RACE RESULT and mika:timing unveil on-demand bib printing and transponder programming

Race Directors today are facing increased pressure to reduce their environmental impact and save money. Since the start of the pandemic, runner “no-show” rates have been increasing, which means event more unused bibs, packet materials and timing transponders thrown in the trash after an event – a substantial waste of money and materials.

At the Running USA conference last week, timing technology provider RACE RESULT and leading timing company mika:timing demonstrated a new solution: on-demand bib printing and transponder programing. By printing bib numbers and programming transponders on demand at the expo, electronic and printed material waste from no-show runners is eliminated. This brings not only a much greener solution, but also represents a significant cost savings to events. 

On-demand bib printing and transponder programming also allows teams to operate with 50% less staff or volunteers not just at the expo, but also in the process of preparing, sorting, and transporting the runner bibs to the expo. The result is also more flexibility for both the expo team and runners, who can queue at any counter at the expo to pick up their start packets. It’s even easy to have packet pickups at multiple locations, such as local sponsors or running stores. The on-demand printing keeps the flow of packet pickups moving and lines short. By experiencing an easy and efficient packet pickup, runners will spend more time browsing with vendors and sponsors at the expo. Late data entries or corrections can be done on the fly and printed, together with personalized runner instructions, on the bib numbers. Timing transponders are programmed efficiently with RACE RESULT Chip2Go machines. Pickups are faster and retrieval errors are virtually impossible. The expo is the runners’ second point of contact with an event and modern customer-friendly support is of great importance.

Harald Mika with mika:timing shares: “We’re excited to be able to showcase our sustainable and efficient solution for on-demand bib printing. We’ve been doing on-demand printing at large events for years and saved over 115,000 bibs in two major events last year alone. Being able to combine this with the RACE RESULT technology to program timing transponders on the fly at the expo really makes this solution cutting edge. We recently implemented this at a World Marathon Major last October. The positive feedback we have received from other race directors around the world looking to bring this solution to their events has been great and we look forward to working with some new races in the future.”