Ahead of the NYC Marathon, run-club sponsorships are picking up speed

If you’ve ever walked through a somewhat populated area during the weekend, it’s possible you’ve had the sneaking suspicion that you’re about to be swarmed on the sidewalk: the pounding of sneakers on the concrete, the labored breathing, the flashing lights.

No, it’s not a scene from a horror movie. It’s a run club. And for many brands, they’ve become anything but scary in the months leading up to fall marathon season, which spans races like this weekend’s TCS New York City Marathon.

“If you’re not showing up in a run club, you’re actually probably not doing [marathon sponsorship] right,” Stephanie Arpaia, VP of brand marketing at Excel Sports Management, who works on running strategy for clients including the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) and Clif Bar, told Marketing Brew. “That is almost table stakes already, which, to me, is really fascinating. It went from being this underground thing…to very quickly becoming a vital ingredient to a marketer.”

Like with any major sporting event, marathons now tend to draw a roster of official sponsors, in addition to brands seeking to use guerrilla marketing tactics to show up at events without the “official partner” designation. Grassroots marketing has become particularly popular in running, since it’s a heavy participation sport: about 52.3 million people participated in road running in 2025, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.

Given the speed at which run clubs have become valuable brand assets and the continued demand around live sporting events, running stakeholders, including influencers, brands, and race organizers, are still at the starting line of navigating sponsorships. This weekend’s NYC Marathon, though, could serve as an early test for marketers working to navigate the course.

Under the influence(r)

Run clubs, much like runners, come in all shapes and sizes, but many of them are hosted by influencers. In Brooklyn, Preethi Rajaguru, who has about 85,000 Instagram followers and 10 marathons under her belt, hosted her first “Sprint & Sip” run club in the spring alongside local bar the Ten Bells, where the approximately 30 regular members end their runs, she said.

Since then, she’s hosted events in partnership with local brewery Threes Brewing and Chelsea Piers.

As Rajaguru’s roster demonstrates, bars and alcohol brands have a significant, if unexpected, opportunity in running.

“Beer is carbs, at the end of the day,” she said. But the bevvies aren’t the selling point for many members. “It’s not the run itself, and it’s not even the drinks. It’s the fact that you’re getting to hang out with people who are doing what you want to be doing,” Rajaguru told us.

The social element of running has attracted a wide range of brands, from endemic sports companies like Nike and Zappos to beauty brands that have been breaking into sports marketing, like Maybelline.

Nicki Seaborn, head of creator product at influencer marketing agency Later, said close to 30% of brands mentioned in running content on TikTok this year are not from the fitness industry, up slightly from about 25% last year. The biggest growth, she said, has come from the beauty and personal-care category; mentions of those brands in running posts leading up to the NYC Marathon, according to Later data, have almost tripled YoY.

Justine Huang, a content creator and marathon runner with more than 117,000 TikTok followers and who has worked with both Maybelline and Nike, said she’s been surprised by the range of companies that have reached out in the past year.

“Big brands like [Nike], they’ve always had their own official [events], and then they’ll have their Nike Run Coaches,” she said. “But I think they see how creators are interacting with their audience…and how beneficial that could be in terms of better engagement and attendance.”

Course rules

Brands can also engage with runners through nonprofits like New York Road Runners (NYRR), the organization behind the NYC Marathon. Those race courses and related expos, where runners pick up race-day bibs and other gear, are often surrounded by sponsors.

While official sponsors still tend to be more endemic, like Maurten, which makes fitness fuel products like gels, Christine Burke, NYRR’s chief commercial officer, said sponsor interest has “maintained or increased” since last year, including largely inbound interest from non-endemics.

With demand in official sponsorships trending up, so too do non-official activations. Marketers and influencers say the guerrilla approach is a smart one, but some noted the importance of not infringing on the marathon course itself, as NYRR has been cracking down on unauthorized activities in that space, and will send cease and desists when necessary, Burke said.

“We are absolutely protective of our IP,” she told us. “That being said, we love how the whole city rises to this event, and we see that a lot with our run clubs out in the city…You’ll see block after block of cheer zones and run clubs out celebrating their team members, and so we’re really supportive of that.”

Join the club

Run clubs happen year-round, as does race training, which is part of the reason they can present meaningful opportunities for brands. If not done right, though, there can be risks.

“We better be talking to runners and talking to run clubs before we decide to go put anything in market, because the last thing we want is to show up with something that feels inauthentic,” Arpaia said. “You can’t really make too many mistakes, because you’ll get called out on it.”

AT&T, a WNBA sponsor, recently partnered with Seattle Storm guard Natisha Hiedeman to support her Run Budz run club. The brand team had an existing relationship with Hiedeman, Katie Riley, AT&T’s AVP of social media, told us, which was why they decided to tap into Run Budz and Hiedeman’s existing “natural community” as opposed to starting their own run club.

“What we never want to do is try to invent something on our own but really find moments in which people are connecting and see how we can maybe bring more value to that connection or bring more exposure to that connection,” Riley said.

AT&T’s event with Run Budz in September saw about 300 attendees and generated hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of engagements, according to Riley. The content had over a 9% engagement rate, she said, “which means we really struck a chord.”

Though AT&T is a company with the budget to go big on its sports activations, Riley said her team isn’t put off by the fact that running doesn’t necessarily draw the same kind of regular TV audience as other sports.

“When you sponsor a lot of things, you can definitely have sizzle reels of what you’ve sponsored and then put it in the social feed, but that doesn’t really help the people who aren’t able to physically be there,” she said. “This was our first foray into running since I’ve been here, but I think we’re always going to look for more opportunities like this.”