Running Experience Survey 2025
2: Race satisfaction summary
A key part of the survey was dedicated to collecting feedback on runners’ experiences of a recent race.
This data enables us to paint a big picture of running event experience, and also to dig into the detail to discover what’s done well by race organisers, and where there is room for improvement.
This section provides a summary of the kinds of races respondents told us about, as well as some overall figures on levels of satisfaction, perceived value for money, and satisfaction with various aspects of race experience and organisation.
Later in the report we will explore the key drivers of runners’ decision-making about the races they choose to participate in.
2.1 Races covered
Race types and distances
The two charts below show the proportion of respondents who chose to provide feedback on races of different types and distances.
Race organisers
This chart shows the percentage of races organised by different groups. Event companies and clubs make up the lion’s share of the races covered.
‘Collaborations’ involved more than one group, for instance a charity and a running club.
2.2 Satisfaction scores
Overall satisfaction
Overall, average satisfaction scores were high for all kinds of race, reflecting high standards across the running event community, but also, perhaps, the fact that running races are intrinsically satisfying experiences for runners, irrespective of details around how they are delivered.
Value for money
Overall satisfaction scores are fairly consistent across all race entry fee levels, but perceptions of value drop steadily as prices increase until they bottom out at about £60.
This seems to suggest that runners’ expectations rise at a faster rate than the amount of added value provided by more expensive races.
Possibly the stable value perceptions across the highest price points indicate that top-end events have more obvious quality differentiators that runners are more likely to notice.
"Superb" and "poor" elements of race experience
The below chart shows the proportions of respondents who rated various aspects of their race experience as superb (pink) or poor (blue).
Overall, the quality of the goodie bag and race photography were most likely to disappoint. Stewarding and results reporting were the most consistently strong areas.
Running Experience Survey
© Neil Baxter 2025
Please always cite using: Baxter, N. (2025). Running Experience Survey. Running Studies. https://runningstudies.co.uk/running-experience-survey