It can sounds crazy, but most of the races in the World are... without qualification. Like Challenge Roth.

Norseman solves this by a lottery + a small elite field

And the registration fee is less than 400 Euro.

For Nooseman? Well as far as i know, there are no aid stations as you bring your crew to feed you all the way. No road closures (most expensive cost item for any race), and you have to follow normal traffic rules
Limited security...

400 euros is not exactly a bargain when the OPEX is low

Same for London Marathon (ok bigger field, but much smaller than number of applicants).

Never said it was a bargain. There are 250 participants and a ferry to be paid. Whatever, for Kona the fee is 1200 Euro and 2000 starters. It is twice the price for a regular IM. Why? Roads cannot be that closed in Kona, ask Matt Russell about it. In the end, and this might be totally irrational, but I don´t care what they use my money for, it is just this huge registration fee I have to pay, after I already paid 600 or so Euro for a qualifying race.

All things considered Norseman is value for money. It’s a point to point that covers a huge geographical area in an expensive country. Things such as Ferry, race start and end facilities, safety, first aid support, permitting, insurance, cable card down from the mountain summit finish, race numbers/tracking/T-shirt’s etc etc. all this achieved with a relatively small entry fee and entry numbers. Puts the Ironman WC into context.

It is the best race on the planet.

Putting aside the relative dodgyness of claiming Hawaii IM as a WC, but Hawaii labelled itself as a WC well before any other current race or organisation had established any type of triathlon world championship. Not sure when Hawaii assumed the title "WC", but it was before the sport was 10 years old and prior to the ITU's formation as the sport's governing body.

If you compare Kona one day with Kona two days yes. But look if you compare it with the income of Ironman of all of their 140.6-es.
A two day Kona brings in 2500*1100= 2.7 million $ more than a one day Kona.
There are about 36 Ironmans. Lets say conservatively with 2000 participants per IM. That brings 2000*600*36= 43.2 million $.

So the income of Ironman increases with 2.7 / 43,2 * 100 = 6,25%.

And that I do not call a "massive difference".

This difference even becomes smaller -relatively, as a percentage- if you add all of the 70.3-s and other income of Ironman.

Hey, you guys are confusing revenues, profits, incomes etc.

Putting that aside, every time I have given Ironman $300-$800 for a 70.3 or full or given then over $1000 (all figures CAD) for a championship, I have probably spent $1000-$2000 on airfares, and $800-$2500 on hotels and probably another $200 on restaurants. There are several companies making way more revenue off each participant at an Ironman event than the Ironman corporation itself. Even for a local event, the towns force bogus 2-3 night minimum hotel stays. We are all lemmings in this. We can easily do local events, sleep in our beds, pay $80 and be done. Or just bike to your local pool, hammer a swim, get on the bike, hammer a bike for 40km and loop home, put on the running shoes and turn out the gps and hammer out 10km and do it all for free.

It's a bit hard to complain about Ironman and hotels and airlines milking us, when we can just turn on our GPSs and do it all for free like during the pandemic, but hey, if someone is organizing a party that we all want to be at, I guess they get to decide the price on what they want to charge, before we all go back to self timed solo events like we did in summer 2020 in most regions.

🤣

Interesting