Shoes & Gear, the people of Berwick, Pa., have left their homes to take part in the Run for the Diamonds. Hundreds sign up to run. Thousands more cheer them along the 9-mile course.
A devoted group of volunteers organizes the race. So many locals want to sponsor an award that there's a waiting list to do so. And when it comes time to put a price on this tradition? "It really isn't a very difficult decision," says Margaret Livsey, the race director for 29 years. "We just want to charge the runner enough that it will cover our expenses." A decade ago that meant $15. Now it's $20. The $5 increase covers the introduction of chip timing, and a doubling in size of the race's commemorative program.
The Run for the Diamonds is a real throwback, though. It's the rare race that's largely resisted the changes of the second running boom. The most successful races have exploded to unimaginable sizes, and evolved into something entirely new. Festivals? Parties? Where dozens or hundreds of runners once toed the line, tens of thousands now do so. And they pay handsomely for that opportunity.
PAY TO PLAY
Road racers of the first running boom were a pretty hard-core lot, but they were slim in numbers. As their favorite events grew, they could no longer support them alone. New attractions led to greater costs. The Run for the Diamonds still gets by with volunteer labor, a few auxiliary police, and the generosity of local residents and businesses. The 2011 ING New York City Marathon, by contrast, will be a spectacle that would've been unimaginable to the 127 entrants who paid $1 to run the inaugural 1970 race. Today, New York requires a full-time staff, a multimillion-dollar annual budget, corporate sponsors and entry fees ranging from $167 to $292.
"Everything about a major is major," says New York Road Runners president and CEO Mary Wittenberg. "You have a major pro race, you have a major competitive race, a major number of newcomers, major entertainment, you're on a major stage." And, it goes without saying, you have major costs. Last year, NYRR paid the city more than $850,000 for services, according to a New York Times report. Those costs could be on the rise, too, with the NYC police department looking to events like the marathon to pay more. With city and state governments around the country struggling to balance the books, New York isn't alone.
John Bysiewicz, a Connecticut-based race director, recently paid a $15,000 police bill for a 1,500-entrant race. The bill wouldn't have been any larger for 5,000 or 10,000 runners. Bysiewicz's races are the sort of events that bridge the gap between the Berwicks and the New York Citys: classic 5Ks and 5-milers, 10-milers and half marathons. They range from 250 to 7,000 entrants, with entry fees that top out at $50 for a half marathon.
Asked about the future of entry fees, Bysiewicz looks back at the incremental, across-the-board cost increases of the past decade and offers a simple analysis: "There's no cost that's going to go down." As costs continue to rise, Bysiewicz says, "Some of the 200-, 300-runner events might not be viable anymore. Will people pay $50 to run a 5K?"
In 2008, Road Race Management published a survey of entry fees that showed a steady rise over the previous three years. Half marathons showed the biggest spike, with stand-alone events jumping from $35.71 to $45.93, on average; 5Ks rose from $13.50 to $15.86; and 10Ks from $22.31 to $25.31. This, in the midst of a decade where the number of road race finishers soared to more than 10 million annually in the U.S. (a 37 percent spike on the decade, according to the Road Race Information Center). Clearly, entrants haven't yet been deterred.
"I don't think we have ever seen the range in choice for runners that we're seeing today," Wittenberg says. "Literally, there is something for everybody." The New York Road Runners certainly do their part, putting on events of every shape and size during the year. But only a select few races allow us to step onto the big stage, and affording them is becoming more difficult.
The New York City Marathon is a famously diverse race, but at current prices it's clearly no longer a race for everyone. Wittenberg says that potentially pricing people out of the marathon is a concern, but adds, "We think the value is there for what we're charging. People can run a marathon, it just might be a different marathon." Which is to say that if you enter New York--or Boston, or Chicago, or any Rock 'n' Roll--you're paying for a lot more than 26.2 miles of pavement. It's an experience that starts days in advance and extends hours after you finish. There's food and drinks and goodie bags and entertainment. There's also equipment rentals and barricades and porta-potties, and many other unglamorous necessities.
The reality of today's mega races, which cater to everyone from the Olympian to the jogger, is that every entrant is paying for something he or she doesn't want. Do the swift up front even notice the bands at every mile? And do the back-of-the-packers need the instant splits and finishing place data provided by modern technology? A good cause draws some newcomers, but not every runner wants to support the race's chosen charity in order to participate in the event. For every proud runner strutting around in their race T-shirt, isn't another wondering if there's any space left in the closet?
