US endurance event registration provider, RunSignup, has issued an event registration market update. According to the company, registration industry and participant levels in the USA continue to show positive trends towards reaching pre-pandemic levels.
The industry is also experiencing market consolidation, with smaller registration vendors exiting the market as they face substantial barriers to entry.
RunSignup claims to currently hold approximately 40% of the registration market in the United States and processed 8.4 million registrations in 2022.
“We have been doing the US race registration market analysis for many years, and include a great deal of data to process our analysis of the happenings and directions in the market,” said Bob Bickel, Founder and CEO of RunSignup.
“This began because we as a business need to take a hard look at how we are doing against a competitive landscape and decided as long as we were doing the analysis, we would share it publicly. This analysis is from our perspective and we realize it may be a bit biased in terms of our competitors, but our goal is to offer transparent insights into the industry.”
The company reported positive initial trends for 2023 race participation and registration numbers. Overall race registrations during the first months of 2023 show a slight increase compared to the same period in 2022. In addition, participants are reportedly registering earlier for larger events than in 2022.
This indicates an increased confidence that more typical registration behaviours are resuming [following the disruption of the pandemic]. It is noted that the number of races listed on RunningintheUSA.com has increased by 7% percent compared to March of 2022 – yet is still less than in March 2019.
RunSignup has found that many legacy and smaller registration providers have exited the market while established providers continue to apply varying strategies for serving endurance race events.
The level of investment and technology expertise required to build a complete platform, in addition to security and sales tax requirements is seen as a high hurdle that many registration providers were not able to achieve.
A release from RunSignup added… ‘The current established registration providers – such as RunSignup, Race Roster, and Haku – are shifting strategies by expanding into other geographic markets, adding adjacent product offerings like ticket offerings, or partnering with financial backers.
‘Some registration providers in the industry offer varying levels of customization, white glove services, financial incentives, and negotiated pricing for larger events. RunSignup’s differentiator is to provide advanced, integrated technology and a low price offering that empowers event organizers to increase registration levels and deliver a successful event experience.’
The US events industry also faces the impact of changing R&D taxability from a simple expense to a capital investment requiring a five year amortization as introduced in the 2017 Tax Cut.
Previously, research and development (software product development) expenses were simply written off as an expense in the calendar year that they occurred. Now, these will be amortized over the course of five years. This may be a financial challenge for new entrants or smaller registration providers.
