There have been a couple of recent posts about whether midsized races should offer prize money and the impact of prize money on the reputation/competition level of the race. It got me thinking about how a race director for a midsize marathon could incentivize a more competitive race without either paying appearance fees or offering five figures of prize money.
With every shoe company now making their own super shoe, it seems like there may be an opportunity to partner with one or more of these companies to offer gear-specific prizes paid for by the shoe company. Say Nike will pay $1,000.00 for first place IF you are wearing Nikes and they can use your name/photo for marketing. You could have a similar deal with Adidas or Hoka, etc. Honestly, I think that type of marketing would draw more attention and drive more sales than sponsoring a half dozen East Africans that no one outside of this website have heard of. Obviously sponsored athletes already have some incentive packages for winning races, but how often is a 2500 person race won by a sponsored athlete?
You could also try and get kit prizes as well. Maybe the local running store offers $300 credit if you win wearing a logo singlet. Or maybe Tracksmith would be willing to do a similar deal.
A race director may also be able to get an insurance policy to offer some crazy amount to break the world record or American record. It would grab a lot more attention to say “Wichita Marathon offering $1 Million to break the world record, $100K to break American record” than Wichita Marathon offers $2000 to winner.
Some races may already be doing this, or maybe there is some reason that this isn’t already happening. It just seems like a mutually beneficial arrangement where the gear companies get pretty cheap marketing, athletes get some prize money, and race directors get to market the potential prizes without having them come out of the race budget.