Maybe they don't want to be found? If they get the itch again, they'll find you.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

The question is do you want to find the statistics or the actual individual?

You could probably do some statistic modeling (ala the BEA and jobs) using LBS, running, swim, and biking clubs in certain statistically significant areas if you just want an idea of how many people are in the ecosystem, but to actually reach the person you wold need to do some sort of survey through each an every LBS, run, swim, bike club, and RBS coach in the country to even scratch the surface because not every person utilizes those outlets especially if they aren't training for a race.

Are you simply trying to scope out the real size of the triathlon market that includes racing triathletes and non racing triathletes?

I'm right here.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

"Maybe they don't want to be found? If they get the itch again, they'll find you."

thank you for the very helpful comment.

so that you understand my interest in this, it's become pretty difficult for manufacturers, retailers, etc., to forecast, because multisport has become lifestyle-ish, in the same way that each of its constituent sports is (you can run without racing, bike without racing, etc.). it would be nice to know what the size of the market is. you can't find this out through the typical means, such as "leisure trends" because a triathlete who buys a floor pump is a "cyclist" according to leisure trends, rather than a "triathlete".

also, there may well be a way to non-intrusively find or reach a non-practicing triathlete. if i have a new, interesting, novel event i'm going to launch that may well be of interest to a latent triathlete and there's a way i can alert this person to the creation of it - and i can do that without banging on his front door and thrusting a tract in his face - that might not be a bad thing.

so, if you do have a useful solution or idea i'm eager to hear it.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Maybe comparing to a sampling of triclub membership might give you some idea at least percentage wise .... from my experience it seems that lots of people who belong to triclubs really don't do events with any regularity.

Dave

"The question is do you want to find the statistics or the actual individual?"

80 percent of my interest is just in the stats. but 20 percent is the ability to ping the individual in some non-intrusive way if there's something he/she would in all likelihood want to see.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

more helpful:

if you were looking for me, you would dig into bike races and duathlons and find me there.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

They belong to multisport clubs. I see this here, in my own ecosystem. They enjoy the camaraderie of the club and they participate in club events (i.e. not USAT or otherwise sanctioned), or other local non-sanctioned events, and that's plenty for them.


Edit to add: And they are multi-sport consumers, even though they don't show up in the "stats".

isn't part of the solution to this the use of social media which these groups inhabit - I'm thinking strava and trainer road as an example because these individuals,as you say, would not identify themselves as triathlete when in a bike or running shop

Given the volume of data that these sorts of services can access, I'm sure they're the closest source.

Another would be something like Movescount - I swim, bike and run, but don't race but they'd clearly know who is doing what combinations of work-outs on a regular basis.

There is obviously a confidentiality issue with the sharing of the data (I don't think I'd ever give permission for identifiable data to be shared, nor to receive communications) but I'd think these services are the best shot at knowing what the untapped audience is in aggregate.

In fact, if they were willing to simply share the number of people that swam biked and ran in a specific geographic area in the past X months without sharing the personal data, and you could look at the participation levels in events, it might give you a clue

My pleasure, anything to help ;)

Seriously, I think your spy network is the best way of reaching out and a) informing the latent triathletes of new / novel events.


the size of the market may be able to be done with polls of active triathletes. They all have friends who used to compete and maybe just dabble now, or are part of the "support network", which is kinda where I consider myself now. I ride a little bit, mostly swim, and I run if my life is in danger. There are a bunch of folks in my masters club who are active triathletes, they would identify me and a few other members as the "lifestyle triathlete".

You'd have to do some polling stats wizardry to eliminate any double counting though.

a better way might be to do some really deep dives into active.com / sportstats.ca, they have a ton of data in there which can be correlated to estimate the size of the market. i.e. what percentage of people participate in a tri every year, every 2 years, every 5 years, etc.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I reckon you could get reasonably far using Athlinks, but I've had no success yet in getting permission to use their API. You would need some sort of algorithm to establish uniqueness among athletes and filter out noise- ie a 30 year old John Smith from Baltimore with no triathlon races probably isn't the same as the 30 year old John Smith from North Carolina who does several sprint distances a year - but that's not the hardest thing in the world to figure out if you have some programming experience. Again, the access to the data is the issue; I applied for a developers license about a month or so ago and never heard back despite multiple attempts to reach them. I'd be happy to help you out if you could help me get past that hurdle in any way, I have some other uses for that data that I'd love to work with!

