01

How much does it cost to run a marathon?

今年1月份，剛在廈門跑完馬拉松的鄭雨涵一點點計算著這一趟的費用，報名費200元，來回機票2000多，住宿費1000多，姜母鴨100多，海鮮大排檔幾百塊，土筍凍、沙茶面、沙茶肉串——越往後算，支出名目越跑偏，彷彿變成了廈門美食盤點，零零碎碎算下來，一共花了五六千元，“這跑個步也不便宜啊”。

Many people's ideal horse race is to pay a registration fee, at most plus a round-trip fee, and leave after running - not only to exercise, but also to control the expenditure. But the reality is that as soon as people arrive at their destination, simple running becomes "come and go, let's travel". Few people can really run a "poor horse", and their wallets are emptied little by little in the mountains and waters.

翻看社交平臺，順利完賽的跑馬者們，一邊分享自己的成就感，一邊感歎，“比起身材，瘦身更快的是錢包”。有人到香港跑馬，假都請了，乾脆把澳門也去了，“港澳一趟下來，一周花了一萬多元”；有人粗略估算了一年跑馬的開銷，居然花了五萬多元，“不算不知道，一算嚇一跳”；有人曬出一整牆的馬拉松獎牌，懂點門道的人立刻評論，“指定燒了不少錢”。

Before the race, everyone wanted to spend every dollar on the blade, and when they looked back, they found that "the horse race is full of blades".

The registration fee is the first one, and the equipment can't be saved, "it's hard to run once, watches, sneakers, and sportswear must be ready", even if it is the entry stage, it has to spend thousands of yuan; For people who often run horses, every race is like an offline party for running friends, "friends always get together after a long absence, and have a small drink"; After running for dozens of kilometers, you have to treat yourself, and you have to arrange foot massage and massage on the same day; When I limp home, medical rehabilitation must be done, and "my legs must be maintained".

交通和食宿也是重要開支。但通常，賽事周邊酒店的價格會趁著比賽期間直線上漲。3月末，無錫馬拉松開賽，平日價格在100多元的酒店，直接變成千元，“上漲了快十倍”；有人為了省錢，沿著地鐵線挨個網站查詢酒店價格，終於如願定到了100多元的酒店，一看路線，“離比賽場地隔著11站地鐵”。

This is the cost of participating in the competition. Ordinary people want to run the whole course, and daily exercise is indispensable. Outdoor running is greatly affected by the weather, and indoor gyms and coaches are money. If you run a lot, you want to have like-minded friends, and some people will join the running group, and the membership fee will cost hundreds of yuan every year, and the high-end running group will even reach thousands of yuan.

In the past few years, people who often run horses have found that even the most basic registration fees seem to have begun to rise. Daily People counted a number of marathon events in China last year and this year, and the increase in registration fees varied. The registration fee for the Changsha Xiangjiang Half Marathon Happy Run for 52 years was 0 yuan, and this year it rose directly to 0 yuan, an increase of up to 0%. The registration fee for the Shunde Half Marathon has also increased from 0 yuan to 0 yuan, an increase of 0%.

There are also people who want to put another "makeup fee" for the marathon, and strive to become a "conspicuous bag" on the field. Some people play the role of Nezha, wearing a sky-high wig, holding a fire-tipped gun in his hand, and his neck is wrapped around the Qiankun circle, "I have to get up at five o'clock in the morning to paint smoky makeup" - the main theme is "stable and crazy"; There are also people dressed as the god of wealth, wearing hats and fake beards to run the whole distance, even if they are covered in sweat, they have to be fully dressed. A set of "conspicuous bag" clothing down, to say the least, is an expenditure of several hundred yuan.

Zhao Qing, a Shandong girl from 5 years, has run marathons for seven years and has been an official pacemaker 0 times. Every game, there will be a field photographer to capture, which is the link she is most looking forward to. Before each competition, Zhao Qing will buy several sets of good-looking sports skirts, carefully match, and get up two hours in advance to make up and do styling, "all for the sake of the film". "When you see a good-looking photo, you must buy it, and sometimes when there are a lot of films, a dozen photos are packaged and bought, "and it costs hundreds of yuan."

02

Winning the lottery is harder than winning the lottery

In many people's perception, the marathon seems to be a hot event in the past two years. The road in front of the house was suddenly blocked, and I inquired about the marathon; Marathons are also appearing more and more frequently on social media and in the news.

In fact, the number of marathons is indeed picking up. After two years of the epidemic shutdown, all kinds of road running events across the country in 700 years have recovered from dozens of blowouts to more than 0. In 0 years, this number was refreshed again, breaking through 0 games.