A SELLER'S MARKET
Lauren Gabler, 27, lives and runs in Washington, D.C. She was a varsity runner in college and she's a Boston Marathon qualifier. Last spring, she considered running the National Half Marathon. The course wound through her hometown, and many of her friends planned to run. But then she saw the cost: $95. (A $55 option was available last July, with the fee increasing incrementally through Jan. 1.) "When the cost of the Marine Corps Marathon is $80, I had a hard time justifying paying more for a half," she says. So she didn't.
Gabler did sign up for the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10M one week later. Another race with roots in the 1970s, Cherry Blossom has kept costs down--entry for 2011 was $37--despite ballooning to 15,000 (another 13,000 were turned away in a lottery). "I think the race director could probably charge double and people would still sign up," Gabler says.
A la carte entries are one way race director Phil Stewart has kept his Cherry Blossom affordable. When demand arose for a finisher's medal, he offered it for an additional charge, at registration. Prefer a tech shirt to a cotton T? That's an option as well.
A race's goal--profit or not--is another obvious driver of entry fees. The biggest change on the road racing landscape since the first running boom is the emergence of a for-profit running industry. Event managers, timing companies and a host of supporting businesses now make a living from the sport. Yet some races--even some of the biggest--still just aim to break even.
"My business is to have a balanced budget," says Rick Nealis, director of the Marine Corps Marathon. If he makes a profit, he can put it into the next year's event. As a result, he's able to offer his runners some extra protection: For a small administrative fee (rather than a second entry fee) they can defer entry for a year, and--a rarity in the sport--entries can also be transferred between runners. "If I was a participant, how would I want to be treated?" Nealis asks. "I think we owe it to our runners to treat them a lot better."
Nealis' top expense, which he thinks might be the highest in the industry, is security: $600,000 per year for everything from traffic cops to divers to secure bridges along the course. Next are the embroidered entrant T-shirts, rental costs, and technology for registration and timing. Finishers medals are $2.50 apiece. All of that adds up to an $80 entry fee, a relative bargain these days.
SELLER BEWARE
So far, steeper prices haven't hurt the big events, which seem to sell out in record time every year. But Nealis sounds a cautious note.
"Sometime down the road I think there will be an uprising. That scares me when we're all of a sudden talking about maybe charging 250, 300 [dollars]," he says. "I wish others would get back to, 'What is their mission? Why are they in the business?' If it's to make money that's OK as long as they're not gouging the runners with high fees."
Fixed costs, inevitably, will continue to rise. Races also must brace for the unpredictable. Global cotton prices, for instance, spiked over the last year. Peachtree Road Race organizers were forced to absorb a 12 percent increase in T-shirt costs. When you're shopping for 60,000, that's no small matter. The costs races can control are the extras--anything above and beyond what's needed to get a group of runners from point A to point B safely.
Yet there's a sense that if you cut into the amenities, you'll cut into your customer base.
I think the days of offering a race for all ages and abilities are getting harder. It's really hard to juggle those priorities," says Sean Ryan, director of the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon and Bellin Run.
An organizer of a 5K shared budget numbers for this story on the condition that the race not be identified. The budget includes the bells and whistles of a bigger event, the sort of event they aspire to be, along with the basic costs of race directing: $1,000 for medical personnel, $2,000 for a website, $3,000 for a band, $3,500 for police, $9,000 for T-shirts. The numbers quickly add up to $100,000. On a good year the race attracts 1,000 entrants. Corporate sponsorships and fundraising are needed to subsidize the entries and turn a profit.
"Runners who have been around a long time, they've seen the [entry fee] trend going upward," says John Conley, director of the Livestrong Austin Marathon. "I think it's the newer runner, someone who's become a marathoner in the past five years or so, this is all they've ever known. They're used to paying 150 [dollars] for a concert." The analogy is literal: "Entertainment on the course is like water stops on the course--the customer expects it, and they notice when it's not there," Conley says. "You have to do it."
An obvious way to afford something new is to cut something old. At several events, that's meant the elimination of the elite race. Prize money, travel and appearance fees add up, and the benefit to the event is debatable. Conley eliminated his $100,000 prize purse in 2009 and was surprised at the lack of negative publicity. "That was the absolute eye-opener for us," he says. "We still had great coverage nationally."
Some events have the enviable--and marketable--mix of characteristics that will continue to draw crowds and allow them to keep paying for something for everyone. Carlos Renjifo, 28, boasts a 2:36 marathon PR. The most he's paid for a race was the Boston Marathon. "Seeing that price at first was a little bit shocking," he says. "But for that particular race, given all that they do, you are getting your money's worth."
In an increasingly cluttered marketplace, races like Boston and New York will continue to stand out. So will events like the Run for the Diamonds where old-school tradition and frugality live on. But for races lacking the sort of intangibles that aren't reflected on the bottom line, trying to be everything for everybody--without pricing them out--will be increasingly challenging.
