Several Grand Slam Track vendors asked a bankruptcy court for approval Monday to sue the leaders of the embattled track league and its primary investor for $25 million.
The three vendors—each owed six or seven figures by the league—allege Olympic champion Michael Johnson committed fraud by making a $500,000 payment to himself in June 2025, and that investor Winners Alliance steered the league into financial ruin.
Grand Slam has been in bankruptcy since December after struggling to pay back the athletes and vendors who participated in its short, three-event 2025 season. The league said in January that it has more than $40 million in debts and brought in less than $2 million in revenue in 2025.
Three of Grand Slam Track’s vendors make up the creditors committee: broadcast company Momentum-CHP Partnership, graphics company Girraphic Park, and the league’s former public relations firm SRK Strategies. The three creditors are owed about $3 million, $690,000, and $248,000, respectively.
The threat came after another fiery filing from the creditors last week that rejected the league’s plan to get out of bankruptcy. Grand Slam had proposed a plan where athletes would be repaid about 85% of what they are owed, while creditors would get about 1.5% of what’s due. The creditors committee said the league has shown “shocking levels of incompetence, bad faith, self-dealing and failures to fulfill its fiduciary duty,” while its proposed plan “violates the fundamental bedrock tenet of the Bankruptcy Code.”
In a filing on Tuesday, the league fired back, saying the creditors’ objection to the plan “reeks of desperation for any reason, however farfetched, to attempt to derail the Debtor’s Plan confirmation efforts.”
To build a case against Johnson and Winners Alliance, the creditors on Monday published new information that the committee said it received in discovery.
The filing pushes back on Johnson’s claims that he put millions of dollars of his own money into the league and has lost money on the venture. The document cites two written promises by the league to pay Johnson back—the first shows the league owed Johnson $1.5 million, and later more than $2.2 million. The filing says there is “no documentation” in relation to the first note to show Johnson put “any funds” into Grand Slam, and that the league “has not produced any documentation” to show any additional funds from Johnson that would’ve raised the amount.
The creditors also focus on a $500,000 payment from the league to Johnson in early June, shortly after the Philadelphia event and before canceling the L.A. event. The creditors claim Johnson did this “without proper Board approval or justification.”
“Shockingly, Mr. Johnson elected to secretly prefer himself over the athletes and other, non-insider creditors, while at the same time feigning to the public that he was selflessly looking to advance the interests of the athletes,” the filing says.
A Grand Slam spokesperson denied any impropriety.
“On behalf of Grand Slam Track, we are aware of the [creditors committee’s] recent allegation that GST secretly paid $500,000 to Mr. Johnson instead of paying athletes and vendors,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“This claim is unfounded and false. As was previously explained to the [creditors], Mr. Johnson advanced millions of dollars for GST’s operating expenses, including athlete travel, accommodation and costs, only a portion which was repaid through the reimbursement. It is unfortunate that the [creditors committee] chose to ignore facts and is instead attempting to discredit the company and Mr. Johnson through false statements.”
The committee claims that Winners Alliance made assurances that it would backstop Grand Slam, then failed to follow through on its commitments. Winners Alliance is the commercial arm of the Professional Tennis Players Association that led Grand Slam’s initial funding round, organized emergency financing in October that paid athletes half of what they are owed, and is currently funding the league through the bankruptcy process.
Monday’s filing claims:
- In a Sept. 2023 term sheet, Winners Alliance said it “is willing to fund the work needed to properly diligence and scale GST” and “will provide all diligence and needed skills to create this entity including, but not limited to: financial diligence (internal and external), operations consulting, and fundraising.”
- During the fall of 2023, Winners Alliance paid more than $1 million for a consultant, Two Circles, “for the purposes of, among other things, developing a business model” for Grand Slam.
- Winners Alliance initially said it would give Grand Slam a $25 million line of credit (on top of its $7 million investment), but that was brought down to just $6 million when the money was exchanged in April 2024.
- Grand Slam announced in June 2024 that it had more than $30 million in funding when in reality, Winners had only paid $13 million.
- The league’s internal projections were for $14.5 million in revenue and $27 million in losses for 2025. The league didn’t expect to be profitable until 2027.
- After prospective investor Elridridge backed out, Winners “instructed” Grand Slam to go forward with its Miami and Philadelphia events, despite not having sufficient funds to do so.
- In the fall, after athletes were paid 50% of their debts, Winners Alliance “directed the engagement of a consultant” who offered vendors half of what they were owed “after deducting for any prior payments received.” This meant that some vendors were offered “a payment of 7-8% of what they were owed.”
The vendors say that Winners is responsible for the current mess by directing Grand Slam to keep holding races “despite deepening insolvency” and is breaking the law with a plan that “grossly favors athletes” for repayment.
The creditors’ proposed lawsuit does not list Grand Slam as a defendant, but rather Winners Alliance, Johnson, COO Steve Gera, league board member Robert Smith, and Winners Alliance executives Vivek Khanna, Ahmad Nassar, and Eric Winston. (Nassar and Winston have both worked for the NFLPA. The creditors committee said Khanna served as Grand Slam’s CFO, which Winners Alliance denies.)
The creditors need the court’s permission to file their complaint because the law gives bankrupt companies protection from facing numerous lawsuits that could drain their coffers.
In addition to Grand Slam’s rebuttal, Winners Alliance filed its own defense on Tuesday, in which the group emphasized it did not control the track league and called the objections of the creditors committee “fundamentally false.”
“The notion that WA would pour additional millions into a Plan solely for reputational purposes, rather than because athletes provide unique, critical services for the Debtor and are owed for their services, defies common sense,” the filing says.
Winners Alliance in the filing said it has “has conducted itself in good faith at every step, is proud of its efforts, and is prepared to defend its conduct,” and “is not to blame for the vendors’ regretful decisions” to decline the 50% settlement offer.
The creditors committee and Grand Slam will meet before the judge on Thursday.
“Grand Slam Track is, and will remain in full compliance with all Chapter 11 requirements,” a league spokesperson said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “We are disappointed by those who seek to manipulate information publicly and attempt to undermine a court guided restructuring designed to protect all parties. We will continue to adhere to the very clear and defined statutory rules of the bankruptcy process.
“We will not be drawn into a battle of allegations or misrepresentations.”
Grand Slam’s February plan for getting out of bankruptcy would pay athletes $6 million of the remaining $7 million they are owed. Athletes like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas are some of the league’s biggest creditors, and were owed about $350,000 and $250,000, respectively, as of December. If the plan were approved, athletes would nearly be made whole.
Any litigation from creditors, though, could complicate those payments. If the creditors are successful in recovering $25 million in damages, athletes could get back the same if not more money. But even if a legal challenge were to fail, the litigation could still drain Grand Slam’s remaining resources with legal costs.