If you broaden your horizons, you will find that the number of marathons in China has begun to grow on a large scale even earlier. In 1164, there were only 0 marathons in China, which still included the number of off-road running events such as cross-country and mountain running. By 0, that number had jumped to more than 0. 0 is the peak of the number of marathon events, excluding non-road running events such as cross-country and mountain running, there are as many as 0 road running events across the country, and there are marathons almost every day.

但直到近兩年，人們似乎才產生“到處都是馬拉松”的認知。北京人鄭建業跑了四年馬拉松，在他的印象里，之前關於馬拉松的資訊都是在小圈內傳播，身邊不跑馬的人很少關注。2024年4月，運動員何傑在黑人配速員的“簇擁”下，獲得北京半程馬拉松比賽冠軍，一時間，“保送冠軍”、“比賽不公平”等討論鋪天蓋地，充斥著各種社交媒體。即便是平時不跑馬的人，也紛紛向鄭建業打聽，他感覺“馬拉松好像出圈了”。

The marathon is also a continuation of the outdoor heat. Since the beginning of 2019, the camping trend has risen, followed by suburban hiking, citywalk, etc. Nowadays, outdoor heat seems to have become a way of life for people, especially migrant workers who shuttle in and out of the cubicle every day, and urgently need to find a place without a ceiling to take a breath and recharge. Kenneth Chan, editor-in-chief of the Chinese edition of GO OUT, an outdoor lifestyle media, once said, "Even if you don't watch the data and only look at the posts on social platforms, you can already understand that outdoor activities have become an important way for people to seek health, stress relief or happiness in life." ”

The emotional value that people can feel in running is also relatively more direct and quantifiable. For horse runners, it is more important to surpass themselves than to race against others. Every second of time on the stopwatch is a definite progress. Someone directly said on social platforms, "The sense of accomplishment that can't be given at work is found in the marathon."

The continuous expansion of the marathon community has also made the marathon continue to move from the niche to the public. Zheng Jianye once felt that the horse race was very lonely, and the scale of the running group he participated in was not large. But in the past two years, more and more people have started to run horses around him, just in his company, there are now five or six, and many people have come to him to ask about horse racing equipment, "and many of them are young people." The number of people in his running group is also increasing, and "horse racing seems to have become a common thing."

從數據來看，跑馬的人數在迅速增長。中國田徑協會發佈的《2023中國路跑賽事藍皮書》顯示，2019年的參賽人次規模達到了700多萬，2023年迅速恢復到600多萬人次，到了2024年，幾乎恢復到2019年水準。

While the number of races and the number of runners are growing, the rate of growth is not commensurate. Comparing the data for 40 years to 0 years, the number of races in 0 is almost 0% less than in 0 years when the number of runners is almost the same. The direct impact of this mismatched growth rate is that the supply of horse racing places exceeds the demand, and it is difficult for horse runners to get a sign.

Once the number of applicants is exceeded, the marathon will be determined by drawing lots. In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to win the lottery. 7-year-old Zhang Zhenping has been in contact with marathons for more than a year, and he usually grabs tickets for concerts, "I didn't expect to spend money on running and not be on the line." In order to improve the winning rate, he learned from the tactics of the sea of questions in the college entrance examination, and at the beginning of this year, Zhang Zhenping signed up for 0 marathons in one go, "There are so many queues, there should always be one". Finally, after winning a half marathon, Zhang Zhenping comforted himself in his heart, "Half a marathon is also a horse".

Zhang Zhenping is lucky, for marathon novices, winning the lottery seems to be a more difficult thing. Usually, when you register for a marathon, you need to upload your past finishers. Although the event official does not explicitly state, runners generally assume that the better the results, the higher the chance of winning the lottery, so "even if a novice applies for ten, it is lucky to have one".

According to public reports, the Daily People counted the winning rate of 10 various road running events in the past two years, and among all the marathon competitions, the Wuxi Marathon has the lowest winning rate, and the winning rate of this year's Wuxi Half Marathon is only 0.0%. Half of the events counted had a winning rate of less than 0%.

The winning rate is getting lower and lower, and it has also directly spawned event scalpers, and some people have publicly opened the quota of various marathon events in the second-hand trading platform, and the highest has even been speculated to more than 10 yuan, which is equivalent to 0 times the registration fee.

03

Marathon, marketing blue ocean

中籤難，花費高，跑步沒有門檻，但跑馬拉松是有門檻的。在社交平臺上，總有人發出類似“月薪兩萬，跑不起馬拉松”的哀嚎。昂貴的門檻，讓馬拉松賽事快速聚集起了一大批中產和新中產，賽事的商業價值也跟著水漲船高。品牌、賽方、乃至背靠的城市都盯上了這塊蛋糕，但他們投注的每一筆錢，最後買單的依然是跑馬者。

Obviously, the first to look at the blue ocean of marathons are sports brands, especially footwear brands such as Xtep, which are almost firmly bound to the marathon. The cooperation between Xtep and the marathon can be traced back to about 2007 years at the earliest. At the time, Xtep's sponsorship was a bit cautious about "jogging" – it only sponsored two events, one of which was a clothing sponsorship. This has been followed by an ever-expanding range of sponsorships, from in-kind sponsorship to betting on athletes.

