Running Experience Survey 2025
5: Race comms and social media
Mobiles, apps and websites are an important part of many people’s relationships with running today.
This section looks at how runners use these technologies (as well as more traditional methods) to discover races and running events, and also explores how different groups use social media to engage with content about the sport.
5.1 Communications from race providers
Discovering running events
We asked our respondents where they had first heard about a recent race they had participated in.
Club members were most likely to hear about a race through their clubs, but without access to this source of information, non-club runners were much more likely to find out about running events through social media. Word of mouth referrals remained fairly consistent across both groups.
Top 3 sources - club members
Top 3 sources - non-club members
Quality of pre-race communication
Overall, runners were happy with the quality of pre-race communication they received, with only a tiny minority rating this as ‘poor’.
There was little variation between types of race, such as road race and fell races.
5.2 Social media usage
Platforms for running content
Facebook is by some distance the most common social media platform used by race participants to engage with running content.
Instagram and YouTube are also popular choices, but only small minorities use TikTok and especially X to view running content.
Social media demographic differences
There are some significant differences in the platforms used to view running content depending on respondent gender and age.
Female and younger runners are more likely to opt for Instagram than male and older runners. TikTok and YouTube are also more popular among younger runners.
X as well as YouTube are more popular choices for male runners than female.
Social use by gender
Social use by age
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