Read the Brand Finance Marathons 50 2025 report online now.
On Thursday, 24 April 2025, Brand Finance launched the Marathons 50 2025 report at the London Stock Exchange. Attended by many business and sports leaders, this event gave people the opportunity to consider the broad brand implications of sports sponsorship. The event featured two panels of industry leaders discussing the data with exclusive analysis.
Brand Finance’s Valuation Director, Hugo Hensley, unveiled the first global study of marathon brands, rating 50 races across awareness, functional excellence, emotional pull, and commercial outcomes. Drawing on surveys of 4,000 runners in nine countries, London topped the Brand Strength Index thanks to unrivalled UK familiarity, along with strong perceptions of heritage and charity engagement. New York ranked a close second, acclaimed by overseas runners and scoring highest for reputation. At the same time, Paris secured third place due to its scenic course and post-Olympic associations.
When that brand equity is converted into monetary value via Brand Finance’s ISO-compliant royalty-relief model, New York leads at almost USD300 million, followed by London, Boston and Chicago. Yet Chicago’s Bank of America Marathon generates the greatest economic impact, due to a huge out-of-town field and spectator base.
Collectively, the world’s top 50 marathons drive an estimated USD5.2 billion into host economies in 2024, including USD425 million raised for charity. Hensley revealed that these findings, of an affluent, B2B-friendly profile of serious runners, demonstrate why marathons are uniquely valuable platforms for sponsors, cities, and philanthropies alike.
Following Hensley's presentation, race directors from three of the world’s leading marathons told the audience that collaboration, not rivalry, is fuelling the distance-running boom and turbo-charging host-city economies.
Hugh Brasher (London Marathon Events), Ted Metellus (New York Road Runners), Wayne Larden (Sydney Marathon) and Abbott World Marathon Majors chief executive Dawna Stone said the seven-race majors alliance has become a knowledge-sharing club where operational playbooks, security protocols and sustainability standards are exchanged as freely as finish-line hugs.
Brasher credited New York’s example for London’s creation in 1981 and revealed that 840,000 people applied for this year's London iteration, with 18-to-29-year-olds the fastest-growing cohort. Larden (representing Sydney as “the 20-year-old baby” of the group) said Sydney’s entries have leapt from 5,300 to nearly 80,000 ballot applications in four years, proof of the World Marathon Majors badge's pulling power.
While friendly one-upmanship persists – notably over who can field the largest start-list or boast the most spectacular finish line – the panel insisted that the true contest is against inactivity. They highlighted record charity fundraising, wheelchair-athlete pay parity, expanding youth programmes and ever-broader disability access as metrics that now matter as much as net-promoter scores or sponsorship revenue. Metellus stressed that major-city support hinges on hard numbers: New York’s race is the city’s second-biggest single-sport cash generator after the US Open, and London keeps 73 pubs along its course full all day. Stone confirmed the series is exploring international broadcast deals to amplify “six-star” storytelling, while Brasher hailed London’s new evergreen sustainability certification as evidence that the majors can generate social, environmental and economic returns in the same stride.
The second panel featured global sponsors who told the London forum that marathon partnership has shifted from simple logo exposure to a strategic, year-round business platform that fuses technology, community impact and brand growth.
TCS Chief Marketing Officer Abhinav Kumar said the IT giant has gone “all-in on running”, replacing every previous sports deal with 14 marathon tie-ups that now see 4,000 clients and 8,000 staff race each year. Beyond title rights for many marathons including London, New York and Sydney, TCS uses the events as live test-beds for products such as race-tracking apps and an AI-driven “digital twin” of Des Linden’s heart, technology it hopes to democratise for public health. Abbott’s Chris Miller framed the majors as a decade-long proof-ground for the firm’s glucose-monitor-based Lingo biosensor, while Bank of America’s John McIvor detailed how the bank turned every channel—from ATMs to skyscraper wraps—into personalised fundraising hubs for Boston’s 30,000 runners.
Standard Chartered’s Tanish Kapoor-Shriram, engaged with 10 Asian and Middle-East races, said marathons perfectly embody the bank’s cross-border, “progress” brand promise: participation has climbed from 1,000 runners in Hong Kong in 1997 to 250,000 across its series last year, with internal challenges such as a staff “Race to the Moon” boosting morale and data-led product ideas.
All four executives argued the model is commercially self-evident. This is driving customer acquisition, client engagement and new fintech or health-tech ventures, while generating outsized social returns: GBP5.2 billion in host-city economic impact, record charity totals and programmes that pull schoolchildren, first-time joggers and disabled athletes onto the streets.
With emerging markets from Hanoi to Dubai launching races, panellists predicted the sport is still “nowhere near peak”, provided sponsors keep investing in innovation, inclusivity and broadcast storytelling.
The inaugural Marathon 25 report launch closed with a civic flourish as Lady Mayoress Florence King delivered the wrap-up address and presided over the awards ceremony. King, who ran her first marathon in London 2025 in aid of the British Liver Trust and the Lord Mayor’s Appeal, explained the Lord Mayor’s year-long brief to champion the UK’s financial-services sector worldwide and to “re-inspire the country to take risk” under the theme Growth Unleashed. She also highlighted Mansion House initiatives that knit together the City’s Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish, armed-forces and Hispanic business communities.
King presented awards reflecting the rankings unveiled earlier in the day.
- TCS London Marathon collected two trophies—Strongest Marathon Brand and Greatest Charitable Impact—while the TCS New York City Marathon was crowned Most Valued Marathon Brand.
- Bank of America Chicago Marathon earned the accolade for Greatest Economic Impact.
- BMW Berlin Marathon received the Fastest-Growing Appeal award.
Brand Finance also recognised the Top-10 strength index: New York (2), Paris (3), Berlin (4), Boston (5), Tokyo (6), Rome (7), San Francisco (8), Sydney (9) and Los Angeles (10). Representatives from each race joined King for photographs before guests dispersed for lunch and, for many, final preparations ahead of a 26.2-mile marathon on London streets.