Historic Millrose Games keeps up the pace

Five years after abandoning Madison Square Garden, the world’s longest-running indoor track meet survives in a diminished but far more stable capacity.

Saturday marks the 109th running of the Millrose Games, which by now is comfortably settled into its new home: the 5,000-seat Armory Track & Field Center in northern Manhattan, miles from the glamour of the Garden.

Despite leaving Madison Square Garden, the event is doing well enough to keep going. Photo by: AP IMAGES

“It’d be gone by now,” he said.

The move was steeped in controversy. It came only two years after the Millrose Foundation gave the Armory the rights to the meet after cycling through several for-profit licensees. USA Track & Field, which was then operating the meet at a loss, strongly objected and left the partnership. Track enthusiast website LetsRun bemoaned the “end of Millrose as we know it,” and The New York Times called the move “fraught with risk.”

The new era struggled at first. USATF staged a competing professional event at the Garden in 2012, and Millrose’s only “television” presence was on YouTube.

But under the new leadership of CEO Max Siegel, USATF returned as a media partner in 2013 in a streaming/tape-delay deal with ESPN, and today produces a live NBC Sports Network broadcast as part of the USATF Championship Series, a model that insulates the governing body from the risk of any single event. A year later, the nonprofit New York Road Runners signed as title sponsor to Millrose, providing a key financial tentpole and assuaging fears that sponsor dollars would dry up in a less prominent venue. The exact terms are private.

The USATF deal is year-to-year, and the title sponsorship expires in 2017, but both groups say they’re pleased. NYRR and the Armory now share a major sponsor, New Balance, and NYRR is already in talks to extend its naming rights. “We’re bullish on it, and have been for years,” said NYRR Chief Executive Michael Capiraso. “We think it’s one of those iconic properties that is a really great value above and beyond the sport.”

USATF spokeswoman Jill Geer said the governing body benefits from the grassroots exposure provided by Millrose while not actually owning it. “Within the sport of track and field, we’re all in it together,” Geer said. “This is an example of how everyone’s been working together rather than have competing interests.”

In many ways, the Millrose Games’ saga is a microcosm of the entire sport. Aging Eastern running enthusiasts fondly recall the days of sellout crowds, tuxedo-clad officials and athletes running through the cigarette smoke-filled Garden, but those days are historical footnotes to anyone younger than 45.

By the late 2000s, profitability became virtually impossible at the Garden. With 18,000 seats, MSG simply was too big and too high a rent for track. It reportedly cost USATF more than $1 million to produce the meet in the final years.

Now, without rent to pay, the Armory produces the meet for about $500,000, Sander said. And while it’s not exactly a moneymaker, it’s doing well enough to keep going. The Armory stages a $600-per-ticket benefit on Millrose weekend and then cobbles together revenue from ticket sales, the NYRR title sponsorship and associate sponsorships. The Armory itself reported an overall net loss of $348,000 on total revenue of $5.3 million in the year ending June 30, 2014, according to the most recent available tax filings.

“We’re about break-even, counting the title sponsorship,” said Sander, winner of the 1974 New York City Marathon.

The modern Millrose Games is both a professional and amateur meet at once, with an extensive schedule of youth, high school and community races to start the day and fill the seats. At the professional level, Sander believes the quality is “as good as it’s ever been,” and he doesn’t see any downside to it being largely confined to Americans.

This year’s field for the featured Wanamaker Mile includes U.S. Olympic hopefuls Matthew Centrowitz and Leo Manzano as well as New Zealander Nick Willis on the men’s side, along with Shannon Rowbury and Morgan Uceny on the women’s side, among others.

What the Armory lacks in sex appeal as a venue, it makes up for with a track that is universally regarded as top-notch, with a size and surface amenable to fast times, said Ray Flynn, an agent for several Olympic hopefuls and the Millrose meet director. The younger generation saw the negatives at the Garden. “Tradition only goes so far,” Flynn said. “If they’re running slower than they should be, then they question, why are we doing this?”

Former Runner’s World publisher and NYRR Chairman George Hirsch said the forces that rendered the Millrose Games nonviable at Madison Square Garden were already at work long before the Armory took over. It was just a matter of right-sizing it.

“Frankly, as the crowds were disappearing, the excitement was disappearing,” Hirsch said. “It just wasn’t the same to see a half-empty Garden. And Norb came along, with the support of others.

“Norb is sort of the Atlas holding up the world of track and field, in my opinion, and I think he simply saved it.”