Expanding Into Irrelevance? World Marathon Majors Expansion Is Ill-Conceived Unless They Do This

I have to go back 10+ years into the MB Archives - but somewhere in there I said then what I'll repeat today about the marathon majors brand:

The World Marathon Majors are not about the competition. They're a clever marketing ploy designed to get more people to participate in their races. This much was obvious when no one cared (both spectators, or marathon major organizers) who won the elite 'series' competitions.

Having focused races do make sense, but the pissing contest about which should be which would be legendary. You'd need to rotate it every year between the men and women. One fact you've got wrong is for tennis, the men's and women's tournaments are held in the same place, largely at the same time, but they won't put the finals on the same day. That would be hard to do in running by shutting down the city 2x.

All of this could be solved too if they just had a damned feed that doesn't get any smaller than 50% of the screen on the lead groups at all time. Even for commercials, especially for personal interest stuff and without a question don't televise the wheelchair race. Nobody cares.

You could raise a lot more interest too by adding graphics to the tv: give stats: current pace of each athlete (can't be that hard to measure/have a laser pointed at them from the lead truck), give some splits. I did like the elevation profile bug they had on the screen for some of NYC, keep that going so you know what's coming up, but any map overlay would be helpful too.

And honestly instead of personal interest you could cover sections of the course and the intricacies of what they're about to run. "Oh they're about to enter the rolling hills, this bridge is the biggest on course and we'll probably see some slower splits but oh so and so is attacking, let's see how that plays out".

And these races bring so much revenue into these cities. I remember back in the 1980's or so there was a book about big city marathoning. I can't remember the name- Inside the World of ...

They talked about how a major marathon brought in more money than the major league sports franchises.

That was in the 1980's. Imagine now that the fields are double and more.

All those people and their families spending their money on hotels, food, shopping, entertainment ...

This is the Hobby Jogger Olympics.

Inside the World of Big Time Marathoning

It doesn't matter really. Nobody can run 4 or 9 good Marathons anyway.This is not like Tennis where you have the four Majors in different countries. (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open).

In Golf it's just a US/UK affair (Masters Augusta, PGA, US Open and the Open Championships in the UK).

This is just a marketing thing.

There's a thing called Super Halfs that I get emails for (for some reason). Half marathons, mostly (maybe all) in Europe.

I like this idea and I like the idea of catering THIS to elite also.

Elites can run 5 or 6 a year and a point series will have more meaning.

I disagree with you Rojo. If there are more marathons with big prize money, there will be more elite marathoners. Track runners will be incentivized to move up. The key is to keep prize money big, and ideally increase it. If it's there, great runners will show up to win it and even switch events to do so.

If you have men only or women only races, the coverage will probably be even worse. Networks already look for anything else to show but the race. You'll be watching 9 min of 'human interest' stories per 1 minute of the men's race, vs now where we get 8 min human interest stories per 1 min each for the men's and women's races.

"the World Marathon Majors have forgotten their roots"

Rojo, what

The WMM was a corporate construct and a cash grab to begin with.

And before you get into nonsense about storied history, it's only existed since 2006.

Why do you want track runners to move up?

I don't want them to. But they will, if there are better opportunities for them elsewhere.

You make the races focused that by having a two year WMM championship cycle. Each race is a championship event for the men and women once during the two years. For Example year one the men do Boston, Berlin, and New York, then Tokyo, London, and Chicago the following year. The women do the opposite. Points for the overall championship would be from those events and have a big payout for the series title. The other events and the new WMM could still be “majors” even if they aren’t part of the championship. Most runners just want to say they qualified for and ran all the marathon majors and if they want to add some new races to that list it’s fine. Maybe the new races can get added to the cycle of championships eventually. I think the WMM can be both a showcase of best world marathons for the masses and a way to determine the world’s best marathoner.

I think what we are seeing are viable business expanding. Why doesn't track make money? Lack of mass participation, Marathons can generate tons and tons of revenue which they use to have larger prices and more appearance fees.

This is why road 5ks need to be more of focus for the elites - NYU 5k, etc - need to bring in more mass participation.

the DL does the same by linking the euro, arab, and chana meet dirs.

it worked.

they get 50K per day in London, Silesia, Xiamen, Bru.

while the US only get 1K-2K at Prefontaine and Jserra.

An interesting take by Rojo (even if I don't agree) ruined by Rojo making it about his brand of politics. Post could have also been titled "F* the deaf, F* the disabled, F* the 50,000 runners who make the events actually happen - they all deserve nothing."

Relevance = dumb take. The WMMs aren't about the elites or about the elite competition. It's marketing for the masses. Most people understand this (the marketing aspect, the artificial designation of "major") and aren't bothered by it. Rather, they find it a fun challenge to pursue the WMMs. Because this is how life works—we find something to do with our time, and if it has a community and some fun milestones/goals along the way, then even better. The truth is that almost no one really cares about the elite race, with some obvious exceptions (WRs, local elites, compatriot elites, etc.). This may seem to stem from racism (as most of the elites who win are East African), but I would argue that it isn't. The EA runners, to the casual fan, can seem interchangeable. There's generally very little for the fan to go on, to connect with, and so they don't. Most people don't care whether the winner ran 2:03 or 2:08....most people don't care whether or which Kipruto won the race. The people in charge of the WMMs know this, as they are smarter than Rojo. And so they have managed to build a global participation sport by making it not about the elite competition or the elites but about the normal people who are running the marathons. Expansion only makes sense. Although I don't know why they haven't aimed for a round 10 to include a South American major.