Are more or less people running the NYC Marathon?

I took the liberty of doing some research. Below is an additional graph showing the increase in participation for marathons in the US over the same period. The graph stops in 2021 tracks the trajectory of the NYC race.

This marks a 6% uplift on 2024 — which also broke the world record at the time — including ~2,400 more female participants. More broadly, with the exceptions of 2012 and 2020, when the race was called off due to Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19, respectively, the NYC Marathon’s popularity has boomed over the past two decades.

It’s not just New York: people the world over are increasingly lacing up their sneakers of choice for marathons, despite their expensive price tags (London, for example, charges ~$300 for international participants). Now, the likes of Harry Styles and other famous faces can be spotted at the starting lines of equivalent contests in Berlin and Tokyo.

Besides celebs making running cool again, people are turning to endurance races for structure, discipline, and community in the post-pandemic world; for some younger people, run clubs have also become dating hot spots. At any rate, though, for NYC and other major cities, the growing popularity of marathons means hundreds of millions in additional spending as partakers and spectators splash the cash.