Marketing fail? Longtime Boston Marathon elite coordinator admits he couldn't tell you who won Boston last year

The real reason wrote:

The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only....racism. Once the East African started to dominate the sport and take all of the prize money, people started to lose interest. You can observe that this is clearly the case.

HELLO... it's not racism.... We can't freakin' pronounce or remember their names, and they speak little to no English to communicate with the public and media! That's the problem.

I don't know what you want to call it-- a communication barrier? Not racism.

The comparison to triathletes is crap-- a rich man's sport with athlete's who have pronounceable names and can communicate.

More golfers than runners? Umm...yeah.

https://www.sfia.org/press/713_Fitness-Activities-Continue-To-Dominate-Top-Ten-List-of-Core-Participants

Also, to the guy who thinks Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh mean that race doesn't matter in golf spectator interest, a) there are always tokens and b) hard to think of a safer black person than TW.

HardLoper wrote:

Les wrote:

Also, there's many, many more people participating in golf than there are competitive running. There's also no "hobby jogger let's just finish" mentality in golf. It requires some golf-specific skill and not much athletic ability just to finish a round in a reasonable period of time.

I disagree, most recreational golfers are no-skill hackers. By middle school I was better than 90% of the people on the course. Golf Digest is just like Runners' World, selling gimmicks to people who can't putt and still whiff 30% of their shots but need the latest $500 Callaway driver to add 2.5 yards to their tee shot.

Q: what would most hackers do without golf carts? A: switch to bowling.

The key word is COMPETITIVE runners, i.e. NOT hobby joggers.

automaticslim wrote:

More golfers than runners? Umm...yeah.

https://www.sfia.org/press/713_Fitness-Activities-Continue-To-Dominate-Top-Ten-List-of-Core-Participants

Also, to the guy who thinks Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh mean that race doesn't matter in golf spectator interest, a) there are always tokens and b) hard to think of a safer black person than TW.

Race doesn't matter in golf spectator interest. It thrives when YE Yang or Angel Cabrera win majors too. Liberal pundits are bent on finding racism (or projecting their own) in places where it isn't.

The real reason wrote:

The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only....JINGOISM. Once the East African started to dominate the sport and take all of the prize money, people started to lose interest. You can observe that this is clearly the case.

helpful editing

try a different word wrote:

[quote]The real reason wrote:

The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only.... XENOPHOBIA . Once the East African started to dominate the sport and take all of the prize money, people started to lose interest. You can observe that this is clearly the case.

better editing [/quote

hello. wrote:

HELLO... it's not racism.... We can't freakin' pronounce or remember their names, and they speak little to no English to communicate with the public and media! That's the problem.

I don't know what you want to call it-- a communication barrier? Not racism.

The comparison to triathletes is crap-- a rich man's sport with athlete's who have pronounceable names and can communicate.

It's not the names. DeLamielleure, Yastrzemski, Blyleven, Wojciechowicz, Krzyzewski and Lemieux didn't suffer for their names. It's less the language, although it would help. Ichiro and so many other sports stars have used translators for years. It's that when they come to compete they come once or twice a year and then go away and maybe they never come back. Ichiro may not have spoken English when he got to America, but people knew him because he was playing phenomenally and they saw him for 162 regular season games.

The real reason wrote:

The major reason for the rapid decline in the popularity of elite distance running among potential fans in the past 40 years, is due to one thing and one thing only....racism. Once the East African started to dominate the sport and take all of the prize money, people started to lose interest. You can observe that this is clearly the case.

What a tool.

Ignoring the many other factors that may have affected runnings popularity as a spectator sport, the cold hard facts are that running is a better sport to do than it is to watch.

I don't really care about what is going on at the elite level any more and am more than happy doing the best I can for myself.

Charisma - - personality whatever you prefer to call it. Exactly. There is a reason why Prefontaine, Benoit-Samuelson, Rodgers and even Galloway continue to be the most recognized names.

Ex. Went to an event at a local run specialty retailer which had Joan Benoit-Samuelson present and Q/A for a bit after. Place was packed - standing room.

Christo Landry came in the year before and there were six people including store employees.

Even some of the kenyans have more personality than most usa 'stars'. Wilson Kipsang was invited to and presented at a three day event in Minnesota post NYC. Very engaging, great turnout.

The majority of shoe companies and major road races have zero clue as how to best market their event and athletes aside from the one day stop in and see the school crap.

Runningrant wrote:

Baseball, golf, NASCAR and others are boring sports to watch, in my opinion, but the coverage is extremely analytical. Spectators/fans are bombarded with stats before, during and after in mainstream news.t

I see why a non fan sees baseball as boring but baseball has a lot of randomness that makes it more exciting. You can go to a baseball game, nothing is happening and then the worse player on the team can hit a game winning home run. In running, in terms of the winner of nearly every race, you might as well only let 3 people on the track 95% of the time.

From the use of the word "longtime" it was pretty clear I was implying he was the ex-director and then in the first sentence it I made it 100% clear.

Yes, it's not his job to know it. But that's my point. If someone who was so involved in the sport now doesn't even know the name of the winner just 3 years later,, it basically proves my point that it's not INHERENTLY interesting. The fact that this guy needs a clever marketer to make the sport interesting to him shows you the problems our sport faces.

I think the main reason we know Nick Symmonds has nothing to do with his personality - it's that he wins all the time. Same thing with Meb. These guys are brands because they have been on top of the US forever. In marathons, they are so damn competitive, it's hard to become a brand. A guy is on top for 2 years - he might race Boston twice but maybe he goes to Lonodn one year so you don't have anyone to root for or against.

The guy below makes this point.

Curioso wrote:

I think you might be taking his comment "There used to be a slew of running writers who could contextualize those times..." as an insult. You are not the Mainstream Media. You do not write for average american sports fans. I have no doubts that he would agree that you do a lot of contextualizing. You don't have a reason to be defensive here.

Just my thoughts.

I didn't take it as an insult. I was agreeing with him. We contextualize it all the time and I fully admit we are already preaching to the converted, but even we need to do it.

automaticslim wrote:

Sit back for a moment and think to yourself: Why is golf a popular spectator sport and running isn't? I'm not a golfer, There's no way you can convince me that golf is inherently more interesting as a spectator sport than running, yet hundreds of people can make very, very good livings from golf but not road or track racing. Why?

First and foremost, golf is packaged better.

No. That's not it.

1) In golf, you never know what the story line is going to be as there is so much randomness.

Some fat alcoholic might put 4 rounds of his life together back to back and wn it. That's not happening in running. At the start of t a golf tournament ,there are a 40 guys who could win it. In running there are 4.

2) In a single golf broadcast, there are an endless supplies of litte victories/losses. "Will the put go in" happens on every hole? "Will they make a hole in one" happens on every par 3.

Golf has it's Mo Farah's - Rorry/Tiger, etc - so you get people who are likely to win more than not but they dont' win all the time like Phelps, Farah.

While not a perfect fit, I have always looked to golf as the closest comparion to t&f and distance running as far as how it could be covered. The reasons are pretty self evident, it's an individual sport instead of team, it's international, and it's an activity that regular people do as their hobby every day and weekend all over the USA (the world?).

rojo wrote:

Runningrant wrote:

Baseball, golf, NASCAR and others are boring sports to watch, in my opinion, but the coverage is extremely analytical. Spectators/fans are bombarded with stats before, during and after in mainstream news.t

I see why a non fan sees baseball as boring but baseball has a lot of randomness that makes it more exciting. You can go to a baseball game, nothing is happening and then the worse player on the team can hit a game winning home run. In running, in terms of the winner of nearly every race, you might as well only let 3 people on the track 95% of the time.

Sooooo, Rojo, I get it, you are firmly backing your opinion that running is fatally boring thus not a more mainstream spectator sport and it’s lack of popularity has nothing to do with failed marketing.

I disagree. I run, I really like to run, I like to jump over stuff and throw things. I like to follow track & field and I like to watch running events but it is still marketed like the amateur sport it once was. Maybe worse. Running event marketing is crap and media (video/audio) programming is embarrassing junk or completely non-existent. In fact, track & field marketing is far inferior to amateur versions of other sports. Amateur track & field marketing is practically non-existent. And it’s not because running isn’t fun to watch.

The Olympic marathon trials are two weeks out. I just did a search for “how to watch the marathon Olympic trials”. Here’s what I got:

1) An Outside Magazine article from 2012

2) A current article from runnersworld with no info on how to watch (preceded by one of their irritating and ubiquitous pop-up adds).

3) Runnersworld about DQ’d marathoner

4) USA Today about Rupp

5) ESPN about Rupp

Nothing on USATF that I can find and nothing on letsrun.com after searching them directly. Sure, I could refine my search but give me a break. What new viewer or fan is going to work that hard to find out how to follow the trials real time?

I love and appreciate what you are doing here with letsrun.com but look at your own site. It’s dark ages technology. Track and Field is stuck in the dark ages of marketing, news coverage and event promotion. There is no hype man and little professionalism! So I can’t disagree with you more on this one. Sorry for bashing your site a little. Really, this is a fun place to hang sometimes when my legs are tired. But can you post some links on how to watch the damn trials? And London, and Berlin, and Dubai when they come around? Where the heck did you watch Dubai? And it’s not just the damn marathon. Where can I consistently follow track & field events live and when? Thanks