While World Athletics' commercial circuit and the US circuit of domestic pro and NCAA events coexist and offer different options, and the successes of many from that US circuit who are little-known or even completely unknown to world audiences in Paris have made it clear there is a more than viable alternative to the DL/CT model out there, and obviously the whole Grand Slam Athletics thing is designed to try to capitalise on it, as mentioned in that article you link, its value is kind of determined by it needing to have essentially the full roster of every athlete it has signed up at each event. It seems likely to have a similar kind of level to many other US-parallel-series in events that aren't primarily the preserve of North America and where their leagues are the world's dominant (i.e. not basketball or ice hockey, international sports but very much with their home in the big leagues in the US and, in hockey's case, Canada) - likely the top level athletes will be absolutely world class and at the very highest level, but the depth of field is likely to tail away sooner such that the gap between the best and worst athlete in the field is likely to be larger than on the world stage - but in athletics that matters less, because away from the major championships it's less about who you beat but what time you run, or what distance you jump/throw. GSA having signed up the likes of Kerr, Nuguse, McLaughlin-Levrone and others who are US-based and most of the time primarily run in the US calendar is not just expected, but it would have been surprising had it not happened. The key thing will be if some of the strongest US athletes who are stalwarts of the Diamond League and are major figures on the world calendar competing around the world regularly, like Ryan Crouser, Noah Lyles or Valarie Allman, decide to do GSA instead.
Situation update: Grand Slam Track launched with much fanfare and has been an absolute fiasco. Some big stars, but as mentioned it was primarily made up of those who already largely ran a US calendar anyway, and many of the bigger international names would show up for events that fit their calendar and then run the IAAF's commercial calendar the rest of the time anyway. I mentioned that persuading the likes of Lyles and Allman who usually do a full Diamond League calendar to stay at home would be key, but they've continued to run the world calendar and GST has attracted little to no fanfare this side of the Atlantic, which kinda surprised me as I thought with the likes of SML running it would at least get some buzz going.
Now it turns out that essentially one major backer pulled out after the first event, Johnson had based his financials on an offer sheet and didn't have the money held in escrow ready, so was left with a major shortfall, and now because of the crazy high prize money promised in order to try to attract the elite field away from the IAAF's own calendar, they owe $13m in unpaid purse to athletes, and had to cancel the Los Angeles event. It seems that two events were run with the knowledge of the shortfall in the hope of funding the payouts with gate receipts, but attendance has been disappointing to say the least (one source quoting that they got 10% the attendance of Diamond League events, though I suspect that may be a selective figure using something like the London DL event specifically, which always draws a massive crowd compared to, say, the Bislett Games at Oslo, or the Monaco event, which are in smaller stadia) and one of the venues has not been paid for the rental either.
With a lack of field events to keep audience interest between track events, some odd choices of venue cities (I know Eugene was off the table because of the Prefontaine Classic being contracted to the Diamond League, but one thing crucial to the existence of the DL and CT system is running the events largely in towns with T&F culture) and being a flyaway event for any non-US-based participants - and let's be honest, for a large part of the audience outside the US, those are the guys and girls carrying the audience interest, as by and large apart from an occasional figure like SML, the US athletes the rest of the world has developed an attachment to and interest in are the ones that travel the world and compete against the world's best on an ongoing basis, like Noah Lyles, Rai Benjamin or Sha'Carri Richardson, rather than those who we see once every couple of years at a championship event and the rest of the time only run in US-specific events which get no TV coverage and take place in the middle of the night for European and African audiences - it seems like while it may limp on into a second year and find a niche for itself, ultimately Grand Slam Track is another one to add to the litany of start-up leagues who tried to reinvent the wheel and found out that, actually, there's a reason why the wheel doesn't need reinventing, just optimising.
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