I did it. I solved the world's problems on a recent run. Runners have a tendency to do that sort of thing.
So the central problem is this: how do you make running a more popular sport?
Wait, what? I thought running was already hugely popular? Isn't that what this whole "running boom" thing has been for the past 15 years? Aren't there millions of people who finish races every year? For the nerds (like me), check out some of the stats here.
But that's precisely the issue. Running is a wildly popular activity, but it's a fairly unpopular sport. Meaning, people all over the country participate in running -- they go for a run, join a training group, sign up for a road race, etc. -- but very few people follow the professional side. And what's really interesting is that as more and more people have taken up running, fewer and fewer people have been following the pros. Media coverage of the sport, while once a mainstay in Sports Illustrated and on ESPN / ABC (remember Wide World of Sports?), is largely dissolving into niche markets (Track and Field News, LetsRun.com, Flotrack, and [very] occasionally Runner's World)
The issue is presentation. Running is not presented according to a modern professional model -- with a regular cast of characters (individual athletes or teams) competing in a regular series of events during a defined season with stakes at each event, all culminating in a season-ending championship where only the best qualify to figure out the CHAMPION. Look at golf with the PGA Tour leading to the FedEx Cup. Or tennis with the ATP World Tour -- anyone here in Cincinnati knows just how big an event the two-week stop in Mason is. Both golf and tennis are individual sports that have large participant bases but also large fan bases. Yet their models are so much more successful than running's model.
As it stands now, running is presented as nothing more than a series of exhibitions, with arbitrary national titles and piddling amounts of money on the line. The athletes who grew up with the sport are passionate fans, but few others are. The only time those others actually care about the sport is every four years for the Olympics. It's time to give casual fans (runners and non-runners alike) a reason to care every year.
Let's take the model of golf and tennis and create a professional road racing series.
THE SERIES
The USATF Running Circuit, I feel, is actually a pretty good model for this type of thing. I've written about it before, and had my first taste of it just recently in Houston, so I think it has a lot of potential. My idea is essentially expanded along these lines, but executed in the fashion of a more professional tour.
Under the current format, there are 10 races in the year-long circuit plus one series championship in November (the .US National Championship). For the individual athletes, here's how the scoring / standings work for the series (directly from the series website):
Alright, let's simplify this a bit. Change the scoring -- instead of awarding points on an arbitrary scale, try points based on finishing place. So your place = your points. Score it like cross country (or golf), so that a lower score is better. If we're trying to place as low as possible (number-wise), then the score should match that. Duh.
That also allows the series to include more than just the top 10 runners. In the current model, there's no real difference between finishing a race in 11th place and finishing last. That's stupid. My proposal rewards (or punishes) everyone for their finish, meaning that higher places will always be more important to season-standings. Plus, it emphasizes competition over finishing time, which is more excited to watch.
Let's also also add more races. The current schedule races less than once a month over the course of an entire year. Too hard -- too sparse -- to follow. I'm fine with the occasional race early in the year (January/February), but how about designating a specific season -- say, April through October (the time of the year when there are the most road races) and hosting a race every two weeks? Maybe even back-to-back weeks, in some cases? Shove it down the public's throats, so they know it's always going on.
But which races should they be? Should the series be integrated into regularly-run road races as it is now, or should USATF put on races solely for the series? Personally, I'm more a fan of the former than the latter; it allows for more fan interaction and engagement with the running community, who should all be fans (but many aren't). Maybe pick a few events to be mainstays that will always host (for example, the Peachtree Road Race should always host a stop on the series as they did in 2014. Other regular hosts could include the Houston Half, Falmouth Road Race, Fifth Avenue Mile, and other events with traditions of national excellence. Outside of those "majors," rotate hosts on the schedule. Reward events that make a significant investment in elite competition with a USATF Circuit race. Pick a marathon in the spring and another in the fall. Choose a couple half marathons in the lead-up to those marathons. Fill in the schedule with 10ks, 5ks, and road miles. Sign on to the occasional odd-distance race: a 15k, 10 mile, 7 mile, 8k, etc. Bottom line: let's race more than less-than-once-a-month.
Athletes on the circuit don't have to race at every event, but the rules could at least establish a minimum number of events. To be considered for end-of-season standings and championship qualification, an athlete must run 10 events. If they run more than that, their best 10 places will count towards their season standings, so that anything outside of their top-10 places is dropped (that way they aren't punished for running more races, and thus accumulating more points; you're also ensuring a relatively regular cast of characters for fans to follow).
