NYCM and NYRR being sued for $10+ million for running illegal lottery

Rounding numbers, they have 50,000 widgets. Somewhere around 200,000 people want those widgets every year. NYRR controls that demand four ways. 1. Time qualification 2. Charity entries 3. The drawing. 4. 9+1 race volunteering-which is arguably also a Charity entry.

NYRR could abandon these approaches, and go to a pure price approach-where the entry is set at 500 or 600 or 1000 dollars or some other point where 150,000 people say "too rich for my blood." My understanding is that the Charity Entries require the raising of about 3000 dollars. I imagine many of those entrants pay a significant portion of that from their own pocket-rather than shaking down their friends for pledges. That gives you an idea of what a significant portion of the market will pay for the pleasure of hobby jogging through the 5 boroughs.

It's not as if anyone is forced to pay the 11 bucks-or the $265 entry fee. There is no shortage of marathons in this country. Run somewhere else. There are plenty of races that are a lot less of a nuisance to run-and a lot cheaper. New York is an event like nothing else. St George Utah, while beautiful and charming, is nothing like it. A Rock'nRoll marathon in Anytown, USA is like eating at Bennigan's. It has no soul. New York charges what they charge because they can-because they offer something unique.

The bigger question is, how exactly is the drawing fixed? I live in the USA, but outside the tri-state area. Entries are divided among the tri-state area, USA outside the tri-state area, and overseas. I "won" the drawing in 2010, 2013, and 2015 and only lost in 2012. Did not enter in 11 or 14. 3 for 4 in a 1 out of 5 game? Either I'm one lucky SOB, or NYRR is trying to fill hotel rooms. Just listening to the accents in the start corral-I think the race is 40 percent overseas visitors, 40 percent non NY/NJ/CT Americans, and 20 percent locals. And a good portion of the locals are 9+1 and charity entrants. If they make it easy for locals to win the lottery, who will volunteer at their races? And a runner sleeping at home in Queens is a runner who is not paying 300 bucks for a hotel room.

Wouldn't that just open to door to people scalping entries to popular races?

No thanks wrote: Wouldn't that just open to door to people scalping entries to popular races?

Don't go blabbing your business plan to the world Just do it.

Airlines, etc... don't have to run a lottery because they just raise the price until demand equates with supply (seat availability per route).

NYRR could surely avoid the lottery by charging a $1000 entry fee with $0 processing costs. But then people would complain that it is an "elitist" race for the rich.

I'd pay $1000 if they could guarantee:

1. a smaller field of no more than 10,000 runners (less headaches for the runners, the staff/volunteers, and the city). Maybe limit race ten 1,000 person waves, each starting about 3-5 minutes apart.

2. nice quick rides from downtown and midtown over to the starting area - arriving at starting area no earlier than 1 hour before the start.

3. a wait no longer than 5 min to use a porta potty.

4. no medals for finishers - instead, put that money into free high quality beer and food at the recovery area.

That's about it - I'm pretty easy to please!

The lottery exists because people would HATE the economic solution of raising the entry fee until only ~50,000 people were willing to pay. But that's basically what this lawsuit is asking them to do.

If I was in charge of NYRR and I lost this suit, I would just go to a highest bidder system. 50,000 spots are available, and whoever offers us the most money gets a bib. Why not? The internet makes this easy.

We might not love the lottery system, but we DO like the fact that marathon entries are sold at below market clearing prices.

What would getting rid of the $11 fee and just adding it to just entrants add to the entry fee? $30?

Shelten wrote:

What would getting rid of the $11 fee and just adding it to just entrants add to the entry fee? $30?

$11 is enough so that it takes a little skin to enter. If it were free, they could easily be overwhelmed by people saying "oh I'll just put my name in for the heck of it and see what happens."

I would argue that it's not a true "lottery."

I would think the law is intended to prevent a gambling type lottery. This is not gambling in any way. The prize here is not monetary, and furthermore the money raised goes to a non-profit organization.

It's a stupid lawsuit where a few lawyers will make big $ and the runners affected might get a few pennies. And it will screw up the entry process from here forward, likely with sky high entry fees as others have suggested.

I'm not sure why so many think that non-profits are somehow better than for-profit companies. They aren't, and many times they engage in worse behavior.

How about a really good, big, fast international marathon, that charges a 70 Euros entry fee that is fully refundable until 5 weeks before the race. I'm off to Rotterdam in April.

There is nothing that neat about NYC, but I also really could give a s**t if they stick it to slow runners. If you are fast enough you literally can get into any race worth running. Yes, all the mid- back-of the packers to extent keep these races available to us, but I don't care if they have to go through hell to get in. All this BS is almost as dumb as this lawsuit. The only race that I find a bit annoying is London where their time qualifications are only open to UK citizens. But even there, so be it. If I was fast enough, I would get in, I'm not in that case.

tycobb wrote:

rojo wrote:

Great post.

Not really that great since its premise isn't correct. People that aren't serious won't give their credit card number that would automatically withdrawn $200 if they are accepted.

You're missing the point. Any post that has any semblance of anti-liberal sentiment is a great post in Rojo's mind

Yes - we have the 'lottery' because the listed price of entering the NYC marathon is far below the market clearing price, as others above suggest.

NYRR could make improvements at once in the following way:

1. Allow a few 1000 to register using tougher than BQ age-qualifying times, at say $100/runner or $150/runner. This keeps the more dedicated runners in the field.

2. All dues paying members of NYRR who ran and completed at least 4 NYRR races over the previous year (this would be a relatively small number of runners). I think they do this already? Same price as group 1.