Big Data is your friend. Seriously.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I'm here too, barely ever race, train everday

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"Base training is bull shit" - desertdude

I'm here too. Last IM in 2012, probably 2 tris/year before that starting in 2005. Last belonged to a tri club in 2011. Still SBR regularly. Set up my own routes/courses to test myself. Buy most of my gear used.
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[ The sign of intelligence is you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life. - Vasudev ]

How about the folks who do all the triathlon stuff, have never raced, but are thinking about trying it soon? Are you interested in them too, or more interested in the folks who seem to be "slipping away", for lack of a better way of putting it?

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

Facebook ads. You can target the ad only to people who are associated with certain keywords or combinations thereof: triathlon, running, biking, swimming, etc. I'm not entirely clear on how facebook determines if a person fits that category (ie: they mention it in their profile, they've liked a page, etc.).

You can further split this out by demographics: geographic region, age, education, etc.

The beauty is that you don't even need to purchase the ad to find out the numbers. Go through the motions, and with each descriptor you put in, facebook tells you how many members you'll reach.

Hi Dan,

Interesting question as is the "why" are they not racing.

Also is it time to acknowledge that 3 sport training (triathlon) has moved from its start of proving who is the best athlete or who is the fastest and on to a great way to stay in shape?
If so then triathlon - the lifestyle - has reached a tipping point where the race is no longer the point but being healthy is the focus. That might have implication for vendors as their marketing and product mix might have to change from "this will make you race faster" to "this will be more comfortable or assist in being healthy".

Thanks, John

I can answer why I don't race as much as I'd like. I have a young family and its a bit self centered to be dragging your young kids to watch you race for hours and hours when most of the time they have nothing to do. This is why when I do race I choose Rev3 events or local bike events that may have a kids race so my 8yo can get on his MTB and have fun too.

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"Base training is bull shit" - desertdude

Except for the people that don't use facebook or input enough into facebook for triathlon to show up . . . .Off the top of my head (in the limited universe in which I live where I know three triathletes well) no one uses facebook.

Another "soft" triathlete here - run or bike most days, swim occasionally, do bike and run events and the occasional duathlon, hang out on Slowtwitch, but haven't done an actual triathlon since 2008. Not a member of any clubs, I do group rides but they're with friends or local rides where they're not fussy about who joins. If you want my stats you'll find me on Athlinks and other results archives (though have a pretty common name so difficult to strip out individuals). If you want to contact people like me individually then my email is still sitting in the database of various race directors and probably one or 2 other forums as well. I generally don't mind receiving the occasional email from those organisations as long as they're things I am or might be interested in again at some point, and they're not too frequent. Anybody who starts sending me more than 1 email a week or trying to sell me stuff gets blocked or unsubscribed.

My question would be - for your purposes is there any real difference between a "soft triathlete" and a "soft runner", "soft cyclist" or just "general exerciser"? If you want to know how big the market is, surely it includes anybody who could buy any swim, bike or run gear, not just triathletes? Apart from my tri-suit, pretty much all the sporting gear I own is specific to the sport rather than to triathlon per se. Even my TT bike gets used for duathlons and standalone TTs, not just tris.

If you have a new innovative race idea, is there any particular reason why it might appeal more to a "triathlete" who hasn't raced for 5 years, than a cyclist who might be interested in dipping their toe into multisport? E.g. if the location/price/timing/format piqued my interest, I'd be interested in pretty much any race involving any combo of swimming/running/biking/kayaking/rowing/orienteering, on- or off-road, individual or team events, etc.

I'd guess to say yours is a very limited universe and not representative of general public (and "triathletes"). For better or worse, Facebook is pretty damned near all-encompassing. In terms of scoping a market...I would hazard Facebook could be quite useful.

I'd say you have to find a way to look locally. I know a lot here in Austin who are lifestylers...exercise and stay fit almost daily and never race. They used to race, they don't now. If there is a multisport club in the area, that's where some of them might be. Training groups, same. They stay fit enough to race if they want, but generally don't race.

In Austin though, the tri-club is dead. It started about 10 years ago when everyone was signing up for an IM and then subsequently joined a training/coaching group. Our membership attendance when from probably 100+ to about 20 in the span of a few years. Though it sounds like San Diego and LA tri clubs still flourish.

I don't like 'soft'. I'd prefer 'lifestylers' or something else. Soft, to me, implies a bit out of shape.

What about retailers who use an actual POS system that have customer databases? Would it be worth it to see if they couldn't have a USAT member Q on their customer profile. I'm sure it violates some privacy law, but that's a way to find out how many or what kind of people exist out there.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

Even if not everyone is on facebook, it is pretty representative of the public at large. Virtually all of my friends are on it. And yes, I have flesh and blood friends, not just internet friends.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly