Running across Europe

The Rise and Size of one of the Largest Sport Markets

Jeroen Scheerder, Koen Breedveld, Julie Borgers, Jeroen Scheerder, Koen Breedveld, Julie Borgers

• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137446374
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Social Policy

Analysing in-depth data from 11 European countries, this collection explores the rise of the European running market, the reasons and motives for running, and the most important players in the field. The volume sets out policy challenges and marketing possibilities and addresses issues of participation, cost and health.

1

Who Is Doing a Run with the Running Boom?

The Growth and Governance of One of Europe’s Most Popular Sport Activities

Jeroen Scheerder, Koen Breedveld and Julie Borgers

Two waves of running

Originally, running was a sporting activity which was mainly, if not only, practised by competitive athletes in private track and field clubs or through extracurricular school and university programmes (Bale, 2004). Today, running has become an immensely popular pastime pursued in the public sphere by millions of recreational participants worldwide. Up to the 1960s, however, recreational jogging along the street, in a park or in a forest was considered a strange activity. In his analysis of public order, Goffman (1971) described patterned characters of everyday life and, among others, analysed pedestrian traffic systems. At that time, people huffing, puffing, hobbling, plodding and sweating while running in the streets was less evident than it is nowadays. Stokvis (2006) noted that in this context, leisure-time running was rather perceived as a disruption of social codes between pedestrians, and thus marring the existing public order. If people ran in public, this was mainly the case because they were in a hurry. Doing forms of physical exercise in public meant that one was ‘frivolous’, ‘idle’ or even ‘subversive’ (Florida, 2002; Paunonen, 2009). Running in public was seen as a waste of energy and, therefore, people practising leisure-time running activities risked being scoffed and jeered at (Van Bottenburg et al., 2010a). Thus, apart from the club- and school-organised version, recreational running used to be a rather unusual physical activity for the greater part of the twentieth century. However, the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s would significantly change this pattern. During the ensuing decades, informal manners and attitudes would become more and more accepted and gain importance in public life (Wouters, 1990). Consequently, thanks to this process of ‘informalisation’, people began to feel more at ease about being physically active in public. Also, running would witness and profit from this recreational (r)evolution (Scheerder, 2007a; Stokvis, 2005).

Going through processes of deinstitutionalisation and desportification (cf. Crum, 1993), running transformed from a mere competitive sporting activity mainly dominated by a small number of top-level athletes into a recreational pastime attracting huge masses of runners and joggers (Van Bottenburg, 2006; see also Smith, 1998). In fact, the transformation of achievement running, i.e. ‘racing’, into recreational running, i.e. ‘jogging’, consists of two main sub-phases. First, no longer was running only practised on a private track and field court, but also along the public road. Afterwards, road running – but also running in other public spaces, such as a park or wood – became more popular among less competitive runners, meaning that track and field running lost its monopoly.

The New York City Marathon led the way for a nationwide change, not only in number of participants, but also in restructuring the marathon to validate the presence of many runners of little athletic potential. Before the ‘marathon boom’ of the 1970s, marathoners were competitors who hoped, if not to win, at least to place in the top ten or compete for age group awards.

(Cooper, 1992: 244)

From the late 1960s onwards, running would largely be withdrawn from club-organised settings and become an independent, well-pursued sporting activity. As a result, the so-called first running boom was born. Thus, it seems that a spatial shift was needed in order to generate a change with regard to the perception and the popularity of running. Or in other words: making running a less structured, less rationalised, less quantified, less competitive and less bureaucratised physical activity (cf. Guttmann’s socio-historical model of the nature of modern sports), implied that more people would enjoy running as a leisure-time pursuit. According to Vanreusel (1984), recreational running could be characterised as a mass movement of which the characteristics conflict with the features of modern sport. As a consequence, mass running may be defined as a mass movement, being a prominent social expression of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Mass running has its roots in the United States, particularly in major cities. Here, along with the informalisation process, other evolutions as well laid the foundation for the mass running phenomenon, among which the fitness revolution may be defined as one of the most obvious social and cultural changes (Scheerder & Van Bottenburg, 2009). Based on scientific evidence, experts such as Kenneth Cooper and George Sheehan began to explain to the general public the health-related advantages of long-lasting moderate physical exercise. Running, in particular, was strongly recommended by these fitness and running gurus. Following their personal health advice, more and more people actively engaged in leisure-time running. As a rather simple and previously almost neglected physical activity, running also became a popular subject for discussion during business meetings, cocktail parties and political summit talks in the White House. Former US presidents liked to be photographed while tripping on a jog, demonstrating their vitality. Running books sold like hot cakes, among others, Bob Anderson’s The Complete Runner (1974), Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running (1977) and his Jim Fixx’s Second Book of Running: The Companion Volume to the Complete Book of Running (1980), George Sheehan’s Running & Being: The Total Experience (1978), John Parker’s running novel Once a Runner (1978), Bill Rodgers’ Marathoning (1980), Timothy Noakes’ Lore of Running (1985), etc. Also Runner’s World, the well-known running magazine that was launched in 1966, thrived during the running boom. The running boom even evoked parodies, such as The Non-Runner’s Book by Ziegel and Grossberger (1978). In fact, such books endorsed the popularity of running as a mass phenomenon. Running would become a strong ambassador of the US fitness culture, representing the idea that success can be made, also in a physical manner. In this way, it is hardly surprising that in 1980 the Chicago Daily Herald declared running as the sport of the 1970s.

