By Jim Hage / Special to Universal Sports

Race directors of the Boston, Chicago and New York City marathons spoke exclusively with Universal Sports via conference call during the Running USA 2009 summit in San Diego earlier this year. Guy Morse (Boston), Carey Pinkowski (Chicago), and Mary Wittenberg (NYC), who spoke from New York, talked candidly about the future of the World Marathon Majors series. They also addressed whether the races in London and Berlin are stealing the States’ marathon thunder and registration fees and where how they view their races evolving.

By their own admissions, the race directors are fiercely competitive with each other and unabashed champions for their events. Not surprisingly, they each believe theirs is the greatest marathon in the world. Universal Sports broadcasts all five Marathon Majors races.

Questions and answers are condensed and edited for clarity.

US: With the completion of the first two World Marathon Majors cycles, the crowning of four individual champions and payment of $2 million in prize money, have the series objectives been met so far?

Guy Morse: Before the Majors ever started, each of the five events was very successful and independent in its own right. But we as a group felt a responsibility above that to help the sport mature. Included in that process are promotion and media support, print or electronic, celebrating the elite athlete and influencing the elite athlete in terms of where they participate. Their successes and our successes are really successes for the entire sport.

I want to make it clear that this is not the work of any federation but that we are obligated to help the sport across the globe and now, three years into it, we are seeing the fruits of that labor in terms of the tremendous elite athlete interest. Interest and coverage is growing and crosses national and international lines.

Mary Wittenberg: In terms of creating stars, name recognition and personality around the athletes, that is very much the purpose of the majors. The challenge in our sport is that there is no continuity from race to race. A principal idea behind the majors, for all of us, is to try to create the concept of a leader board, with some connection between runners in the fall to runners in the spring, so that people begin to know who the world’s major marathoners are. In the future, maybe you’ll see us develop a more manageable list of athletes that we can then all promote with our powerful media assets and operations.

US: If there were a timeline, would that be a five-year plan?

Wittenberg: I would hope shorter, but one thing that we’ve learned is that we’re five really different races, and different individuals, and that’s a really good thing. In the end, we end up balancing each other. I think in the next few years, you’ll see us certainly evolve in a way that helps all five of us.

US: Boston kicks off the third WMM cycle on April 20 – any new marathons added to the mix or other changes in the works?

Morse: We always look at ways to grow our organization, but we approach any changes from a best practices point of view. Our approach is through deliberate, thoughtful decisions – due diligence, if you will — and we’re not going to waiver from that approach.

There may be a time and place where we add another event marathon, at some point in the future, but that’s not imminent. We’re also considering how we might bring the excitement of the events down to the regular runner for their participation in the race series.

US: London has spent a lot of money and there’s really no question that it has the best field, certainly in April, and Boston goes head-to-head with them. Berlin, too, has captured a lot of the excitement with (Haile) Gebrselassie and his world records. Is there any feeling that the U.S. events are being short-changed or falling to second tier among the world’s premier marathons?

Morse: We don’t feel that way. London and Boston, while we compete in terms of elite athletes, are cooperating more than ever. We feel we have assembled a great field, especially for the United States, with the top U.S. man and woman, so we don’t feel shunned at all. London will be the great event it always is.

In terms of the Boston market and the Boston tradition, it’s about the entire competition, not about one or two elites. We have managed to put together a very competitive race, one that is very compelling. ... As far as we’re concerned, we are star-makers, first.

Carey Pinkowski: London, obviously, they have done some amazing things. Dave [Bedford] puts together a phenomenal field. All these guys have to get to the line and we’ll see how things go. Each of our events has continued to bring the best available athletes. For myself, and [New York], the Olympics affected us to a certain extent, although we had Constantina [Tomescu-Dita] who came back. There are always going to be challenges.... There’s always a bit of luck that goes into recruiting fields, scheduling, and who’s available from injuries. But there’s also a lot of opportunity.

Wittenberg: Certainly our goal in New York, and I think the same with the others, is to put on the greatest marathon in the world. London, when it comes to pro fields, gets a lot of attention and rightly so. We think our fields in New York are really, really compelling — it’s way more important to have a race rather than a time trial. We have different courses, we have different races by nature, but I would never say that I thought either [London or Berlin] were better.

In the U.S., there’s a way more [deference] toward sportswriters. We’ve had major institutions like the New York Times tell us, ‘don’t announce the field if they’re not all going to be at the start line.’ We don’t announce our field six months before. If we had, you would have heard on our list Zersenay Tedesse [former half-marathon world record holder] and [Beijing gold medalist Sammy] Wanjiru. It was a blockbuster field, but by the time you get to September, October, it was a different field.

In total, we’re spending not exactly as much as London, but close to it on the pros. There’s no secret, we spend $2.5 million on appearance money, prize money and bonuses. We have more seriously than ever before considered moving all that money up front [to prize money]. In the end, we’re probably not inclined to this year, but we’re always looking to figure out how we get the most attention. Prize money is just one of just many elements that get attention.

