format has been given added spotlight in recent months, as performative “feuds” have formed between the likes of Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, a former elite track athlete, and Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles.

Kahn, however, believes cross-over ideas may have to wait.

“The key for this is not to be a gimmick,” Kahn said. “And the way you do that and launch has to be with the best athletes … I think we want to be at a point where one-on-one running is sort of a new discipline within the sport that would essentially have different champions and different people who would excel at it.”

However, there is no expectation that this league will operate inside a stadium, Kahn said. The right location could feature a smaller venue with premium seating and vendor options. It might not include a traditional oval track.

“What we’re currently looking at is kind of a paddock area of an (Formula)1 track, using the garage areas …and then having kind of an exclusive VIP audience, a couple 1,000 people in what is referred to as the common area,” he said. “We’re not trying to put this in a stadium.”

In October, Ad Age reported that Super Serious, a creative agency led by actor Terry Crews, has joined as an exclusive production partner. That could be a sign of significant changes in the way the league is presented on television.

Kahn said broadcast and commentary decisions could ultimately greatly impact how the league generates an audience, both within linear programming and through social media. Duael, which is looking to promote its storytelling through social media channels like Instagram, YouTube and Tik Tok, is putting particular focus on its “run-of-show.”

Currently, Kahn sees his first 100 meter competition completed over six days in two- to three-hour blocks separated across two weekends. By the end of the competition, he said, viewers will have a greater understanding of each athlete through its storytelling.

“If you didn’t know who Noah (Lyles) was by the time you get to the finals and he’s there, he fits one of those archetypes for you,” Kahn said. “You either want him to win or you want to see him lose. I think it will take a number of rounds for that to get through.”

While Duael is reviewing traditional linear partners, Kahn said he may exercise non-exclusive rights so that nontraditional options, such as YouTube streamers, could promote the league from a different vantage point.

Recently, the YouTube streamer iShowSpeed, who has over 33 million subscribers, raced the Olympic champ Lyles, a YouTuber with over 250,000 fans, over 50 meters for $100,000.

It was streamed on Lyles’ channel, moderated by by YouTube sensation Mr. Beast — 335 million subscribers — and ultimately generated 1.3 million views — Lyles won, by the way. It has since been repurposed and republished by handfuls of content creators.

“We have a couple offers on the table,” Kahn said of potential television contracts, “so we’re trying to figure out where we ultimately land on it.”

How Duael Can Change The Sport

Then there’s the matter of betting operations.

Kahn said Duael will feature parallels to horse racing and NASCAR, two sports which invite odds and betting. Track and field typically struggles to prepare fans for its events because advanced commitments from professional athletes are not common.

“It’s hard to even create lines, because you don’t know who’s going to be on the line,” Kahn said.

That will not be the case with Duael.

“Here, it’s really simple,” he said. “You’ll see something akin to the NCAA tournament here, a full bracket. I mean, there’s just a lot you can do with this from a betting side.”

And yet, if it wasn’t already clear, starting a track and field league from scratch is no small order.

Kahn did not disclose the amount of seed money or investment he’s accumulating to build the venture, but he added that Duael has “raised some outside capital.”

With focus on all the little details, Kahn said he’s also not worrying so much about competition. He believes his league will create its own lane and may prove to stand on its own.

In a perfect world, Duael could open the door for a whole new discipline of racing, one that could eventually be governed at the international level.

“The way we’re looking at this is that it needs to launch as an elite-level competition for track and field,” Kahn said. “Our first step is kind of proving out or creating this new sport of one-on-one running.”

To do that, Duael will require the right athletes.

Ad Age reported back in October that Lyles “signed up to be a part of an upcoming tournament-style event that will pin racers against each other.”

While Kahn said he’s currently in discussions with Olympic athletes, nothing is official yet.

The Opportunity Ahead For Duael

With increased exposure to the sport in the beginning of 2025 following the Olympic Games in Paris, Duael will have an opportunity to capitalize on a still-captive audience.

There’s no doubt that timing will make a difference.

But Kahn hasn’t wavered. He believes Duael is in the process of building a transformative product for the sport.

“I think there’s a really high excitement level on the possibility of changing the sport,” Kahn said. “I think what’s exciting about what we’re doing, what everyone gets excited about is, it’s fundamentally different. You could see the NFL fans tuning in to watch a Duael, in a way they are not going to tune in and watch a current track and field property.”