3. All remaining spots bid on via ebay (or some other internet service). NYRR could allow for a minimum bid of $150 (or whatever), at $10 increments, with no maximum. The auction could be done in waves as well, with X bibs auctioned in July, Y bibs auctioned in August, and Z bibs auctioned in September. Bids are sorted on the last day of each month - and those with the highest bids get a bib. So, if you bid too low in July, you can try again and bid in August.

Overall - this will create a price closer to market clearing.

4. I would eliminate their current entry via "charity teams." Just incorporate charity giving into the bids in step 3. That is, NYRR could divert any bid amount over say $300 to one of a list of pre-approved charities (that is, if you bid $500 for a bib in step 3 above - if you get a bib, $200 of that goes to a charity you pick, and you can deduct that from your taxes).

OK - I thought way too much about this already this morning. Trouble is, I live in northeast and can't run this morning or get to a treadmill.

Cross-training = snow shoveling today.

You do realize that the NYC marathon's guaranteed qualifying times are already way more difficult than Boston... The only difference is that thankfully NYRR gives you a Half Marathon Qualifying time.... Personally I think that's great..... being able to run fast HM but haven't quite conquered the Marathon yet, but I do see where you are going with your idea.... My thoughts are it's Jacka$$ like this that manage to screw it up for most people...

Men's Standards:

Age* Marathon Half-marathon

18-34 2:53:00 1:21:00

35-39 2:55:00 1:23:00

40-44 2:58:00 1:25:00

45-49 3:05:00 1:28:00

50-54 3:14:00 1:32:00

55-59 3:23:00 1:36:00

60-64 3:34:00 1:41:00

65-69 3:45:00 1:46:00

70-74 4:10:00 1:57:00

75-79 4:30:00 2:07:00

80+ 4:55:00 2:15:00

How exactly are they screwing it up for everyone else?

PWay Runner wrote:

You do realize that the NYC marathon's guaranteed qualifying times are already way more difficult than Boston... The only difference is that thankfully NYRR gives you a Half Marathon Qualifying time.... Personally I think that's great..... being able to run fast HM but haven't quite conquered the Marathon yet, but I do see where you are going with your idea.... My thoughts are it's Jacka$$ like this that manage to screw it up for most people...

Men's Standards:

Age* Marathon Half-marathon

18-34 2:53:00 1:21:00

35-39 2:55:00 1:23:00

40-44 2:58:00 1:25:00

45-49 3:05:00 1:28:00

50-54 3:14:00 1:32:00

55-59 3:23:00 1:36:00

60-64 3:34:00 1:41:00

65-69 3:45:00 1:46:00

70-74 4:10:00 1:57:00

75-79 4:30:00 2:07:00

80+ 4:55:00 2:15:00

Because nothing good ever happens when lawyers are involved !!!! They manage to screw most things up !

I like the idea of bidding for a bib. You submit a bid and I take the highest 40,000 (or what ever) bids to fill my capacity.

Since the charity runners do not care which Kenyan or Ethiopian wins the race I'd have no appearance fees and related expenses associated with professional runners.

Or I'd just charge the charities x amount (set it to guarantee myself a nice but fair profit) per slot and let them worry about selling them at a profit.

I don't know. When you have many thousands applying with essentially the same test scores and grades for maybe two thousand slots, that seems to function not much different than chance. The prize is a big one as well. If a game of skill, however, doesn't that fall afoul of a different law, regulating gambling (see NY state attorney's case against DraftKings).

mileage_man wrote:

jjjjj wrote:

Is the admissions fee for applying to an elite university in a similar category?

No, because university admissions are not "chance-based". If runners were hand-picked for the marathon on the basis of their personal stories (or whatever), then presumably it would be legal.

Can somebody who understands lottery laws chime in here? What is the likely outcome of this case, and what questions will it turn on? Is the issue whether the $11 can be considered the cost of processing your application vs. being considered payment for a 15% chance of getting into the marathon, like "dude bro" suggested?

jjjjjj wrote:

I don't know. When you have many thousands applying with essentially the same test scores and grades for maybe two thousand slots, that seems to function not much different than chance. The prize is a big one as well. If a game of skill, however, doesn't that fall afoul of a different law, regulating gambling (see NY state attorney's case against DraftKings).

At least a college administrations office has an employee read all the competitive applications. Surely universities are using some base standards to just accept or eliminate many applicants without further scrutiny, but it at least seems like $100 or so is more representative of the financial burdens a university would face in screening thousands of applications.

Randomly drawing the names out of a database is something that would be an assignment in Comp Sci I. It's hard to imagine it takes NYRR millions of dollars to maintain the lottery annually unless they need an enormous amount of capacity for web traffic.

That said, it's $11. That fee is a drop in the bucket for anyone planning to run this marathon. Do we really need to support bottom feeding lawyers for this frivolous crap that ties up court systems that our taxes support? This fee isn't harming members of society like a casino or scratch-off ticket. It'll be funny when the entry fee is >$1000 next year and the lawyers pocket most of the refunded application fees.

Today is a perfect example of why the Lottery system works for this race..... NYRR opened registration for the Brooklyn Half Marathon today at Noon and the race will most likely sell out before 1pm today. Registration on the server was slow due to the increased volume and mind you this race is a fraction of what the volume would be for the Marathon so you add the complication of technology when it comes to open registration.

Now I'm not belly aching as I have my spot for both Brooklyn, this year's Marathon, and will have my spots for 2017, 2018 and so on and so forth. I'm not concerned about my spot I just think if you enter a Lottery system it gives equal footing to all in the you geographic area who wants to run the race.