Haile Gebrselassie will be one of the lucky few to receive appearance money when he enters the 2,000 metres in the BUPA Indoor Grand Prix at the National Indoor Arena on Birmingham on Sunday.
The Ethiopian, widely regarded as one of history's best distance runners, having set 11 world records and won the Olympic and world 10,000 metres titles, is one of only 14 athletes being paid to compete in the meeting, the second leg in the Ricoh Tour.
The rest will be competing only for prize money and record bonuses, a significant change. Most of them have been accustomed to receiving appearance fees in the past.
"This is the way of the future," said the meeting's promoter Ian Stewart. "The athletes are going to have to get used to it, even at places like Oslo and Brussels."
Although it may not appear so, this situation has not been forced by the financial collapse of the British Athletic Federation, which was declared insolvent last October with debts of £1.74 million.
API, the sport's marketing agents, are underwriting the costs of Sunday's event, but the budget of about £139,000 is less than half of the sums available to the other top three meetings in Europe this winter.
Ironically the Birmingham event could be the classiest indoor meeting this season, with 10 Olympic and world champions plus seven current world best performers competing.
Besides Gebrselassie there is Sergei Bubka in the pole vault and the world 100m champion Maurice Greene in the 60m. All of them are competing at under their market value. "A lot of big stars are coming here as a favour to British athletics," said Stewart.
