RunSignup releases 2024 Top 100 Largest Road Races list

RunSignup, the leading registration and technology provider for races in the U.S., released a list of the Top 100 Largest Road Races in the United States. In the absence of a single aggregator for US road race data, this report is compiled to improve the industry understanding of the top tier, most attended, events. The report ranks races based on the publicly available finisher counts for each race weekend in 2024 and evaluates the decline and growth in participation.

While large races have been the slowest to reach full recovery from the pandemic, the Top 100 Largest Race list in 2024 has encouraging indicators. Forty percent of the races that were on both the 2019 and 2024 list had grown by 2024. On average, races were just 1.4% smaller in 2024 than 2019, and they saw an average growth of 10.9% compared to last year.

Highlights of the report include:

• Four registration platforms hosted 65% of the races, including 19 on RunSignup, 16 on Race Roster, 15 on Haku, and 14 on Active.
• The top 5 largest races in 2024 included the TCS New York City Marathon & Abbot Dash to the Finish 5K, the Bank of America Chicago Marathon & Abbot Chicago 5K, the AJC Peachtree Road Race, BOLDERBoulder, and the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend. All were in the top 6 in 2023, and all exceeded 40,000 finishers in 2024.
• Thirty-six races that were on the list both years grew compared to 2019. The most significant growth was seen by the NYCRUNS Brooklyn Marathon & Half (275%), the Rocky Run (96%), the BMW Dallas Marathon Festival (93%), the Long Beach Marathon and Half Marathon (82%, and the HOAG OC Marathon Running Festival.
• Fourteen races from the 2023 list did not make the top 100 in 2024. Of those, 8 had declining participation in 2024 and failed to make the list, 5 grew their participation, but were beaten out by races that grew even faster, and one did not have publicly available results to verify finishers.

RunSignup continues to study and publish endurance market data to provide insights into a diverse industry with many technology providers. The Top 100 Largest Races report is compiled manually based on publicly available finisher data for timed events. Data adjustments can be submitted to eric@runsignup.com. For more information, view the full report: https://info.runsignup.com/2025/01/07/2024-top-100-largest-races/