The 2021 Dingle Marathon sells out but will it go ahead???

 

The organisers of the Dingle Marathon announced recently that their 2021 event scheduled for the 4th of September had already sold out. The 2020 event which was supposed to have been held back at the start of September but it was postponed until the 8th of May 2021.

To put the Dingle Marathon in perspective, it is one of the most popular running events in Ireland. In 2019, there were 2045 finishers in the half-marathon and 606 finishers in the full marathon.

While the average entry fee of about €70 is expensive, many people will look at it as part of a weekend break so the entry fee may end up being a minor part of the overall spend.

In terms of generating economic activity, the Dingle Marathon is not insignificant. If we consider that there were 2651 finishers in 2019, we allow for say a 10% no show/no finish rate then we might guess that maybe roughly 2,900 people entered.

At roughly €70 per head then this would give a figure of about €200,000 in entry fees alone. While the organiser obviously takes a profit from that, part of it is used to pay the various suppliers. While the dry fit tops and medals probably come from China, there will be a considerable Irish spend as well. Buses are needed to transport the 2000 or so half marathon runners back to Dingle from the finish line, chip timing is need for each runner, bottles of water need to be bought and there is probably a host of other things as well.

For each event, there is also a considerable spend by the individual entrants in the Dingle area in terms of food, accommodation and entertainment and is probably in the region of tens of thousands of Euros.

The big question however is if the two events in 2021 will actually go ahead?

While we are heading into a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic at the moment, it will probably be at a lower level next Summer again If and when a vaccine is produced, it will probably take some time to distribute it to enough people. 

I suspect that any event that attracts 2500 or so runners in one spot will not go ahead in 2021 and it will be 2022 before we might get back to normal. We'll see.