Oh, and can we stop calling every Circuit race a National Championship? That's needlessly confusing, especially when it culminates in a National Championship race. It also diminishes the significance of the actual National Championship. So if there are 10 races of 10 different distances and 10 different winners, and each one is a National Championship, then are there 10 National Champions? No. That's laughable. Every race is just that, a race. In terms of the total season standing, only the top-25 should be invited to compete in the .US National Championship. If any invited athlete chooses not to compete in the .US 12k, then his/her spot will be filled by the 26th-ranked runner...and then 27th, 28th, and so on. From there, season standings are irrelevant. It's a national championship race -- the winner of the race is the sole National Champion. That's it. Just one male and one female.
So that's it. I think it'd be pretty cool. But that's not all -- like with any professional sporting series, we also have to consider...
PROMOTING THE SERIES
In garnering an audience to make the series worthwhile, promotion and PR may actually be more important than the series itself. It's one of the things the sport has really struggled with, as well. So it's about time to start promoting the crap out of the Circuit.
The most important thing to do is step up the prize money. In the quote a few paragraphs up, USATF talks about a prize purse of $100,000 dollars. Split that up between the top 10 men and women, and the winner gets somewhere between $25- and $40,000. While runners are used to being starving artist types and that's enough to get by on for a year, in a world of million-dollar contracts and endorsement deals, where the winning prize for a run-of-the-mill PGA event is at least six (if not seven) figure, $40,000 is practically pennies. That's less than a practice player in the NFL makes. And we expect running to be taken seriously as a professional sport with that kind of money? Child please.
So where does that money come from? To be completely honest, I don't really know. But I do know there's a lot of money out there in the running industry. A lot of large companies (Nike, Adidas, etc.) and wildly successful race organizations (New York Road Runners, Chicago Marathon...basically every city's marathon). But it's also time to expand a sponsorship base outside of the running world. NASCAR drivers aren't solely sponsored by the car industry, so runners (and a running circuit) shouldn't be solely sponsored by the running industry. On that note, let's run this series without the infamous IAAF rule limiting the size and number (two. 2!) of sponsor logos on athlete's jerseys. This is the 21st century...runners should look like NASCAR drivers. Or, maybe more modestly, cyclists.
And why can't a nation-wide series have sponsors? Let's sell naming rights for the championship race. Let's attract corporate sponsors as officially endorsed for the series. Let's brand and sell athletes' uniforms. In short, let's shamelessly sell out.
But sponsors aren't going to hop on board without a nation-wide audience. That's why TV is so important. USATF.tv is awesome, but internet streaming doesn't grow a sport beyond it's niche. Live sport broadcast on TV is how you reach more casual sports fans...and with the growth of sports-specialty networks in recent years (think: CBS Sports Network, Fox Sports 1, NBC and Universal Sports all encroaching on the ESPN juggernaut), now's the perfect time to get a regular running series on TV. In fact, the NBC network is heavily invested in Olympic sports; that's their niche. I'd love to see the series on NBC Sports Network -- or even Universal Sports. Think of the TV treatment of the Tour de France and ram it down the viewers throats.
Since more money and viewers and sponsorship are intertwined in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, it's time to get creative on the PR side of things. Here are some more ideas to generate promotional interest in the Circuit:
So the central problem is this: how do you make running a more popular sport?
Wait, what? I thought running was already hugely popular? Isn't that what this whole "running boom" thing has been for the past 15 years? Aren't there millions of people who finish races every year? For the nerds (like me), check out some of the stats here.
But that's precisely the issue. Running is a wildly popular activity, but it's a fairly unpopular sport. Meaning, people all over the country participate in running -- they go for a run, join a training group, sign up for a road race, etc. -- but very few people follow the professional side. And what's really interesting is that as more and more people have taken up running, fewer and fewer people have been following the pros. Media coverage of the sport, while once a mainstay in Sports Illustrated and on ESPN / ABC (remember Wide World of Sports?), is largely dissolving into niche markets (Track and Field News, LetsRun.com, Flotrack, and [very] occasionally Runner's World)
The issue is presentation. Running is not presented according to a modern professional model -- with a regular cast of characters (individual athletes or teams) competing in a regular series of events during a defined season with stakes at each event, all culminating in a season-ending championship where only the best qualify to figure out the CHAMPION. Look at golf with the PGA Tour leading to the FedEx Cup. Or tennis with the ATP World Tour -- anyone here in Cincinnati knows just how big an event the two-week stop in Mason is. Both golf and tennis are individual sports that have large participant bases but also large fan bases. Yet their models are so much more successful than running's model.
