WTC expos are also very small and disappointing in the pandemic world. Although I believe there are other reasons WTC is not allowing other vendors to attend the expos. At least the 3x70.3s I've done between 2021 and 2022 (NY, NH, CA). The best IM expo was IMMT in 2016. I purchased a new helmet and wetsuit at that one (yes, nothing new on race day but I did it anyway lol). I still spent a small fortune at the Ironman store as it was our first full IM so we went a bit nuts. Not proud of that. But the Ironman store didn't lose money from us by allowing other vendors.

I love expos since I don't get out much aside from races and have to order most of my triathlon gear online. I do love being able to talk to the vendors and try stuff on......

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I was very disappointed by the expo in Kona, I was expecting a very large exhibition and instead it was very very poor

A lot of what is happening is "corporate" is taking over (and that's in so many industries these days). Not only are vendor fees "expensive" but with WTC's own sponsor obligations, said vendors are restricted on what they can sale (IE- no direct competition against a sponsor, ie wetsuit, etc). So if you are a vendor and your limited on what you can sale, you then have to make really smart financial decisions on if it's worth it to even attend said expo.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Nah, these expos are limited by the races now to vendors that don't conflict with race sponsors.

I vaguely recall an Ironman I attended where local run and bike shops weren't allowed to have a tent at the expo.


BWR San Diego last year had an amazing expo. Didn't pay too close attention whether they were all race sponsors or not.

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Ironman Canada in Penticton started doing that in the 2000's

The whole race weekend for Ironman events is a totally watered down version of what it was "back in the day"

Not entirely. The expos at Unbound and SBT continue to grow every year. My understanding is Sea Otter also bounced back pretty well last year.

Went to the Phoenix Rock n Roll marathon sports expo today. Pre-covid it was a great expo - all the shoe companies, talks by well known runners like Frank Shorter, lots of free and cheap stuff, many clothing companies, drinks, sports bars, Road runner Sports and their returned shoes, etc. This year - a huge space for the official sponsor Lululemon, no shoes, one sports bar company, a few drink companies, one clothing company, a bunch of tourism exhibitors, and lots of exhibitors with stuff for women (my wife got a free hairstyle and bought a curling iron). I guess the good old days of sports expos are over - a victim of online shopping.


I suspect this is yet another ripple effect of the pandemic - although, I had noticed a bit of a decline generally in Expos at running, cycling and triathlon races/events before the pandemic.

The Why of this?

- Costs for EVERYTHING is up

- While many running, cycling and triathlon races/events had the feel of being back to normal this year, away from the marquee one, entry numbers were down often substantially, but on average by about 15%

- Staffing levels - particularly for vendors at expos are challenging. For local retailers this has always been a tough call. Do you pull your key people out of the store on Friday and Saturday - two key days in the week to work at your booth at the Expo? What are the gains here? For larger Brands - see point number one. Travel costs are up! Also there have been cut backs in staff at larger level brands. Specialized just let go 8% of their staff this week!!

- As ever with larger Brands - marketing now is multi-channel. Expos USED to be great for Customer Lead generation, but these leads as noted by point number one are now coming at a MUCH higher cost via an Expo. There are other ways of generating Customer leads and contacts, for less $

- Many Race Organizers, who are REALLY good at Organizing a Race, may not be so great at Organizing an Expo - the needs and the demands here are different. Also, many just sell the booth space, then do nothing to generate more crowds or crowd retention - Like having a Speakers Stage, with marquee Presenters and Speakers. Pro Tip - ALWAYS have someone talking about Sports Nutrition. At the Speaker Events that I Emcee at, at Expos, whenever there is a Presenter/Speaker talking about Sports Nutrition - it often draws the biggest crowd, and the most number of questions!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Yeah, I was pretty sure it was IMC in Penticton but my brain was fuzzy on the exact details.
Ironman STILL doesn't seem to get it so many years later that by being over-protectionist they piss off locals.
You have no race venue if the locals get mad enough.

Ha that's because our triathlon shop (little tri store Inside Out Sports in NC) paid/bid/won bid for said service with IM at most of their venues (as the primary "store" and bike shop/repairs for about 10 years in the sport ~20 years ago). Their expo has basically always had bids to cover certain services for said race (IE- bike shop), and then many local vendors who sell stuff outside of said sport has never really had restrictions.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Last 3 IM expos have been horrible. Basically just the IM tent with clothing. Miss having the local bike shop or vendor with a bunch of tubes, gels, CO2 etc. The small things you may only need 1 or 2 of.

They are charging about $4300 for a 10x20 booth according to https://expo.ironman.com/...-n-roll-arizona-expo
Let's assume you're selling shoes. In that space you don't really have a ton of room for an inviting display, but you're really just selling flea market style with boxes of shoes on tables. 15,000 people walk by your booth? Which is pretty solid numbers. 20% stop and look, 5% of that buy something = 150 customers. Maybe that's low balling it. But I would bet there are vendors who do 150 or less transactions there. That gives you 150 shoe sales at an average price of $100 @ figure a 35% avg margin because some of them are on sale = $5250 in gross profit.
Which is pretty much your setup cost. So you need to double my estimates above to even pay for your employees. Is it worth it? Not really.

Should they charge less for their space? Probably. Is it worth it to them provide the service of having a tradeshow space if they aren't making a few grand per booth? Probably not?

