Europe’s Biggest Marathons 2014 – Laufmarkt – a service for organizers of running events

About Laufmarkt – The creation of the  "Laufmarkt"-Database started in 2006. At the time being, it contains information about a panel of approximately 400 running events in Germany for the years 2003 to 2012. The amount of data available materializes in more than 25000 data sets. The data base is updated regularly. 

The main purpose of the database is to monitor the size and the structure of the market. Therefore, it concentrates on economically relevant figures such as the number of finishers and the fee participants have to pay. To be able to capture changes in the structure of runners, the data on finishers are detailed by gender and – at least for some years – by age. Other data which form the core of most other statistics, such as the winners' time are not part of this database.

Due to its panel character the database collects data on a fixed sample of big events. Nevertheless it is open for newly established events. About 230 of the events monitored were already active in 2003, the remainder has been founded since then. However, some events have become inactive in the meantime, which means they departed from the calender of races temporarily or for ever.

Europe's Biggest Marathons 

A new issue addressed on this site is a compilation of data on the biggest Marathon races in Europe. For this purpose, I set up a new data base, collecting information on the number of finishers at approximately 300 marathon events in Europe, which accounted in total for about 500 000 finishers in 2011. It is not the aim to list all marathon races, which would be extremely ambitious.

But by covering the most important races in most countries, the data allow to draw a representative picture of development in Europe. The estimate is that mor than 90% of all marathon participants in Europe a covered by the data base.

Below you find a first list of the biggest European Marathons in 2014. Because I had an accident, I have not been able to update the database. In the meantime, I have collected data about the most important races, but I am not sure whether I have got them all. Therefore the list still might be incomplete.

Europe's Biggest Marathons

   Event                    Finisher   2014   2013   Change%   
1 Marathon de Paris         FRA    39125     38690      1,1
2 Virgin London Marathon GBR   35026     34312      2,1
3 Berlin-Marathon            GER    29021    36474   -20,4
4 Stockholm Marathon      SWE   16067    15653     2,6
5 Maratona di Roma         ITA     14875    10665   39,5
6 Maratona de Barcelona  ESP     14225   14778    -3,7
7 Marathon Hamburg        GER    12851    11450   12,2
8 Dublin Marathon            IRE     12224    12346    -1,0
9 Amsterdam Marathon    NLD     12212    11307     8,0
10 Frankfurt Marathon      GER     11136    11011    1,1
11 ……

40 Belfast Citymarathon  GBR      2330     2542      -8,3

Europe's Biggest Marathons '14 Europe 2014 engl 141110.pdf [ 35,3 KB ]

The subsequent tables show a ranking of the races according to size in the years 2011 to 2013. The latter tables also contain information on the change in particpation.

Europe's Biggest Marathons 2014

Prof. Dr. Roland Döhrn
Milchstr. 18
45277 Essen  

Contact:  kontakt@laufmarkt.de

	Europe's Biggest Marathons '13 Final results Europe 2013 final.pdf [ 36,7 KB ]
	Europe's Biggest Marathons '12 Final result Europe 2012 engl final.pdf [ 35,4 KB ]