As it stands now, running is presented as nothing more than a series of exhibitions, with arbitrary national titles and piddling amounts of money on the line. The athletes who grew up with the sport are passionate fans, but few others are. The only time those others actually care about the sport is every four years for the Olympics. It's time to give casual fans (runners and non-runners alike) a reason to care every year.
Let's take the model of golf and tennis and create a professional road racing series.
THE SERIES
The USATF Running Circuit, I feel, is actually a pretty good model for this type of thing. I've written about it before, and had my first taste of it just recently in Houston, so I think it has a lot of potential. My idea is essentially expanded along these lines, but executed in the fashion of a more professional tour.
Under the current format, there are 10 races in the year-long circuit plus one series championship in November (the .US National Championship). For the individual athletes, here's how the scoring / standings work for the series (directly from the series website):
"The first ten U.S. runners earn points at each USATF Running Circuit race (15 for first, 12 for second, 10 for third, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1), with those earning the most points receiving prize money at the end of the series. For Super Circuit events, scoring is set as 22.5 for first, 18 for second, 15 for third, 10.5, 9, 7.5, 6, 4.5, 3 and 1.5. Runners who finish in the top 15 at USATF Running Circuit races qualify for the .US National 12K, the culminating event of the USATF Running Circuit featuring $100,000 in prize money."Confused? Yeah, me too. And I ran in it.
Alright, let's simplify this a bit. Change the scoring -- instead of awarding points on an arbitrary scale, try points based on finishing place. So your place = your points. Score it like cross country (or golf), so that a lower score is better. If we're trying to place as low as possible (number-wise), then the score should match that. Duh.
That also allows the series to include more than just the top 10 runners. In the current model, there's no real difference between finishing a race in 11th place and finishing last. That's stupid. My proposal rewards (or punishes) everyone for their finish, meaning that higher places will always be more important to season-standings. Plus, it emphasizes competition over finishing time, which is more excited to watch.
Let's also also add more races. The current schedule races less than once a month over the course of an entire year. Too hard -- too sparse -- to follow. I'm fine with the occasional race early in the year (January/February), but how about designating a specific season -- say, April through October (the time of the year when there are the most road races) and hosting a race every two weeks? Maybe even back-to-back weeks, in some cases? Shove it down the public's throats, so they know it's always going on.
But which races should they be? Should the series be integrated into regularly-run road races as it is now, or should USATF put on races solely for the series? Personally, I'm more a fan of the former than the latter; it allows for more fan interaction and engagement with the running community, who should all be fans (but many aren't). Maybe pick a few events to be mainstays that will always host (for example, the Peachtree Road Race should always host a stop on the series as they did in 2014. Other regular hosts could include the Houston Half, Falmouth Road Race, Fifth Avenue Mile, and other events with traditions of national excellence. Outside of those "majors," rotate hosts on the schedule. Reward events that make a significant investment in elite competition with a USATF Circuit race. Pick a marathon in the spring and another in the fall. Choose a couple half marathons in the lead-up to those marathons. Fill in the schedule with 10ks, 5ks, and road miles. Sign on to the occasional odd-distance race: a 15k, 10 mile, 7 mile, 8k, etc. Bottom line: let's race more than less-than-once-a-month.
Athletes on the circuit don't have to race at every event, but the rules could at least establish a minimum number of events. To be considered for end-of-season standings and championship qualification, an athlete must run 10 events. If they run more than that, their best 10 places will count towards their season standings, so that anything outside of their top-10 places is dropped (that way they aren't punished for running more races, and thus accumulating more points; you're also ensuring a relatively regular cast of characters for fans to follow).
Oh, and can we stop calling every Circuit race a National Championship? That's needlessly confusing, especially when it culminates in a National Championship race. It also diminishes the significance of the actual National Championship. So if there are 10 races of 10 different distances and 10 different winners, and each one is a National Championship, then are there 10 National Champions? No. That's laughable. Every race is just that, a race. In terms of the total season standing, only the top-25 should be invited to compete in the .US National Championship. If any invited athlete chooses not to compete in the .US 12k, then his/her spot will be filled by the 26th-ranked runner...and then 27th, 28th, and so on. From there, season standings are irrelevant. It's a national championship race -- the winner of the race is the sole National Champion. That's it. Just one male and one female.
So that's it. I think it'd be pretty cool. But that's not all -- like with any professional sporting series, we also have to consider...