I think the economics of these things really struggle unless you have a home run product a lot of people are going to buy or unless you're a business willing to spend the money on awareness/event promotion budget. I personally think the "farmers market" or boutique type stuff is great with all the random popup vendors that you see in various locations on the weekend, but those 10x10 booths usually cost 100 bucks or so.

It would be nice if the races viewed their tradeshow that way. But the problem with doing that is it completely undermines the massive sponsorship fees they charge their big spenders if they do that.

Our tri store who’s been doing IM expos since late 90’s. We won’t do IM 140.6 events anymore and only 70.3 due to participant numbers and DNS’s. 70.3 usually have larger field and add in the 10% DNS (rough estimate etc) and it just doesn’t work for IM events anymore. When 200-300 extra people can make or break a small biz bottom line, every person matters. We do Augusta 70.3 and NC 70.3 only now (staff has shrunk over the years

(We quit the wtc expo grind about 10 years ago when the expenses they were charging stopped making sense. We’d make $35k in sales and after all expenses make no money…our “store” measurements needs, were always the biggest booth so our fee was large).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Challenge Roth has a great expo. To top that, though, visit the Berlin Marathon Expo situated inside and outside of the old Tempelhof airport where the Berlin airlift happened after WW2. Adidas was major sponsor with a huge section but there were numerous other shoe displays also- Hoka was there with a good size area, Even a biergarten with plenty of wurst etc. It was very crowded, as much so as a German Weihnachtsmarkt.

I don't think the expo at Kona has ever been especially large. It's fairly cost prohibitive to bring a lot of product or travel all the way there to exhibit. Also, overall the field is pretty small, especially compared to larger marathons, etc.

It was always great to see Cid and Cid Jr at the expos though...

but Kona is the place where some producer show their new products! I thought that all the principal brands could be present… instead I saw only few interesting thing. Only Enve Zipp Dimond Hoka ..

I've been going to expo's for I'm guessing 20+ years now. The Unbound 2021 expo was by far the biggest and best I've ever attended.

That's right! Ironman doesn't allow Rudy Project to be there anymore because of ROKA.

The cost of shipping stuff these days is beyond stupid. Uncle Phil mentioned our owners the Cardoso’s. Jr was telling me one year all the vendors had a big insider meeting. Kona was also know for several companies not paying the vendor fees but “pop up” locations like right on the main drag or beside the expo. That became a very heated debate when a company was paying $10k and 50 feet away some brand was sorta bandititing it and had paid no money.

Cost of shipping product and the man power make a race like Kona almost impossible to afford. It’s not just the product, you then have to house/feed the employees for 5 days etc all while apparently Kona housing fees were the most expensive ever. But the reality is it’s entirely a numbers game when you factor in the expense WTC is adding on to be a vendor. Then it truly is “how many are racing” as the biggest factor of a company showing up for a vendor.

I think when a race sees the expo as an asset to its race, you’ll get reasonable vendor fees and a better experience. If it’s so expensive that you complexly lose the “community” portion of it for some companies, that’s the “corporate” bullshit that causes expos to suck. Our store puts on a local marathon race and that venue in a smaller center has a better “atmosphere” than any WTC expo I’ve been to in the last 5 years. The race organization has to also kinda want to make it work and not just an, how much can they squeeze out of vendors to make the most money.

Yeah and I pity the women this year as I think it’ll easily be the worst expo. (I love the idea of moving WC around, hate the idea of breaking it up by gender….our sport isn’t strong enough to be held like that imo)

The bike industry used to have a big yearly industry wide expo until every brand basically started going and doing their own private insider meetings. Suddenly there was no need for an industry wide expo, so either it went away completely or is a shell of itself (it no longer is in Vegas, may be an smaller Euro destination only now).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I did a story a year ago about the return of mass participation endurance events, so I got to talk to a bunch of race directors about what had changed. A few told me that a lot of the small businesses that relied on person-to-person sales at expos had gone out of business when everything shut down during the pandemic.

https://laist.com/...ning-financial-peril

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

👍🏻

Roth expo 2022 was as big if not bigger and better than 2019 when I was there last. The best triathlon expo I’ve been too. Lots of different companies, some of which obviously clash with title sponsors but it doesn’t seem to matter.

The Kona expo in 2022 was already bad... Ironman's exclusive contracts with their global partners have squeezed out quite a few competitor brands from appearing in the expo as they will only allow the partner in each category in the official expo. The "pop-up" expos such as the one that used to be at Uncle Billys were also absent in 2022.

Why do you think it will be even worse in 2023?

Because I think the women's race will struggle to fill their allotment and I think there is still a "real world" issue of..."oh it's *only* the women's" race. I'm not saying that should be the case, I'm saying that's very likely a real thing they still have to overcome. But when you are talking about ~2500 people, 10% no show or only getting 2300 to fill the race + no-show....that is enough of to cause sponsors to hard pass. We've already read that IM races still had slots post their roll down procedures. If that happens and suddenly 5% short of capacity, at 2500 max, people that is still a massive number. If there was 13k people and 5% no show (big time marathons, etc), that would be different. But an already small capped number is even starting with a smaller number + DNS (which is inevitable), for sponsors to show up in Kona, they need EVERY person to fill show up.

(And please note I'm not saying that as some macho statement....I think it's just going to be a sad reality that the women's race imo will have corners "cut" to make it work...I think the broadcast/race day will be great. But the overall "kona experience" imo will be muted and yet then suddenly it'll be slightly better / back to "normal" when the men show up in '24..though I think anything in Kona now will be muted vs “back in the day”...that's just my hunch)

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II