Innovate or Die (or worse... languish)!
I gave a brief presentation this past weekend at the inaugural Bluegrass Race Directors Symposium held in Frankfort, KY at the wonderful Buffalo Trace Distillery. Kudos to Bob Baney, Matt Montgomery and Skip Rafferty of 3 Way Racing (www.3wayracing.com) for hosting the event. I'm sure it will build in momentum and grow into a great regional resource.
A fresh blanket of snow challenged the commute but didn't stop around 50 or so people from the region making their way. It also greeted each with a picturesque backdrop at Buffalo Trace. Wish I had taken a pic of the grounds! It was great to meet a lot of experts from the industry. Race directors from the region, in the trenches, head down with their own events came out and shared a plethora of first-hand insights and knowledge during the symposium.
I'm a newbie to the Road Race industry so I try to temper my hubris but I also believe a fresh set of eyes can be healthy to progressing a market. My talk was comprised of 3 components which I'll break into 3 posts (Innovate or Die!, Extending The Crescendo, and SocialGraphicsTM - Story Telling Through Social Content) to share here. I welcome feedback as I think some of this is new territory or at least not at the forefront of the discussions I've heard to-date in the industry.
Rise of the Social Run
The good news is the industry is growing. If your event is not growing you should gut check why. I've seen two different stats putting the number of runners in the US between 37-55 million. With the stats showing only 14 million runners showing up as participating in a "timed event" that leaves a lot of growth opportunities. It's difficult to parse the public data but assuming another stat I saw is correct that the average runner "participated in 7 or 8 events" per year, that would lower the actual percentage of runners who participate in an event of any kind. My math says that could mean 14 million "timed runners" actually translates into traditional road race events only attracting 2 million or fewer "unique" runners. Let's assume there are 37 million "runners" in the US and somewhere south of 10 million "unique runners" participating in a timed event. Opportunities abound to create events that brings more runners out to events. The trend data seems to suggest most of the action is in a new breed of events I refer to as "Social Runs". Think Tough Mudder (http://toughmudder.com), The Color Run (http://thecolorrun.com) and our own Louisville-based Tap'N'Run (http://www.tapnrun.com/). I've heard numbers floating around that Tough Mudder may have grown from $30M in revenue in 2011 to double that in 2012 and projecting an opportunity to hit $200M in 2013! Whatever the numbers they're impressive and are a leading indicator of a thriving new sector in the market. The Color Run went from 0 to 50 events in it's first year! This segment is on fire which means we'll see lots of competition and experimentation which should be a good thing for the industry.
Your event may fall into one of the traditional 5K, 10K, Half Marathon or Marathon categories but I think you'd be remiss to not study what's going on in the "Other" column and figure out aspects that you could incorporate into your event. People are flocking to those events for a reason and there is much to be learned. Though many are not "runs" at all, I generically call them "Social Runs" because they attract groups of friends coming together for a shared experience. By nature, participants recruit their friends to participate with them. It's viral which means you can experience explosive growth for your event if you hit the right chord.
Rise of the Women
Besides the rise of the new class of Social Runs another trend that is clear is that women are beginning to dominate industry participation. I took my inspiration for this part of the talk from a presentation I saw by Sean Ryan (@gbracedirector) at the Road Race Management Conference in Florida this past November. Sean is the Race Director of the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon (http://www.cellcomgreenbaymarathon.com/) and did a great job of presenting some of the trends in the industry. I pulled my stats for the graphs below from Running USA (http://www.runningusa.org/statistics) and TrackShack (http://www.trackshack.com/services/sponsor-demographics.shtml).
As Sean presented in November, it's clear that one trend in the industry is, as he put it, the "Rise of The Women". I believe I saw a stat that recorded female participation in traditional road races exceeding men beginning in 2010. I doubt we've seen the top of that trend. Women runners are more "social" than men. As Sean pointed out from a survey of his Green Bay Marathon participants, only 31% of women attended the event alone compared to 49% of men. 69% of women had "Other Runners in their Travel Party" compared to 51% of the men. And, women had an average of 2.3 runners in their travel party compared to 1.8 runners for the men. The takeaway... attract women to your event and they'll bring more friends than the men.
I titled this first post in retrospect to my presentation over the weekend but I think it sums up one of the takeaways which is that the Road Race industry is at a crossroads. Some will breakout and flourish, others will die, but most will simply languish. To me, languishing is worse than death! At least when your event dies (or you kill it) you can put your valuable time and energy into something fresh. It's natural for all things to eventually die. Take a fresh look at what you're doing and either spruce it up or put it to bed.
Part II of this post will be about "Extending the Crescendo" of your event and how I see a huge opportunity to increase the overall value (and participation) in your event.
Randall Stevens (@randallsstevens) Punndit - Founder & CEO [email protected]