PROMOTING THE SERIES
In garnering an audience to make the series worthwhile, promotion and PR may actually be more important than the series itself. It's one of the things the sport has really struggled with, as well. So it's about time to start promoting the crap out of the Circuit.
The most important thing to do is step up the prize money. In the quote a few paragraphs up, USATF talks about a prize purse of $100,000 dollars. Split that up between the top 10 men and women, and the winner gets somewhere between $25- and $40,000. While runners are used to being starving artist types and that's enough to get by on for a year, in a world of million-dollar contracts and endorsement deals, where the winning prize for a run-of-the-mill PGA event is at least six (if not seven) figure, $40,000 is practically pennies. That's less than a practice player in the NFL makes. And we expect running to be taken seriously as a professional sport with that kind of money? Child please.
So where does that money come from? To be completely honest, I don't really know. But I do know there's a lot of money out there in the running industry. A lot of large companies (Nike, Adidas, etc.) and wildly successful race organizations (New York Road Runners, Chicago Marathon...basically every city's marathon). But it's also time to expand a sponsorship base outside of the running world. NASCAR drivers aren't solely sponsored by the car industry, so runners (and a running circuit) shouldn't be solely sponsored by the running industry. On that note, let's run this series without the infamous IAAF rule limiting the size and number (two. 2!) of sponsor logos on athlete's jerseys. This is the 21st century...runners should look like NASCAR drivers. Or, maybe more modestly, cyclists.
And why can't a nation-wide series have sponsors? Let's sell naming rights for the championship race. Let's attract corporate sponsors as officially endorsed for the series. Let's brand and sell athletes' uniforms. In short, let's shamelessly sell out.
But sponsors aren't going to hop on board without a nation-wide audience. That's why TV is so important. USATF.tv is awesome, but internet streaming doesn't grow a sport beyond it's niche. Live sport broadcast on TV is how you reach more casual sports fans...and with the growth of sports-specialty networks in recent years (think: CBS Sports Network, Fox Sports 1, NBC and Universal Sports all encroaching on the ESPN juggernaut), now's the perfect time to get a regular running series on TV. In fact, the NBC network is heavily invested in Olympic sports; that's their niche. I'd love to see the series on NBC Sports Network -- or even Universal Sports. Think of the TV treatment of the Tour de France and ram it down the viewers throats.
Since more money and viewers and sponsorship are intertwined in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, it's time to get creative on the PR side of things. Here are some more ideas to generate promotional interest in the Circuit:
- Legalize gambling. Don't agree? Then read this. Or if not that, set up a fantasy running league. Fantasy "teams" could be comprised of 10 runners each, with the top 5 scoring a la cross country. And, just like XC, lowest score wins. Simple. Much easier to digest than the arbitrary point assignments in fantasy football leagues. At the very least, both gambling and fantasy sport drum up interest among casual fans and pump money into the sport.
- Publish and market weekly rankings. Since finish place at each race has a point value assigned to it, rankings should be pretty easy to assign: fewer total series points = higher rank. Golfers and tennis players and boxers are ranked; runners should be as well. Make it easy for the casual fan to see who's doing well and who's not.
- Have end-of-season awards / bonuses. Americans are suckers for awards shows and ceremonies and things...just look at the Oscar's and Emmy's and stuff. Heck, even ESPN has the ESPY's -- it's terrible and yet wildly successful. Some potential awards: Most Valuable Runner (aka the points champion; may or may not be the national champion), Rookie of the Year (fewest points by someone in their first full year of competition), course/American record bonuses, etc. It's time for running to embrace the extravagance of modern sport.
- Start making a pro card. You need to have one to play on the PGA Tour. Even in a sport like triathlon, you need an elite card to be featured at the highest level. For professional running to be taken seriously, we need to separate the pros from the amateurs so that everyone actually knows who the pros are and amateurs, up-and-comers, college graduates, etc have something to shoot for. This also gives the athletes another tool with which they can leverage endorsements and sponsorships.
So anyway, that's all the word vomit I have for now. I'm sure I could think of some more later, but sound off in the comments if you think of anything else.
Now if only we could figure out how to do this with track as well (like a more unified Diamond League), that'd be awesome.
I fricken love this!! Not sure how we'll ever get around the 2 inch logo business, but I think your thoughts and ideas for the US Running Circuit are spot on. Even as an athlete, it's hard to navigate those races. I am eligible for some but not all with my times (after all, I'm a long distance runner, I don't race the mile) but why not let me be 106th in the mile and make up for it with a higher finish in the marathon? Makes much more sense in terms of bringing everyone together and creating something that the general public might just be interested in watching.
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