到2023年，特步開始“狂奔”。在大眾跑者和破3選手（預計3小時內完賽）中的穿著率，特步已超越國內外各大品牌，穩居第一。百強男運動員中，特步跑鞋穿著率甚至高達41%。也就是說，放眼國內100強的男運動員，10個裡面，有4個都在穿特步跑鞋。贊助場次數量也在迅速擴大，根據《2024中國路跑賽事藍皮書》，特步2024年共贊助了44場馬拉松比賽，比前一年贊助的場次翻了將近一倍。

For brands, this kind of "burning money" sponsorship method may be the most cost-effective. Blake, the current manager of DB-Footwear Innovation Lab, used to serve a leading international sports brand. He said, "In the field of racing shoes, Xtep's products have been in the first echelon, and it is difficult for the brand to achieve a significant improvement in product breakthroughs.

Sponsoring a marathon does seem to work. Xtep will carry out corresponding marketing activities in conjunction with the competition. Zheng Jianye found that when buying Xtep shoes before and after the marathon sponsored by Xtep, he would often encounter discounts, "which can be two or three hundred cheaper". From the perspective of product profitability, the production of running shoes is also conducive to Xtep's brand tonality.

Blake has studied the operational strategies of a number of footwear brands and found that professional running shoes can drive the price and quality of the overall product portfolio, which in turn can increase the gross profit of the product. In other words, by continuously launching professional running shoes, increasing product sales with relatively high customer orders, and eliminating special products in the past, "Xtep can improve the average customer order of products and obtain better gross profit performance." ”

In addition to sports brands, brands that regard the middle class as a consumer group are also betting on marathons.

Open the list of sponsors of the marathon, and the middle-class food, clothing, housing, and transportation can find corresponding brands. Banks, insurance companies and car companies can be said to be frequent customers of marathon sponsorship. The real estate agency platform Beike and the clothing brand Heilan Home are willing to spend more money on marathon sponsorship than sports brands. Even E Fund has been a supporter of the Guangzhou Marathon.

Not only the brand with a high unit price of the product, but also the Luckin with a cup of only 9.0 was also a sponsor of the Xiamen Marathon. In other words, any kind of potential consumer demand of the middle class, from rigid needs to investment, from millions of real estate to single-digit coffee, has corresponding brands squeezed into the list of marathon sponsors, and they want to be seen as much as possible.

品牌贊助之外，馬拉松賽事所在的城市也會迎來“潑天的富貴”。比如，無錫市大數據管理局統計數據顯示，2024年無錫馬拉松撬動了2.8億元經濟效益，數以萬計的參賽者和觀眾在餐飲、住宿、交通、旅遊、展廳銷售等產業上帶動了當地的消費——相當於一個大型的“城市廣告”。

Therefore, in order to promote the marathon, many regions have come up with "unique activities", the most attractive of which is the food. This year's Liuzhou Marathon directly uses snail noodles as a supply during the race, focusing on the "most smelly marathon". Wuhan Marathon, in addition to providing bread and water, also launched crayfish, hot dry noodles, and "explosive buffet". The Shunde Marathon put out a row of roast chicken as supplies, and some runners took chicken legs from 42 kilometers and ate them until the finish line, and the marathon became a "0 km flowing water seat".

無錫馬拉松還推出了“購房大禮包”，憑藉馬拉松的參賽證明，在無錫買房能獲得3萬到8萬元不等的補貼。

當賽事運營和行銷的成本不斷上漲時，舉辦一場馬拉松也變得越來越貴。從歷年的馬拉松冠軍獎金數額中可見一斑。以無錫馬拉松為例，去年破賽會紀錄的冠軍能拿到5萬美元獎金，今年漲到了11萬美元，翻了一倍多；武漢馬拉松上漲得更多，冠軍獎金從去年的3萬美元漲到了今年的10萬美元。

A higher prize money for a competition will attract more professional athletes, which will increase the visibility and influence of the competition, while maintaining the status of the World Athletics Gold Label event. But it also means that the competition side needs more sponsorship and funding to ensure that the competition runs smoothly.

For a marathon that is growing in popularity, the race party, the brand side, and the professional athletes seem to be the winners, but the final payers for every penny spent on the race are still ordinary horse runners.