A growing number of entrants partook in road running events, among which the appealing and influential city marathon races in particular. During the 1970s, marathon participation increased dramatically. Between 1970 and 1979, the Boston Marathon, being the world’s oldest annual marathon, zoomed from 1,011 finishers to 5,958. In the same period, the New York City Marathon, being one of the largest marathons in the world, increased from 55 finishers to 10,477. The number of marathon entrants skyrocketed. According to Cooper (1992), this was also the result of innovations and modifications that served the purposes of managerial capitalism. Capital and technology were used in order to meet a demand that was not only determined by the market, but also as much created by road racing administrators and sponsors. Running events became a business enterprise with promising marketing perspectives, including potential groups of consumers. Consequently, the 1970s also saw the development of running footwear technology. Introduced in 1979, Nike Air was the first trainer to incorporate air bubbles into the heel of the shoe, providing shock absorption. Other brands, such as Asics, Brooks and Reebok, soon joined the race to find the ultimate air cushioning for running footwear. As a result, air-sole cushioning became favoured among millions of runners.

Although the pioneers of the first wave were former track athletes, the early adopters of the running lifestyle consisted of so-called yuppies, being mainly young, male urban professionals from the upper (middle) class layers (Scheerder et al., 2002; Van Bottenburg, 2006). A health-enhancing physical activity like recreational running perfectly fit in with the fast-paced lifestyle of city-dwellers (Paunonen, 2009). This indicates that leisure-time running became a social status symbol (Scheerder et al., 2002). The association with values such as personal well-being and health made running attractive to upper-status individuals (Cooper, 1992; Curtis & McTeer, 1981). By participating in running one showed that one lived a healthy life, had a good balance between work and private life, and belonged to a specific social group (Vaandrager, 2007). In his work, Florida (2002) used the concept of creative class when he referred to the group of highly educated professionals who have a strong interest in fitness, physical appearance and the companionship of other upper-status persons. Members of the creative class belong to the so-called active class, being people who highly engage in regular physical exercise and the fast-growing active individual sports such as fitness, jogging and swimming. Contrary to Veblen’s (1953[1899]) leisure class that is known for its participation in ostentatious time-killing activities, the consumption of creative class people is not so crudely conspicuous. In fact, the social status and identity for members of the creative class do not so much depend on the goods they consume, but come from the experiences they have and that contribute to their creative lifestyle (Florida, 2002). Thus, we may say that running became a significant part of the upcoming experience culture and experience industry, which has been described by authors such as Pine and Gilmore (1999) and Schulze (1992) and also by Toffler (1971) in his trailblazing Future Shock.

From the late 1970s onwards, the US running craze crossed the Atlantic and was imitated in many European countries (Van Bottenburg, 2006; Vanreusel, 1984). The jogging boom took over nations such as Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands etc. (Paunonen, 2009; Scheerder et al., 2007; Scheerder & Van Bottenburg, 2009; Stokvis, 2005; Van Bottenburg et al., 2006). Although Budapest (1961), Prague (1963) and Rome (1965) were the first European capitals which started with the organisation of an annual city marathon, other capitals soon followed, among which Athens (1972), Berlin (1974), Amsterdam (1975), Paris (1976), Madrid (1978), Stockholm (1979), Warsaw (1979), Dublin (1980), Helsinki (1981), London (1981), Reykjavik (1984), Vienna (1984), Lisbon (1986) etc. (Scheerder & Van Bottenburg, 2009). In other words, most of the present annual marathons started after the 1960s.

Since the 1980s there has been a growth in the popularity of road running and jogging. This growth can be evidenced by the increasing prevalence of city marathons and the number of participating competitors. Outside of the Olympic movement large city marathons, for example, London, New York, Paris and Amsterdam are interesting examples of where both elite and non-elite competitors, club and non-club runners, tread the same route, albeit in different finish times, and for different rewards.

(Sutton et al., 2007: 56–57)

During the 1980s, the first running boom swelled as more and more people favoured mass running. In fact, recreational long-distance running evolved from a rather solitary physical activity for fitness freaks, into a popular leisure-time pursuit featured by large numbers of participants (Vanreusel, 1984). This resulted in ever-increasing numbers of running adepts signing up for not only marathons, but also for road running events in general. For example, in 1980, the first edition of one of the most famous road races in Europe, called ‘Brussels 20 km’, took place. At the time, 4,694 runners finished the race. Three years later, in 1983, the number of finishers increased to 15,946 showing the fast-growing popularity of this event. From then, however, this number remained almost the same until the end of the 1990s. Also with regard to other large road races in Europe, rather stabilised participation patterns began to turn up. This not only happened due to organisational and logistic reasons (cf. maximum event capacity, safety of participants etc.), but also it mainly indicated that the first running wave had washed ashore in this period. Indeed, the 1990s can be described as a phase of stagnation in terms of the popularity of recreational running (Scheerder & Van Bottenburg, 2009; Van Bottenburg, 2006).

On the eve of the twenty-first century, however, the tide would turn and jogging paths would hum again. At the end of the 1990s, the number of running participants started to rise spectacularly, not only in North America and Europe, but this time on an almost global level (cf. infra). In the literature this evolution is described as the beginning of the second wave of running (Bezold, 2006; Scheerder, 2007b; Scheerder et al., 2007; Van Bottenburg, 2006). This second wave began around the turn of the century and continues until present. Nowadays, every week millions of people put on their running shoes and go for a run on their own or in a small, informal group, participate in a ru...