We very much look at the totality of the event. Each of our races is different. In New York, we’re the world’s race; we’re global in the field, from the 10-minute milers to the top runners. We’re deep, we’re competitive, and we’re about the titles. And just as I would expect Carey and Guy to say, winning any one of our races is bigger than winning the Olympics. If Kara [Goucher] or Ryan Hall win Boston this year, it’s going to be madness. Boston has a mystique throughout the world. I would completely disagree that London or Berlin has surpassed any of the American races.

Morse: The key is that we all continue to play to our strengths, understanding that we’re all different events. We all have different criteria and different objectives for a “great race.” We’re staying true to ourselves while also working together.

US: Each of your marathons means big business. In Washington, D.C., the Marine Corps Marathon now sponsors an event series of five races, in addition to their marathon and a 9,000-runner half marathon. Likewise, the BAA has expanded its brand of races. Is that a model going forward?

Morse: I think that’s a trend that we’re all involved in to one extent or another. New York wrote the book on that. But we’re all expanding our brand. We have a half marathon and other shorter youth events, and we’re contemplating a couple of new events going forward, but our style is to create and nurture what we have before taking the next step. But we’re in the process of doing just that – success breeds success.

Our limit for the marathon is 25,000 runners. We believe that’s the maximum, the concept being quality over quantity, dictated by the course itself. We are tied by tradition to that course, so it’s not an option to change that to make it more runner-friendly. That’s our franchise.

US: So especially in Boston, where you can’t grow by expanding the primary vehicle, it’s incumbent upon you to develop other events?

Morse: That’s right, through other events either during that same time period or at other times during the year.

Pinkowski: Obviously, the marathon is our big event [with 45,000], but we have an 8K event, the Bank of American Shamrock Shuffle, which we’ve capped this year with 34,000 participants, so that’s a major undertaking. And we’re involved in supporting two other [Bank of America] events in Michigan.

Are we constantly approached to support or consult other events? Sure, but it’s one of those things we feel we have two marquee events that take a lot of focus, time and work, so we’re not actively growing our portfolio at this time.

Wittenberg: You’re highlighting the importance of the word “series,” because otherwise I don’t see any difference with what Marine Corps is doing. For us in New York, maybe we’re not telling the story right, maybe we downplay it because of an embarrassment of riches, but we do 50 races a year. What we do need to do is cut and slice the calendar better and explain what kind of series we do have on the grass roots side, from half-marathon series, charity series, almost a race a month, to our international series, to our professional series [in which] for the first time, we’re looking to sign pros up [with a separate men’s and women’s series].

There may be some marketing points that may make it look different, but we’ve all got a series on some level. For someone like New York, sometimes more isn’t always better. As a business, we’ve got a $45 million operating budget at New York Road Runners and 100 employees. It is about impacting as many people as we can, getting people moving on a regular basis. That’s true for each of our organizations. I don’t think we’re falling behind.

With each race perhaps as big as it can be, is it inevitable that entry fees will continue to rise? [The Marine Corps Marathon charges $88; Boston, $110 and $150 for international runners; and Chicago, $125 for U.S. citizens and $150 for international runners. In 2008, New York charged $166 for U.S. residents and $221 for international runners.]

Pinkowski: You plan your year, look at costs and the challenges of doing business. Entry fees are part of that revenue stream. You try to be as fair as possible and balance merchandise sales or sponsorships. But also remain sensitive to your participant. Our entry fees stayed the same for three years, which is commendable. The cost of doing business is a challenge; you have to make adjustments, both partners and participants.

US: Runners are practically begging to run in Boston via qualifying times and in New York through the lottery – how do you not charge more?

Morse: With an audience that is anxious to compete in our event, your human tendency is to raise rates. Like Carey, we haven’t raised ours in several years. With other costs going through the roof it may rise in the future, but only to the extent that we think it’s still a great value. It’s a constant, annual thing that we have to look at.

Wittenberg: I think there’s a lot of opportunity left, getting people engaged. In terms of pricing, the key point here, two of the three of us are not for profit, and one, Chicago, is community based. If we were pure for-profit, perhaps like Ironman, perhaps like other sports, sure, we could push it a lot higher. We walk a fine line, all of us. We review our pricing in painstaking detail to figure out what is fair.

You want to have it be more than a sport of the elites. This is a sport of the people, and we try to keep it affordable and when we allow people to pay up, they pay up for good reason. In each of our races, you’ve seen the charity programs grow.

You’ll see us go up in New York this year, we’re finalizing our fees ... our weekly races went up but we’re going to hold membership [fees]. Especially in these [economic] times, you can’t disenfranchise runners. It’s a difficult balance; you try to straddle building the event while still being accessible.

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